Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Cheering for the Home Team

Maybe it’s because Canada has a culture that is so similar to that of the dominant cultural exporter, the USA. I don’t remember people being quite so proud of their religion at home.

I do remember that there were some very devout Christians and Catholics that I knew. Sometimes you would find them very cheerfully promoting their religion. More often I think I remember them defending it to skeptics who were a bit reluctant to admit that they didn’t believe in anything. But talk of Islam here mostly reminds me of Canadians talking about their favorite hockey team.

Imagine people sitting at their tables and passionately backing up the strength of their religion, the beauty of it, the magic of how it all came together. They talk about the prophet and the heroes of Islam like we do about Wayne Gretzky and Rocket Richard. They acknowledge that other faiths have something to them, but they’re not as deep, or they’re outdated, or they’re incomplete somehow. No, by all accounts, Islam is their favorite team, and they were blessed to be born BORN Moslem.

And do they practice? Well, no. But that’s hardly the point.

I guess you don’t have to play hockey to have a favorite team either.

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