One Religion, Two Religions, Three Religions, Four. Hesham Sabry holds a Bsc. Engineering (1972), and is currently in a joint Honours Psychology-Anthropology program at the University of Waterloo.

Are you a Jew ?" one of two young men asked from the front of my stall at the Victoria Park multicultural festival last July. "Yes", I answered, "and a Christian, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Bahai and every other religion; are you interested in Jewish scenes from the Holy Land ?" I asked. He was not, he was just asking because his eye had caught a print of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, one of the reproductions of 19th century woodcuts of Christian, Jewish and Moslem Holy sights, among other prints, that I was selling on that day.

"So you believe in Jesus Christ ?" he asked. "I believe in all religions" I answered, and, without realizing that once more I was stepping into the no man's land I had so often found myself in, I went on to say that all religions were good and the only bad thing I thought they all shared was the part where the followers of each believed that they were the true, legitimate faith and all others fake. My solution to the problem, I added, had been to believe in them all, but follow none.

"So you don't believe in an afterlife or a heaven and a hell", he said. Having stood by my conviction for many years, I have learned that to love all people and all faiths is to ask for all faiths' and all people's disfavour. I have learned that if you love 'us' and 'them', you neither belong to 'us' nor 'them', you belong in 'no man's land'.

Still that has not discouraged me, and my answer was one that I had given many times before and which was proving to be true more and more as the years went by: "regardless of whether heaven and hell do or don't exist in an afterlife", I said, "I know that they do exist in this life, because in that respect, I have had first hand experience. I've lived through both, on and off, and have seen others go through the same in their lifetimes; so I don't feel I need an afterlife to motivate me. When you find out that what you do today determines what happens to you tomorrow, decides whether coming years will be heaven or hell for you and yours, you don't need the assurance nor the fear of an afterlife".

"So you don't believe in a second chance to live in heaven after death ?" was the next comment. "I believe in second and third chances" I replied, and went on to explain that I believed that we do not 'live only once'. How often have we felt, or heard friends tell us how in their school days or when they lived in some other place their lives were so different that it was as if they had been somebody else.... As we grow up we change continuously, we basically become different persons every few years and practically remember our earlier years and experiences as if they had been in previous lives. At twenty we are not the persons we were at ten and so on. In the same way, the future holds new lives for us. Our present life is the afterlife of earlier years, and our future will be the afterlife of our present years; all in one lifetime. From the perspective of the 'heaven-hell' dichotomy, we may have been in hell as children and now we are experiencing heaven, or we may have been in heaven and still are, and so on.

"But then what do you think of religion ?" "Unfortunately", I replied, "as we all know, the followers of various religions, sects and denominations are killing each other in many parts of the world in the name of religion", and went on to explain that that had been one of the reasons I had resolved that question long ago, but only after reading and studying many different religions, since it did not make sense that being born into a religion automatically made it right (in fact, I believe it is an aspect of religious fanaticism).

I had come to the conclusion that all faiths were of the same essence: 'there is a 'whatever power(s)' that has an effect on people's lives, and that seems to wish us to do good by our fellow humans, a power(s) which we may fear, respect or love and which we pray to for deliverance or help, especially in times of need and hardship'. Be it an invisible or visible god or gods, a human being, a statue, an animal, fire or whatever, it all amounts to the basic belief in a supernatural power(s) that can do what humans cannot.

Making that power a single deity, a male, and invisible, as in monotheist religions, does not make it better or the best, for that one god is still a symbol even in its oneness and invisibility, and one symbol is the same as another. What does matter above and beyond the symbol is that the goal of all religions is to please the particular supernatural power(s) they believe in mainly by doing good.

In that sense, both the use of a symbol and the holiness assigned to that symbol, equalise all faiths, regardless of whether they agree on the symbol's form or not. Again, oneness and invisibility do not make one choice better or greater than the other; The label, the symbol, and the rituals, are meaningless as a basis for separating peoples into heathens and believers. The essence is the same, only the mechanics are religiocentric [i.e. everyone thinks their religion is the right one, their god(s) is the right god(s)].

In other words, even though the rituals, the symbols, the prophets and the deities may vary, they are the same in substance : non of those deities says 'thou shalt kill', 'thou shalt steal', 'thou shalt cheat'.

That being the case, I have, after a period of atheism, followed by a period of agnosticism, interspersed with many experiences and lessons in life, both good and bad, come to the conclusion that, after all, there does seem to be an all-powerful governing deity (or deities) - which for all intents and purposes I might as well call 'God'- that can and does have a certain amount of control over our lives, and that believing in a 'God(s)' really means, according to my earlier argument, believing in all religions.

Now that I've finished offending all religions, as regardless of my good intentions, I know I must have; let me add that with my eventual coming to the above conclusions and beliefs years ago, I also came to a feeling of peace and serenity. I could not but admire the good found in all religions rather than search for the bad; accept them all, rather than take the negative stance of rejecting them, which would not, I felt sure, have pleased the 'God' I had come to believe in.

After all that, there is one thing I'm not so sure of, and that's whether or not a clause should be added to my belief system stating 'thou shalt not stand at the multicultural fair and chat about religion when there are wares to sell and clients to serve', especially that it was my first time to be selling at a fair; but then again, that's the fun of it all. To be continued. Next time: Religion Goodbye - Religion Hello.

This article was originally published in Cross Cultures Magazine in Volume 1 - Issue 5 - 1992. Unauthorized copying, distribution or other usage without express written permission of the publisher is prohibited.