(24) DOES RELIGION TEACHES THIS???

21st August'08
Reading has always been an integral part of my life. Besides my own interest selection, I try and read books suggested by others. One of my friends suggested a good read and thus my hunt for that book began immediately.
I dedicated my entire evening to search that book.I went to all possible book stores in and around 5 km radius from my residence only to gather various reasons for non- availability of the same.Nevertheless, I ended up buying six other books, one of them by the same publisher whose book I was looking for .Perhaps buying them all could have been the outcome of my never ending ill- craze of buying more and more books.Well, let me put aside the discuss about my obsession and better talk about the incident which put me to write all this.
In the last book store I visited today, I came across few interesting books in Urdu and about Islam.As I was dead tired, I pulled out the bean bag lying nearby and got seated near that book shelf. While I was surfing through the books, one of the many attendants in the store came and stood by my side.He did not say anything and simply stood there for almost 5 minutes observing me.I tried to ignore his presence. I was holding two English language books taken from earlier shelves. As I twisted a little to put them on the lowest shelf nearby to let me do my seek easily, that guy who thought I was putting the books on the floor, interrupted me saying “ one minute madam”, he pulled one small stool and offered me to keep those books on it.I looked in his eyes with a question mark?He told that Urdu or Arabic books should not be kept on the floor. I was bit confused and bit surprised. I asked him if that was written or mentioned somewhere or is it some kind of religious rule that I am not aware of. He said, “No madam, these are our religious languages and books containing them should be given respect, we walk on the floor and hence these books should not be kept where we put our feet”. By then , he had seen the cover page of the books kept there and he got to know that those were not Urdu books. And so he said, “mam, its okay if u keep them down as they are English books, so no problem”. I argued, “ doesn’t it apply to all the books, as books are books and they all impart some kind of knowledge. I shouldn’t be allowed to keep either of the books on floor if that’s related to books dignity”. He said, “no mam, those are not our religious books, so we don’t have to care so much about them”.I asked him, “Do u know Urdu?”, he said.. “bit of Urdu and more of Arabic”. Further, he said, “mam u also must be knowing Urdu and Arabic” and asked if I was an avid reader of Quran.While nodding no for my answer I questioned him alike about Quran and he said he doesn’t read regularly. After a pause , I said I am not a Muslim .He was sadly stunned and asked me why was I, then searching books on Islam and Urdu. Well….I felt like answering him back a good long lecture..but I controlled myself and simply told him that my father’s neighborhood is a Muslim family and we have been brought up spending good time with them and that I have immense in tersest in learning about the religion I was bestowed with in a friendly packaging by God and the same religion which is being either misinterpreted or rather miscalculatively used. I was too loud and harsh in saying all this which made that man move from there without a word.
But all this left me unnerved for quite sometime. I really don’t know what that guy was trying to showcase, his immense love for his religion, his not-relevant attitude towards other religions or rather his ignorance and misconceptions he carried about his religion along with the lack of revere towards books, their role in human development and their importance in every individual’s life irrelevant of the religion a person belongs to.
Am sure there's no religion in the world which teaches to be respectful to a particular thing or entity if its pertaining to itself and not do the same for one which belongs to other religion.Well, to silent my quest I need to thoroughly study the one in question.