I am having trouble believing in my religion (Islam). What can I do?

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The road to belief starts with the seeking of beauty. Your mind will never accept something into your heart if it’s not extremely beautiful to you. One of the easiest things to find beauty in in Islam is the elaborate mosques.

One thing I know offhand about mosques is that their design was driven by the constraint that iconography is disallowed, so the architects needed other ways to glorify Allah.

Seeing this on a screen is one thing, seeing this on a 100 foot slab is quite another entirely.

Once you’ve opened up your heart to Islam’s beauty, you can start seeking it out elsewhere. You can dive into Arabic and start reading the Quran the way it was meant to be read. Once you start reading it you can memorize some of your favorite passages. You don’t need to believe in Islamic dogma in order to find meaning and value in the Quran, which, like any holy work, is intended to be a font of knowledge and wisdom, a cultural touchstone that all can access and relate through.

So maybe find that not all of the Quran is beautiful. Say you find some particularly violent passage, as medieval literature was wont to being. You can study that passage and discover the historical usage of that particular verse. Even if you can’t believe in Islamic dogma, there’s no reason you can’t work to lessen your distaste for it.

Eventually your heart will yearn to believe. Appreciating the beauty of Islam won’t be enough for you, you’ll want to share in it. This is when you start down the path of prayer. The nice thing about religions, as opposed to other forms of spirituality such as the kind I partake in, is that there is very likely a place very close to you where you can learn about opening your heart and mind to Allah. Religions are socialized spirituality.

If you approach with an open heart, and mind, then Allah will eventually reveal himself to you during prayer. If you can keep praying and submitting, Allah will enter further into you.

But some portion of you has to want it first.