not every soul needs saving.

on autonomy.

There’s no formal ranking system of the most questionable, head-turning things I’ve been told, but if there were an intensity spectrum, a few would sit firmly in the red, and one would be the (unequivocal) declaration that I’m a lost soul who still has hope to be found before it’s too late.

Rarely do I build pieces on multiple theses, but this might be an exception. My intention is for my grounded perspective to scream louder than years of what I could only describe as faith fatigue.

Some things are simple and linear: changing majors, moving houses, switching seats in a cinema. Others are not. Somewhere on the more complex end is the idea that the world operates like a centrifugal force, with one belief system at the centre and everything else interpreted as deviation. In that framing, I become the misaligned object being pulled back.

When people repeatedly invite someone to abandon a faith, the conversation often overlooks how layered the decision actually is. It’s sometimes treated as a straightforward change of opinion, when in reality it’s tied to memory, family, culture, identity, and belonging.

For me, it’s also tied to lived practice: Islamic journals, lectures, congregational prayers, Qur’an recitations, personal notes to Allah, and everything else that has accumulated over years of belief. It’s not something that can be set aside casually or treated as a simple adjustment in perspective.

I fully respect both the freedom to persuade and the freedom to disagree. At the same time, persuasion becomes intrusive when it turns into a personal mandate to save someone through a persistent attempt to reopen a closed conversation and override a clearly stated position, especially after respectful refusal(s).

Context cues matter as well. It can be reductive to approach someone within a religious framework as though their beliefs are simply an error waiting to be corrected. Autonomy includes the possibility that a person has already considered alternative arguments and still arrived at their own conclusion.

Not everyone’s standing at the edge of uncertainty waiting to be redirected. In my case, I’ve reached convictions of my own, and I intend to remain true to and consistent with them. Others may disagree with those convictions, and that’s part of coexistence. There’s no simple bifurcation into a right path and a wrong path.

So, as a final wish, I would simply prefer to be seen less as a soul in transit requiring correction, and more as an autonomous person whose beliefs, like anyone else’s, are deliberate rather than accidental.