"...followed by a brisk mauling."

A friend recently asked me the following: 

 How do you calmly debate with people who shove atheism down your throat & personally insult you for believing in something above yourself?

I thought about my response for a long time, and it’s something I want to put here, too, because I think it’s something that all of us with faith struggle with (being one of three Muslims in my community, I know it’s something I’ve struggled with). Before I begin, though, I want to acknowledge what it is I believe in. 

As a Muslim, I believe there is one true god, Allah, and Mohammed is His prophet. But further than that, I believe that Allah, the Highest Power, the Creator, is simply the collective will of humanity to do and create good. I believe that Mohammed, as with other prophets before him, practiced and preached a life spent serving this force.  

Now that I’ve more clearly stated what it is I believe, I want to answer my friend’s question

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Faith and science are not contradictory. They are not mutually exclusive. Neither is faith and critical thought; history is filled with people who both had faith and thought critically. Some of the most intelligent people in the world today are theists or deists. What many atheists do not understand is that, unlike atheism (which at its core is based on the absence of something else), faith is not exclusionary of doubt. Faith, true faith, I believe, is an acknowledgement of doubt. All theists have doubts; doubt is part of belief. But faith does not, I believe, call for us to discard our doubts (and here, let’s be clear that faith is not the same thing as any organized religious system). Faith allows us to question and criticize our systems of belief, to have doubts and to acknowledge them. Faith allows us to seek answers; in my mind, this is the core of what faith is—a way to find answers to otherwise unanswerable questions.

Many atheists deny faith because they believe it is or has done evil. Yes, evil acts have been done in the name of faith. But good has also been done in the name of faith, and evil has been done in the name of things other than faith (patriarchy, nationalism, fascism, etc). To accept one of these facts while denying either of the other two is, in my mind, both illogical and unreasonable. Perhaps, then, faith is not the issue. Perhaps what matters is not why you act, but how. If you have faith in something that requires you to act in a way which is charitable and compassionate, that’s good. If you have no faith, but a moral system which requires you to act in a way that is charitable and compassionate, that’s just as good. I don’t know that it matters what the motive force is, and I’m not sure why anyone should think it does.

I think, honestly, the only way to truly debate people who refuse to accept that other people have faith is to do exactly what you’re doing already. The only way to combat militant atheism is to live as a compassionate and intelligent person who believes in a higher power. To act with empathy and reason. To be capable of charity and critical thinking. And to continue to believe in something greater than yourself. 

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EDIT: When I say atheist here, I’m not being fair to atheists. Most atheists I know are great and wonderful people, who don’t judge me or others as somehow defective simply for believing in something. Many of my closest friends are atheists, as are members of my family. They don’t hate or harm theists for being theists, and I should have been much more clear that here, when I speak of atheists, I mean the small portion of atheists who are militantly against any religious belief—people like Bill Maher, who truly believe that believing in God makes you a bad person. This is not a statement against atheism, and if it comes off that way, I’m truly sorry, as I never meant it to. Rather, it’s meant to communicate how I deal with certain atheists who truly think less of me once they realize I believe in Allah.