Oct 22, 2026 01:31 PM
Today, I traveled a long distance across Delhi, a city that ranks as the second most populous in the world after Tokyo. The journey took nearly an hour on the back of an Uber motorcycle.
The driver was Muslim, and as we passed through streets filled with joyful crowds, vehicles carrying people dancing and celebrating, I noticed two men on a motorcycle carrying a doll with a broken head, along with three towering figures standing in some public squares. I believe they were made of cardboard or some other lightweight material, like large dolls.
The driver turned toward me with an unmistakably sarcastic smile and said, in the distinctive Arabic spoken by Indians who are learning the language:
"This... is death!"
He was apparently suggesting, mockingly, that those figures represented the gods of the people celebrating and that their god was dying that day!
I simply passed through the scene, accepting that every culture has its own language, customs, and peculiarities.
By the time my long and exhausting day came to an end, I decided to take an Uber car for the return journey to escape the constant shaking of the motorcycle. And that was when an unexpected irony began to unfold.
Inside the car, I sat beside the driver and noticed him sharing festive greetings with his followers. That was when I discovered, quite by coincidence, that the day marked the Hindu festival of Dussehra. From his Facebook account, I learned that he belonged to the very religion celebrating the occasion and was enthusiastically sharing pictures and holiday greetings.
The journey home turned into a lively and fascinating conversation filled with jokes, stories, and laughter.
At one point, I made a humorous observation after calculating India's population. I told him:
"Imagine if someone wanted to meet every person in India and spend just ten minutes with each one. It would take him 30,000 years to finish! And yet, with all these people, you hardly hear a sound from them. Meanwhile, we are just five people, and we've driven the whole world crazy!"
He burst into laughter. In fact, he pulled out his phone and called a colleague to tell him what I had said.
I overheard him saying:
"I don't know who these five people are. Does he mean his family or something?"
I immediately clarified, laughing:
"No, I mean our country! We're just five people, yet we've driven the whole world crazy!" ?
Curious, he asked whether I would be returning to my country anytime soon.
Without hesitation, I replied:
"Perhaps I'll never return!"
He laughed at my answer, so I continued:
"Just imagine! You get one single chance at life, a chance that took billions of years to arrive. And that life is incredibly short—sixty, seventy, perhaps eighty years. Yet someone chooses to waste all of it in Yemen, shouting and arguing!"
The young man seemed fascinated by my philosophy and the way I expressed myself. He turned our conversation into something more engaging, began interviewing me, and recorded videos to post on his social media page, which I later discovered he uses to share his daily experiences and adventures.
As I look back on the events of that day, I find myself reflecting on how India's contradictions came together in a single experience.
From the Muslim driver's warm and friendly interaction with me, to the remarkable sense of peace that fills the streets of this immensely complex country, and finally to the moment when I realized that my own position is always the most beautiful and comfortable one for me: I simply treat everyone as a human being.
I have become a universal believer, without specializing in or belonging to any particular religion!
I befriended both drivers with the same warmth and closeness, something that might have been more difficult had I identified with one religion against the other.
Every religion looks at the others like people standing in a fog. Each person sees the fog surrounding everyone else, while those others see the same fog surrounding him, without realizing that he, too, is standing right in the middle of it!
And here I want to draw attention to something beautiful: the love of exploration, curiosity, and research.
Had I been religiously fanatical, I would never have bothered to investigate or discover that the figures burned during Dussehra symbolize demonic or evil characters, much like the symbolic stoning of the devil during the Islamic pilgrimage.
I came to see that both religions contain what I consider myths and superstitions.
And I have no doubt that a Hindu unfamiliar with Islam, upon seeing Muslims throwing stones at the Jamarat during Hajj, might also laugh and say:
"This... is death!" ??
Another remarkable irony occurred that day.
Since arriving in India, I had not heard the Islamic call to prayer even once in the area where I live.
Yet today, strangely enough, my destination happened to be next to a temple belonging to a third religion: Sikhism.
As I stood admiring the Sikh temple while also using it as a landmark to locate my destination, I suddenly heard the Islamic call to prayer echoing through the very same neighborhood and street where the Sikh temple stood.
It's only back home that we seem determined to keep fighting and quarreling over everything!
I have grown deeply fond of India and its social order, unlike many Arabs whose minds, in my view, have been clouded by a sense of superiority over others. They ridicule other peoples while behaving in ways far more contemptible themselves.
(A note: I believe Muslims here coexist with others only because they are a minority. Otherwise, in my opinion, Islam is the only religion that fundamentally refuses the idea of coexistence.)
As I see it, religions were largely the product of the isolation of peoples from one another in ancient times. Each community developed its own beliefs, stories, and rituals independently.
Yet everyone seems determined to impose their beliefs on everyone else!
Why can't each individual be left alone to arrive at their own convictions and simply live their life in peace?
Only a fanatic insists on imposing personal beliefs on others.
And I believe Islam is particularly problematic in this regard, especially when it comes to compelling others to accept what I regard as its superstitions.
For heaven's sake, just leave people alone and mind your own business!
Those who reject secularism, in my view, do not truly want peaceful coexistence when their objective is to impose their religion on others. Their opponents, in turn, may seek to impose their own beliefs on them.
And so everyone goes on killing, condemning, and declaring others infidels in the name of their God.
In Yemen, they've confused even God Himself. He must no longer know whose side He's supposed to be on! ?
In 1994, southerners were branded communist infidels.
Today, northerners are branded Houthi infidels and Rafidites.
And the absurdity goes on and on!
Why can't these societies come to recognize what I believe is a simple truth: that secularism offers the best solution?
Yet the religious preachers of Al-Fiyush, the Houthis of Marran, and all those countries and societies that reject secularism while simultaneously declaring, "We want to live in peace!" remind me of a sick man who refuses to take his medicine but keeps everyone awake with his groaning.
He neither takes the medicine and falls silent, nor lets anyone else get a good night's sleep!
Best regards,
Mohsen Ezzaldin Al-Bakri
The driver was Muslim, and as we passed through streets filled with joyful crowds, vehicles carrying people dancing and celebrating, I noticed two men on a motorcycle carrying a doll with a broken head, along with three towering figures standing in some public squares. I believe they were made of cardboard or some other lightweight material, like large dolls.
The driver turned toward me with an unmistakably sarcastic smile and said, in the distinctive Arabic spoken by Indians who are learning the language:
"This... is death!"
He was apparently suggesting, mockingly, that those figures represented the gods of the people celebrating and that their god was dying that day!
I simply passed through the scene, accepting that every culture has its own language, customs, and peculiarities.
By the time my long and exhausting day came to an end, I decided to take an Uber car for the return journey to escape the constant shaking of the motorcycle. And that was when an unexpected irony began to unfold.
Inside the car, I sat beside the driver and noticed him sharing festive greetings with his followers. That was when I discovered, quite by coincidence, that the day marked the Hindu festival of Dussehra. From his Facebook account, I learned that he belonged to the very religion celebrating the occasion and was enthusiastically sharing pictures and holiday greetings.
The journey home turned into a lively and fascinating conversation filled with jokes, stories, and laughter.
At one point, I made a humorous observation after calculating India's population. I told him:
"Imagine if someone wanted to meet every person in India and spend just ten minutes with each one. It would take him 30,000 years to finish! And yet, with all these people, you hardly hear a sound from them. Meanwhile, we are just five people, and we've driven the whole world crazy!"
He burst into laughter. In fact, he pulled out his phone and called a colleague to tell him what I had said.
I overheard him saying:
"I don't know who these five people are. Does he mean his family or something?"
I immediately clarified, laughing:
"No, I mean our country! We're just five people, yet we've driven the whole world crazy!" ?
Curious, he asked whether I would be returning to my country anytime soon.
Without hesitation, I replied:
"Perhaps I'll never return!"
He laughed at my answer, so I continued:
"Just imagine! You get one single chance at life, a chance that took billions of years to arrive. And that life is incredibly short—sixty, seventy, perhaps eighty years. Yet someone chooses to waste all of it in Yemen, shouting and arguing!"
The young man seemed fascinated by my philosophy and the way I expressed myself. He turned our conversation into something more engaging, began interviewing me, and recorded videos to post on his social media page, which I later discovered he uses to share his daily experiences and adventures.
As I look back on the events of that day, I find myself reflecting on how India's contradictions came together in a single experience.
From the Muslim driver's warm and friendly interaction with me, to the remarkable sense of peace that fills the streets of this immensely complex country, and finally to the moment when I realized that my own position is always the most beautiful and comfortable one for me: I simply treat everyone as a human being.
I have become a universal believer, without specializing in or belonging to any particular religion!
I befriended both drivers with the same warmth and closeness, something that might have been more difficult had I identified with one religion against the other.
Every religion looks at the others like people standing in a fog. Each person sees the fog surrounding everyone else, while those others see the same fog surrounding him, without realizing that he, too, is standing right in the middle of it!
And here I want to draw attention to something beautiful: the love of exploration, curiosity, and research.
Had I been religiously fanatical, I would never have bothered to investigate or discover that the figures burned during Dussehra symbolize demonic or evil characters, much like the symbolic stoning of the devil during the Islamic pilgrimage.
I came to see that both religions contain what I consider myths and superstitions.
And I have no doubt that a Hindu unfamiliar with Islam, upon seeing Muslims throwing stones at the Jamarat during Hajj, might also laugh and say:
"This... is death!" ??
Another remarkable irony occurred that day.
Since arriving in India, I had not heard the Islamic call to prayer even once in the area where I live.
Yet today, strangely enough, my destination happened to be next to a temple belonging to a third religion: Sikhism.
As I stood admiring the Sikh temple while also using it as a landmark to locate my destination, I suddenly heard the Islamic call to prayer echoing through the very same neighborhood and street where the Sikh temple stood.
It's only back home that we seem determined to keep fighting and quarreling over everything!
I have grown deeply fond of India and its social order, unlike many Arabs whose minds, in my view, have been clouded by a sense of superiority over others. They ridicule other peoples while behaving in ways far more contemptible themselves.
(A note: I believe Muslims here coexist with others only because they are a minority. Otherwise, in my opinion, Islam is the only religion that fundamentally refuses the idea of coexistence.)
As I see it, religions were largely the product of the isolation of peoples from one another in ancient times. Each community developed its own beliefs, stories, and rituals independently.
Yet everyone seems determined to impose their beliefs on everyone else!
Why can't each individual be left alone to arrive at their own convictions and simply live their life in peace?
Only a fanatic insists on imposing personal beliefs on others.
And I believe Islam is particularly problematic in this regard, especially when it comes to compelling others to accept what I regard as its superstitions.
For heaven's sake, just leave people alone and mind your own business!
Those who reject secularism, in my view, do not truly want peaceful coexistence when their objective is to impose their religion on others. Their opponents, in turn, may seek to impose their own beliefs on them.
And so everyone goes on killing, condemning, and declaring others infidels in the name of their God.
In Yemen, they've confused even God Himself. He must no longer know whose side He's supposed to be on! ?
In 1994, southerners were branded communist infidels.
Today, northerners are branded Houthi infidels and Rafidites.
And the absurdity goes on and on!
Why can't these societies come to recognize what I believe is a simple truth: that secularism offers the best solution?
Yet the religious preachers of Al-Fiyush, the Houthis of Marran, and all those countries and societies that reject secularism while simultaneously declaring, "We want to live in peace!" remind me of a sick man who refuses to take his medicine but keeps everyone awake with his groaning.
He neither takes the medicine and falls silent, nor lets anyone else get a good night's sleep!
Best regards,
Mohsen Ezzaldin Al-Bakri