This atheistic society

"...the devil, disguised as a magician, descends upon Moscow in the 1930s with his riotous band, which includes a talking cat and an expert assassin..."

Master and Margarita was a novel written by Mikhail Bulgakov, a satire of the bureaucratic nature and the godless order at the capital of atheism, Moscow. I've yet to read it after buying it from ebay during the winter holidays, but the theme interests me so much, it was sublimely punk to actually write something that antagonizes the communistic state.

Another novel, which fortunately i managed to finish was Neil Gaiman's American Gods. Fantasy by genre, but from a self interpretation, a satire by nature. Brilliantly imaginative, a magnum opus from the writer who also wrote 'Stardust'. It was a battle of old Gods against 'new Gods'; ranging from Thoth, Anubis and Horus of the Egyptian Pantheon, Slavic Gods Bielebog (white god, the god of happiness) and Czernebog (black god, god of death), Odin-the chief God from Norse paganism and a few other pagan gods against the new school 'American Gods'; Gods of Internet, media manifested in physical forms.

Probably, Gaiman thinks that we have reached a point where the very nature of our existence is questioned, up to the point of being godless, a life with no purpose or a life solely based on quenching our endless desires in this temporary world. That we have come to a point when we spend too much time 'praying' in front of the television, on the internet, so on and so forth.

Atheism literally translates as 'godless'. Jean-Paul Sartre, a prominent French philosopher denied the existence of God but later on in his life, as he matured, he acknowledged the presence of God. "God is dead" is one of the most famous quotes from Nietzsche, a German philosopher. He believes in the creation of Ubermensch or 'superman' as a new moral conduct, since the sacred belief in God could no longer promise morality. Nowadays, the ideals of atheism is widespread. With publications like 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins propagating belief on a large scale. While people like Bill Maher continues to satirize religion, calling it a 'neurological disorder'.

After generations of people trying to decipher the meaning of life, trying to find who is actually God, the fast food generation of our current times have simply debunked the idea of the his existence.

112 : 1-4 Say: He is Allah, the One and Only; Allah, the Eternal, Absolute; He begetteth not, nor is He begotten; And there is none like unto Him.

Islam is 'submission'. And we submit only to the one omnipotent God, Allah. 'Al' is the definite article 'the', while 'ilah' means deity or god. So practically, Muslims are praying to Allah, The God. Being a montheistic religion, there is 'Tawheed' or the assertion of one-ness of Allah, of which its tenets include Tawheed ar-rubibiyah (oneness of Lordship), Tawheed al-asma was-sifaat (oneness of Allah's name and attributes) and Tawheed al-Ibadah (oneness of worship). Seeing, is indeed, believing but the belief in a God needs faith. We may not see Him, but there are more than enough manifestations in nature that testifies to the presence of Allah. We may not have a physical representation of Allah, but the belief itself is of utmost importance in Islam.

16 : 18 And if you would count the favours of Allah, never could you be able to count them. Truly! Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.

The relationship between Allah and man in Islam is often misunderstood. Some have thought it to be unliberating as Muslims believe they are slaves to Allah. But when we mention slavery, the general picture springs out the man to man form of slavery. But in this matter, the form of slavery is just different from what you may think of. By being slaves to Allah, we (human beings) are being entrusted to take care of what has been given to us by Allah, the concept of being a khalifa (2:30, 33:72). Not only between human beings, but to the nature as well. And Allah sent down a manual, the al-Quran to His beings, through which we would know how to live and who and how to worship in this life. There is dignity in this form of slavery, as Allah has given us more than we could have ever imagined.

But sadly, nobody questions our slavery to the material world. To be liberated, we would need to cut the chains which bind us too much to the our wordly desires. And only then, the presence of Allah would be felt in our hearts all the time. God willingly, the act of remembrance of Allah would prevent us from the negativity and evils of the world.

51 : 56 And I (Allah) created not the jinn and mankind except that they should worship Me (Alone).

2 : 255 Allah. There is no god but He,-the Living, the Self-subsisting, Eternal. No slumber can seize Him nor sleep. His are all things in the heavens and on earth. Who is there can intercede in His presence except as He permitteth? He knoweth what (appeareth to His creatures as) before or after or behind them. Nor shall they compass aught of His knowledge except as He willeth. His Throne doth extend over the heavens and the earth, and He feeleth no fatigue in guarding and preserving them for He is the Most High, the Supreme (in glory).

Presumably, the suicide rates proves to us that the post soviet era has produced a generation that are still atheistic and most probably nihilistic, with former soviet states occupying the upper tier of the statistics.

Quite frankly, those who stand for nothing would fall for anything.