Can You Be Spiritual Without Religion?

As-salamu alaykum, peace be with you. I’m your brother in faith speaking to you from the MixMindSet.

We are dealing with big questions about belief. The question for today is that, can you be spiritual without being religious?

Spiritual But Not Religious

This is a newly noticed phenomenon especially in the United States of America where people are saying, look, I’m spiritual but I’m not religious. So what does that mean? To be spiritual means on the one hand that we recognize that we are spiritual beings, there was a spiritual side to us.

So people believe that they have something that may be called a soul or a spirit as we know from traditional religion, but not religious means that they’re not gonna follow any one of the organized religions.

Some people say, you know, I am a multi-denominational, that means they’re not sticking to one particular denomination as used to be the case for everyone in the past. And beyond that, some are thinking, well, you know, I’m beyond religion.

I am, sometimes people think, you know, I can be all of the religions all at once, or they think I am of no particular religion. I’m just spiritual but I’m not religious.

I don’t subscribe to any of the of the religions or neither do I have an amalgamation of them all, I just have my own way of exercising spirituality.

Why Do People Choose This Path?

So what causes people to go this, this route? It could be dissatisfaction with organized religion, and what sorts of dissatisfaction might there be? People are dissatisfied with, you know, the scandals that you hear from the organized religious bodies with abuse and so on.

Sometimes there, there are scandals relating to money, the way in which money is being handled in the religious institutions.

People may find that the religions are no longer intellectually satisfying in that it doesn’t answer their deeper questions, like the questions that we’re trying to address in this series this Ramadan, the big questions.

Some people may find that the religious discourse is no longer relevant to our modern and changing society, where the ideas are evolving and all the ideas are no longer applicable.

Some people may feel that the gender segregation and the way in which women are being perceived in the religious traditions is not satisfying to the modern mind and so on and so forth.

There, there could be a lot of reasons but these, I think are some of the main ones.

Read Also: Ghusl ki Dua (غسل کی دعا) (Complete Method)

Alienation in the Mosque

And Muslims also have tended to become unmasked in that they’re feeling alienated from the culture that is developing in the mosques.

Sometimes the language that is being used, things are being said in Arabic. People are not comfortable necessarily with that, especially new Muslims who have entered the faith and for whom Arabic language is a bit, you know, foreign.

Naturally they’re not familiar with the lingo and they find that this is being used a lot. There are certain expressions which Muslims use a lot especially in religious discourse that are kept in Arabic.

And a newcomer may feel that this is difficult to understand and may feel a little bit alienated as a result.

So Then, Can You?

So then can you be spiritual and yet not religious? Well, the fact that so many people are from their own personal experience, that shows that the answer is positive.

But we can ask and spin off into a related question and that is, should you, should you be spiritual without being religious? And it’s more the last half because should you be spiritual? Definitely, absolutely. Can you be spiritual and religious at the same time, yes.

And is it, is it ultimately satisfying to be spiritual but not religious? Well, what I would say is that Islam offers a good combination of the two so that you will be both spiritual and religious at the same time.

The Flexibility of Islamic Thought

In terms of intellect, Islam emphasizes the use of the intellect, so one can currently say that it’s, you know, Islam is intellectually unsatisfying.

Yes, you may find that some classical interpretations of Islam may be intellectually unsatisfying, but who says that you have to stay with those classical interpretations? You need to follow the book of God and the life example of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.

But this is open to a wide variety of interpretations, classic, medieval, modern, and it is up to you to navigate that terrain and discover for yourself which of these already available interpretations sit better with you. And there will be one.

And if there isn’t one, let’s talk about it. And we will look at the difficult questions and arrive at reasonable interpretations that people can live with in modern times.

Stay in the Fold

So you don’t have to be unmasked or on religion. You can be spiritual and religious at the same time, especially when we think of the religion before us as being the Islamic faith.

Reevaluating the Role of Women

People have become dissatisfied with the position of women in classical Islam, Islamic, and other religious thinking.

But we can see that with the availability of ittihad and dynamic thinking within the Islamic tradition, it is possible for many thinkers now to revise the way in which we have thought about the position of women and also with many modern issues.

Islamic Spirituality in Practice

So we do not need to become unmosqued or disillusioned with religion. We can be spiritual and religious at the same time. Moreover, the Islamic faith helps us to capture much of what people who wanna be spiritual think is important to them, like deep connectivity with the world around us.

The Quran tells us to look around and see the majesty of God and the things that he created. The Quran tells us to care for the environment which is one way in which people are being equal spiritual in modern times. We learn from the Quran about ways in which to be closer to God and to be deeply spiritual.

We learn about the introspection, about looking at the grandeur of the things that God has made, about the Tafakkur or think deep thinking, about Tadhakkur, you know, contemplation, contemplating the words of God, but also thinking deeply about our own existence, about our own spirituality, about our place in the world and in fact in the universe, the Quran and Islam as a whole is a, a very big way of being spiritual.

Fasting and Connection

So by reading the Quran, we become immersed with the words of God. We become close to God. Fasting in Ramadan, it helps us to be very close to God because throughout that period of fasting, we become deeply spiritual.

We become aware that we are connected with God. We are denying the physical and needs for a certain limited duration as much as is humanly bearable.

And at the same time, we are heightening that spiritual awareness, our connectivity with God and our connectivity with the people around us, with the community, and with the creatures of God.

Why Religion Matters

One of the difficulties with trying to be spiritual but not religious is that there is no structure to this. Whereas in religion there is a structure, there is, there are, you know, reasonable and moral and ethical principles to live by.

Whereas if one says I’m spiritual but not religious, one does not have that benefit of received wisdom. And that has been honed and perfected through generations and through centuries.

One is just making it up as one goes and one person’s way of being spiritual will be very different from another person’s way of being spiritual. And who is to say that one is not just simply following one’s whims and desires while saying that one is being deeply spiritual?

Islam Provides the Complete Package

And there are many good reasons for being spiritual and many good reasons for being religious at the same time, and when we think of Islam as being the religion in question.

There are even many, many more good reasons for being spiritual and religious at the same time, and the reasons that drove people away from the churches, away from the organized religions, when we look at Islam, we see that Islam has an answer to those reasons.

A Community of Trust

And yes, some of the problems can occur within the Muslim community as well, but by and large Muslims have tended to be faithful. They nef tended to be, you know, good with the Amana, the trust in terms of handling funds in the mosque.

They have been good with dealing with, you know, persons of other genders, of protecting children within the sacred space.

So that the sexual scandals that we’ve heard from some other communities.

Well, some of that could be present in Muslim communities as well, and by and large Muslims have, they stayed above, above the water and, and not be drowned in such activities because Muslims have been cultivated with a deep sense of the awareness of God.