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Religion
Salam Ghamidi sahab and team, I’m a physician in the US. Alh blessed in life. Had a decent understanding of Quran, Hadith, Religion, faith was good (theory and practice) and I was an advocate of the faith among my colleagues, neighbors and friends – until I recently went for Umrah. Explored both Makkah and Madinah. Instead of what people say that it was fantastic and people find peace over there, I found a relatively dystopian/broken/fractured society with huge disparities, embedded with a faith which might or might not be upheld. It seemed like a business venture established to highlight tourism. Although part of it was definitely spiritual, there were times I kept thinking how Allah controls everything. The whole world now feels the same to me. I’ve gone down the path of questioning faith, existence (or not) of God, questioning the “control of God on matters related to this world”, and feeling lost in this forest. I have a couple of trustworthy friends who are very respectful, understanding and trying to reason with me to help me find my way back. I’m reading more from books which explain Ontology, Theology and Philosophy. I’m being open and transparent. I’ve read the whole Quran with translation and relatively understand the message. I still pray and fast, which I think is not only good for the soul (if there is one) but the body as well, however, I continue to question the God construct (sciences, consciousness, morals etc) and how that is controlling our current worldly affairs and will balance outcomes in the hereafter. Sometimes I wonder if the only point of faith is to make me a better human being because the fictional hereafter I never saw will have consequences, and in that case God construct is perfection which no one can achieve, and not an actual being who is capable of changing mine or others’ outcomes…? What’s the point of dua then? What’s the point of begging and asking? Any advice for me please? I ask humbly and not with arrogance or disrespect. JazakAllah and many thanks.
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4 Replies
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Religion
updated 1 month ago
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Replies
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I honestly don’t think you are actually searching for answers to those specific questions. I think you’re confused about the confusion itself — and that confusion is giving birth to all these questions.
Sometimes the mind throws theological and philosophical questions at us, but the real disturbance is not intellectual. It’s internal. When the ground inside feels slightly unstable, the brain tries to explain it through metaphysics.
Also, think about this: for most of our lives, we are struggling toward something — exams, career, status, stability, family, financial security. We are always solving something. Our nervous system gets used to movement, pressure, challenge.
When life becomes stable, predictable, successful — something strange happens. Instead of peace feeling satisfying, it can feel unsettling. Too calm. Too quiet. We are so used to “mess” that peace feels unfamiliar. And when external chaos reduces, the mind turns inward. That’s when questions about existence, meaning, divine control, consciousness begin surfacing more intensely. Not because faith collapsed — but because the mind finally has space to wander.
For you, I think Umrah was the trigger. Many people associate religion with spiritual highs and sacred emotional experiences. We expect something to “hit” us — a rush, a transformation, a visible divine presence. But in reality, religion itself does not generate magic feelings. It is our perception, our expectations, and our psychological state that create the sacred emotional layer.
When someone understands religion deeply through logic, philosophy, and structure, it often shifts from being a purely emotional experience to a conceptual framework. That sometimes reduces the dramatic “spiritual high” feeling.
You probably expected something internal to shift in Umrah. When it didn’t, your mind externalized the meaning. You started noticing business layers, inequality, social fractures — even though deep down you already know that every society on earth contains good and bad. Sacred geography doesn’t erase human imperfection.
But when expectation and reality don’t align, something inside destabilizes. And I think that’s what’s happening. You’ve reached a stage in life where you are intellectually and materially stable. You’re not battling survival. You’re not chasing identity. So now your mind is examining the foundation itself.
The issue isn’t that these questions are impossible to answer. The issue is that you are standing on slightly soft internal ground, and that softness is being interpreted as theological instability. If you separate your internal recalibration from the faith itself, many of these questions will start organizing themselves naturally.
Also, there is no single mechanical answer to these questions. The foundational principles may be the same, but each person understands divine control, dua, morality, and existence through the lens of their own lived experience. Meaning is always filtered through perspective.
I genuinely think you are capable of figuring these things out yourself. You’re not confused because you lack intelligence. You’re unsettled because you’re in transition.
If you want, I can engage with the specific questions one by one — but they are deep and deserve individual space. It would be better to ask all these questions separately and explore them carefully rather than trying to solve them all at once.
Right now, though, I think the more important thing is not solving theology — it’s understanding what is happening inside you.
Don’t rush to make things better, let yourself get used to this calm.
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Thank you for this response. It made me reflect more deeply.
I used to believe in 3 constructs existing as one where the God Construct was in control. It has dawned on me now that this constituted my belief system. And this is what I thought was Islam.
God Construct: One God, a “being” named Allah, who is in total and absolute control because a Creator cannot create if He’s not in control. The hereafter with a real heaven and hell. The angels who truly exist. And the other 99 names which belong to God who is the highest level of perfection. The opposite of that is Iblees aka Shaitan or imperfection. An actual being who’s job it is to spread evil and badness.
Soul Construct: This is the metaphysical form of me. The soul or the consciousness. The morals or conscience. The inner voice inside of me which belongs to me but which is also controlled by beings called God and Iblees, who can maneuver it for me through prayer aka Dua or via sins which are immoral acts.
Human Construct: This is the physical me which is an amalgamation of physics, chemistry and biology.
Unpacking all this one by one with my current state: I’m quite concerned how the God Construct is helping my Human Construct? The new me is thinking that the Human Construct is more in control. That perfection and imperfection is inside of me. That that’s all that exists. That I not only have physics, chemistry and biology but also an elevated status called consciousness which controls my thought pattern and conscience which controls my moral balance. That there is a scientific explanation for consciousness and conscience as well. That scientific explanation could be social and developmental and behavioral evolution where we continued to refine ideas through meditation, individual experiences, and societal experiences, tried and tested over centuries. I used to think that Muhammad SAW was ummi (uneducated) who suddenly got this divine inspiration from an actual being named Allah but he was definitely meditating for decades probably thinking, reflecting, pondering and possibly studying all of this through his travels and contacts. Study is not just reading- even listening and reflecting could be educational and called study. Is Quran an actual word of a being called Allah who created soul and created us or is it just our inner voice and consciousness/conscience put into words? Perfection it may be but it doesn’t prove a being called Allah who crafts us with his own hands or something. It doesn’t prove a hereafter where justice will be served. I used to think that justice will be deferred for the most part to the afterlife where an omnipotent God who’s an actual “being” in some supernatural form, would balance out the injustices that we see and experience. But now my human part is beginning to think that this world is all that exists. That the universe is indifferent whether there is injustice or not. The control seems to have shifted from the God construct to the human cnstruct. This is scary because it’s causing a lot of emotional toll on me. It seems like tyrants and evil people will get away with so much. It seems like I might even get away with small sins, and I don’t want to. I was okay with some punishment for myself or others, saved up for a future which was perfection. But the grief is tremendous. I cry a lot. I feel a big, a huge emotional weight on me thinking this life is all it is. How will I meet the Prophets in the hereafter? How will I meet all the good people? I’m safe though. There’s nothing to worry about from a safety standpoint please. But I feel like I’m in an existential crisis where this world is all there is to fix as much as I can before I’m gone and others are gone whom I care about. I know I’m in grief. I’m going through the stages of grief where denial is the first one, however, a powerful God Construct was keeping me hopeful for a better future and also where God was controlling this world, especially via prayer/dua. Now, it seems like I have to try to live out my life to it’s best. However, the traditional Muslim belief seems to have been lifted away from me, and that feels scary. Because that belief was keeping me happy and content in my current life. And if I’m not in that belief system called Islam in the form that I knew it existed, then am I even worthy of a supposedly-fictional place called heaven for the hereafter?
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What you are experiencing is not loss of intelligence. It is philosophical reconfiguration. And that is painful. You are not really asking whether science explains biology. You are asking whether science exhausts reality.
Science explains mechanisms — how neurons fire, how evolution refines behavior, how societies shape conscience. But mechanism is not grounding. Explaining how moral instincts developed does not answer why moral obligation feels binding. Evolution can explain why we cooperate. It does not explain why injustice feels metaphysically wrong rather than merely disadvantageous. If the universe is truly indifferent, then “tyrants getting away with it” is not tragic — it is just statistically unfortunate. Yet you are not reacting with indifference. You are grieving. That grief reveals that you still assume reality ought to be morally structured. That assumption cannot be derived from chemistry.
You are also questioning whether the Qur’an is elevated human reflection. Certainly, the Prophet reflected deeply. But reflection alone does not account for a text that restructures moral, legal, metaphysical, and civilizational consciousness with sustained coherence across 23 years in radically shifting contexts. One may reject revelation, but one must also offer an equally strong account of its origin. You are not wrong to examine it. But replacing revelation with “advanced meditation” is not an explanation — it is a relocation of mystery.
Now about control. You once believed God micromanaged outcomes. Now you see human agency everywhere and it feels like God has disappeared. But divine control does not mean visible interference. A creator can establish a law-governed system where freedom operates genuinely within structure. Physics does not eliminate God — it describes the system He sustains. You are not choosing between divine control and human agency. You are reconciling levels of causation.
The real emotional center of your crisis is justice. You cannot emotionally tolerate a universe where injustice is ultimate. Materialism cannot promise justice. It can only describe survival. Your fear that “this world is all there is” is not relief. It is grief. Because you intuit that moral reality should culminate somewhere. That intuition is not childish hope. It is philosophically significant. If justice is real, it must be grounded. If moral obligation is real, it must be grounded. If consciousness is more than blind mechanism, it must be grounded.
You are not losing faith because you discovered science. You are destabilized because the version of God you held was too anthropomorphic and too interventionist. That version cracked. What may emerge now is a more coherent, less simplistic understanding. Do not rush to declare the afterlife fictional just because you are re-evaluating its mechanics. You are not abandoning belief. You are interrogating it. And interrogation is not betrayal. Right now, instead of trying to solve everything at once, take one axis at a time: Grounding of morality, Nature of consciousness, Plausibility of revelation, Meaning of divine control. These are deep but solvable discussions.
You are not insane. You are not sinful. You are not unworthy. You are in reconstruction. And reconstruction feels like loss before it feels like clarity.
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Thank you for your kind replies. I’ve been trying to reflect a lot. It’s helpful. I’ll ask you if I get any questions. Right now, my mind/consciousness keeps doing somersaults, so I’m reflecting a lot and finding some reasonable answers.
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