Day 21: That sounds like a lot of effort, actually.

Back to our regularly scheduled posts!

For those who forgot, I'm working on parts of this: "Your favorite Bible story, Quranic story, hadith, story from other religions. Least favorites. Hardest stuff to understand from each. Hardest things to give up if you converted to one or the other, etc." In whatever order and depth I want. :p

Keeping with the theme we started, we're sticking with Islam for the day. But today is going to be about what I find the hardest to understand in Islam and what I'd find hardest (I think) if I converted.

So. The hardest thing to understand, for me:

The hadith. There are so many of them and some are 'authentic' and others are 'suspect' (I know these aren't the right terms but this is how I think of them) but people will use the 'suspect' ones if they back up what the person is saying and each madhab seems to consider different hadith as authentic versus suspect and some of the hadith that are 'authentic' seem to contradict the Qur'an or have *really* strange rulings in them that make Islam look like the creation of a brilliant man with severe OCD. Sometimes I think it would be much better if they were all just chucked and people stuck only to the Qur'an and what it says. After all, isn't the Qur'an supposed to be self-sufficient?

Random moment: In my speech class a week or so back we had to give an impromptu speech, meaning that the teacher came around and gave us a question or a prompt that we then had to give a 1 - 2 minute speech on. My prompt was basically, 'If you could meet anyone in the world who would it be and why?' Since there wasn't any time or geographic limitations, I got up and spoke about how, assuming that I had a time machine, I would go around and meet the founders of the worlds' religions. Abraham, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddah, etc. And I would talk to them, maybe ask questions based on what has come down to us from their time, etc. try to get it straight in my head.

But I said, leaving whether or not any of them are the 'correct' religion aside, I would like to talk to them all because they must have been extraordinary men in their own rights. Most religious movements die out after the death of the founder. Theirs not only didn't die out but came to dominate the religious world.

Anyway.

Things I would find the hardest to give up if I converted: Simple, really. Pork and alcohol. I'm not much of a drinker anymore but I do like to have a drink every so often when I go out. And pork. Wow. We eat a lot of pork, which is not something that I'd ever noticed before. But we do. I don't know if it's a Southern thing or what, I mean we really like our bar-b-que's and that means pork. So...I think that would be the hardest.

I think (and this is going to sound so odd to everyone who's been here for a while) another thing that would be difficult would be hijab. I've moved in a different direction from where I was once, when I thought that headcovering was a requirement of God. I'm not sure that I would be a hijabi, mostly because I don't believe that it's what is commanded in the Qur'an. I see a call to modesty, but modesty does not equal the current idea of hijab, in my opinion.

It seems so shallow, looking over what I'd find 'difficult', but this is from the outside. I'm certain that if I did convert there would be things that would surprise me when I found them difficult.