The Bad Muslim Discount

by Syed M. Masood

Was there a chance that looking back could have turned me to stone? I didn’t think it mattered. Anyone who didn’t look back, I realized then, was stone already.

It is easy, in a way, to know what to say when someone dies. Humanity, as a whole, has a lot of practice in dealing with death. Only individuals struggle with it.

The greatest reassurance of religion is the promise that there is someone out there—someone with all the power in the universe—who cares about you. He records your life, listens to your prayers and wants to ease your pain. The moment that I took God out of the equation, the world became too large, too cruel and too indifferent for me to live in. I decided then that there was a God. There had to be. I needed Him.