Why am I a Muslim?

Why am I a Muslim? For that matter, why does anyone belong to Islam or any religion at all? Do we adhere to Islam because we searched for The Truth and the answers it provided were the sanest and most appealing to the intellect? Or is our adherence the result of an accident that we were born to parents who were Muslims by pure chance and/or into societies that followed Islam as a religion? Could there be more to the picture than meets the eye?

This is one fundamental question that tramples on any religion’s real estate and one would expect that elaborate dogma has been erected to protect this. Mindful of these dangers, it may become an epic quest to find an intellectually satisfying answer. Perhaps the reason is that, genuine delusion aside, we all want to sound more assured and reasonable than we really are.

If the question is posed to a random sample of Muslims, you are sure to come across a wide variety of interesting replies from the faithful but what gets me every time is the deep and a sort of innocent conviction with which these notions are held. Typical answers one would come across will be some sort of variation of “because it is the right religion”, “it is a complete way of life that teaches you everything from the cradle to the grave”, “there is no better religion”, “I have read the Qura’an and the beauty of it drew me to Islam”, “Islam is the closest thing to human nature and everything in it is in complete harmony” or that “reading about Muhammad’s (SAW) life drew me to Islam and the beauty of the character he portrayed sucked me”. A more sophisticated reply may include a mixture of the above and may even add some other aspects into the equation.

One can expect to hear all shades of answers but, interestingly, the chances are that the missing answer will be “because my parents are Muslims and I have been raised in Muslim surroundings”. We are all products of our surroundings and although we like to think of ourselves as rationalist and reasonable, the evidence suggests otherwise.

Here is the case.

According to World Christian Encyclopaedia, the most reliable and scholarly accepted source of statistical information on religious trends, total number of the world population that converted from one religion to another during 1990 to 2000 is 31 million. This translates into the fact that less than 0.58% of people changed their religion in the 10 years between 1990 and 2000. The remaining 99.42% of us were completely happy with what religion we were born into. Those “born again Muslims” or “born again Christians” are “born again” into the same religion of their parents as well. This is a mind-bogglingly small figure; for comparison, there were 70 million blind people in the world in 2011.

A look at the figures for Islam only also reveals the same story. 865,000 people embraced Islam per year from 1990 to 2000. This is an increase of 0.10% per year in Muslims through conversion.

What is more interesting is that the figures above do not include “worldly” reasons of conversion like marriage or to get a better chance in succeeding in a society that is against one’s religion.

A look at the statistics alone reveals that we adhere to a religion based on what religion we were born into.  The issue is that why we like to cover this blatant fact into all sorts of rationality or lack thereof? What is wrong with admitting as such and why should further justification be required?

Going back to the question poised at the start again, why am I a Muslim? I think it is perfectly fine to justify one’s adherence to a religion by pointing to the above facts alone. Just like I am not expected to justify other aspects of my accidental birth like the colour of my skin or the shape of my eyes, I am also not required to justify my adherence to Islam. I am a Muslim because I was born in a Muslim family. I am ordinary and humble enough to concede that I will fall into the 99.42% of Muslims (and born-again-Muslims) who are Muslims because they were born into Islam. I am at peace with this fact.

(Mohammad Jawad)