A word with God…

I recently renewed my MOT at a local garage in Bradford. It was run by Pakistanis and looked like any other small Garage I have ever been in apart from one thing. (Two, if you count that all the mechanics had beards!)

In the place of girlie calendars, there was a large chart on the wall, listing Muslim adherance to Dua.

Dua are supplications, personal prayers said to suit particular situations, something also common in many other religions. The chart was mostly concerned with ritual related to prayer time and ablution but despite having spent a year in Saudi Arabia I can’t recall which prayer is which from the Arabic names. However, there were a couple that struck me as amusing. I haven’t found any direct copies of the chart online (the one I saw had been printed in Mumbai), I may be remembering them wrongly (I only had a couple of minutes to look at it) and some of it may have been down to translation (the chart was also in Arabic and Hindi) but there was one related to entering a bus (thanking god for not being able to control the vehicle without his help) and another about barking dogs (and being protected from the foul devils).

All religion troubles me somewhat. I’m something of an Agnosic; I’m happy to accept a grand architect of the universe but I’m pretty sure s/he doesn’t give a tinkers cuss about supplication and it is a conceit of humanity to think that the supreme being pays any attention to the goings on here on earth in Rome, Jerusalem or Mecca, regarding us with anything higher than polite indifference.

By all means, believe in your own invisible friend but please don’t force-feed it to the gullible.