Guest Blogger #3 - When people meet Shias: A personal account

Finding out that I am Shia has always brought about mixed responses from other Muslims. These sorts of reactions have mainly been negative. I’ve also had positive reactions (which are only when another Shia finds out that I am Shia!) and then you also get people that don’t really care.

The reactions can vary from subtly raising the eyebrow to full blown comments in which people have no respect or understanding to what I believe, let alone caring if they hurt my feelings by what they say. I can come up with a number of times where these things have happened and when I think about it I always wish I had handled those situations better than I actually did.

A few years ago, I wouldn’t have wanted to tell anyone that I'm Shia, not because I’m not proud of what I believe or because I think I’m wrong, mainly because I always used to get the funny looks and then: “you guys beat yourself, that’s haraam!!!”. It went to the extent that once someone even imitated Tarzan hitting his chest and laughing, saying that Shia’s do the same. If people at school would confront me I’m embarrassed to say I would have no answer for them because of the lack of knowledge I had at that time.

For someone that would only read Islamic books at home, had never really attended a Sunday school and mainly learned about Islamic history in Muharram through majalis, I really had limited knowledge, especially when questions were thrown at me about being Shia.

I always knew that whatever we believed in, whatever we did, seemed right to me, but explaining it to another 14 year old who doesn’t really know much about Islam themselves, doesn’t really care and just wants to have a reason to argue, well, it just seemed pointless. No matter how I would justify myself at that age... it would always end up at “well Shia’s beat themselves and that’s haraam – end of.”

I used to think that it’s only in your teens, when other teenagers would pick on this topic, but since I’ve been in university, I can safely say it’s not only teenagers. I’ve been told a lot of things that Shia Muslims apparently “do”. The things people have said include:

• We beat ourselves
• We pray to a stone (the sajdagah)
• We believe Imam Ali (a.s.) should have been the Prophet
• We have a different Quran to the rest of the Muslims
• And the list can go on...

Right now though, I want to tell you one account of how someone reacted when they found out that I’m a Shia. This account is about a “friend” that used to study at uni with me. Firstly, I’ll describe this friend of mine. At the time, she was a very good friend who would do anything for a mate. She was also a very strong Sunni Muslim, leaning towards the Wahabi side. She was very judgmental, formed strong opinions of others and extremely blunt.

It was my first year and we were in the middle of the month of Ramadhan. The time was close to opening our fast, and everyone was just waiting around for the sunset time. I can’t exactly remember how, but somehow we got on to the topic of Sunni and Shia’s, and I must have casually mentioned that I am a Shia. Suddenly out of the blue, my so-called friend exclaimed “OH MY GOD, YOU'RE SHIA??????”

The way she screamed it out and looked at me, totally shocked me. I replied saying, what’s the big deal? But in my head I was completely and utterly taken aback due to the way she unexpectedly came out with it. She was so shocked; I honestly don’t know what was running through her mind. She then said, “Oh my God, I can’t believe it, why didn’t you tell me before?” I mean, the way she was looking at me after that was like I was some sort of freak and she needed to get away.

I then said to her, you seem to have some sort of problem, do you want to tell me what it is? She then composed herself and was like, “no, no, nothing it’s all cool” and conveniently excused herself saying she had to get home quickly.

Now that was bad enough as it was, but the next day was worse. She probably had time to think about it all and then get back to me. In her most polite and non-committal voice she says to me, “I don’t consider Shia’s to be Muslims, you lot don’t even give any credit to our Prophet and you lot think that Imam Ali should’ve been prophet instead. So I basically think Shia's are not Muslim.”

You can normally tell when people start getting funny when they find out something that they don’t like, but saying it straight to your face knowing that your not going to like it – well that’s just mean. I cleared up her misconception and then told her how rude I think she was, saying to another Muslim that they’re not Muslim. I told her it wasn’t for her to judge whether someone is a Muslim or not and that’s up to Allah (s.w.t) to decide.

The funny thing was that she was totally shocked that I got upset about it and had no clue that whatever she had said to me and how she reacted had actually affected me in such a way. She later apologised and apparently “regretted” reacting the way she did. In fact, I feel she felt more embarrassment than regret because I had to tell her that she had offended me and she couldn’t figure it out for herself – some friend! Since then, I’ve had a lot of clashes with her and now I don’t even speak to her.

People come with different personalities, different ways to react and confront people. I always found it hard to confront people in the past, but now I’m glad to say that after reading more and gaining more knowledge, I feel much more confident in answering people. I always knew what I believed in but explaining it to others was difficult; which I have now overcome. There'll always be people who no matter what you say will not change their opinion but for others, explaining my point of view might make a difference. But, after all is said and done, there's only so much you can do. Any other accounts from people would be extremely welcome in the comments section.

Miss G2S

Especially published for 'Doctor's Free Time'