Hakim, are you really not a Muslim?  I am not Muslim.

I too once read something about there being more women than men in hell, and it has something to do with soiling ones clothing through bladder incontinence. I am not making a joke. I think this issue is mentioned somewhere in Hadith or in "The Sayings of Mohammed" preserved in oral tradition.

Right, I’m not Muslim.  Besides Moorish Orthodox, I don’t know what other labels would apply to me … antinomian informal universal pluralist maybe.

Oh, right! I forgot that I had read a post here about Moorish Orthodox. Thanks!  Today, I happened to be reading about the Druze. I like to learn about such things.  I was googling on the difference between Shia and Sunni. 

I created a free message board today,
http://www.iranianromance.myfreeforum.org .  My long time friend in Tehran has been corresponding with an American for 4 years, and he is thinking of conversion to Islam and marriage.  I read an article in Newsweek about the surprisingly small number or Iraqi-American marriages, compared to intermarriage during other wars, such as WWII, Viet Nam, Korea.  All those Iraqi marriages involved conversion to Islam.  I did succeed yesterday in finding a Farsi group, and located one Iranian member who has just recently married an American (who converted to Islam). She has much good advice for my Iranian friend.

I was raised with absolutely no religion, by nominally Protestant parents.  Over the years, my own thinking evolved to resemble Buddhist-Hindu beliefs.  But I participate in no organized religion.   I can most easily relate to Sufi beliefs, as described by the popular writer, Idres Shah. Rumi is one of my favorites: "There is a field beyond notions of right-doing and wrong-doing. I shall meet you there." (paraphrased)

Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make sense any more.

one of my all-time favorites! 

I was raised in a very laid-back, liberal, middle-class suburban Friends Meeting, a/k/a Quaker "church".  I was always taught "there is that of God in everyone" and that people can "worship" by sitting in silence, perhaps visualizing the Light or contemplating.  Gay is OK, Jews can come to church here, peace is good, violence bad.  Also, plenty of Volvos and Apple computers.  Simplicity and non-hierarchical organization—through Spirit-led consensus—are other values I picked up from the Quakers.  I recall a line from a song, the name of which I don’t recall, but I do remember singing as a child "you can’t beat the Devil with a book or a gun."  I love that.

As a teenager—in the late 80s—I lost interest in Quaker meeting and never really went back except for the occasional wedding or funeral.  But I have a lot of respect for them; at least, the ones I know are an island of relative sanity within very Republican suburbs of Chicago.

So now I’m further out on the edge, and loving it.  We Springfield Moors are radically informal, yet always seeking inspiration and accompanying one another on our respective paths.  If that makes any sense.  I’m staying up late tonight, doing dishes and drinking dandelion wine!  But I had enough sense to change "Us Springfield Moors are" to "We Springfield Moors are".  Programming …...