What is expected in this book from the reader is to go over the most important matter of his life which, so far, he might have considered a quite insignificant matter.  While doing this, he needs to stay away from his prejudices and think over the standard of judgments he accepted as absolute true until now.

We must bare in mind that when any situation is approached with prejudices, one is no longer able to make a healthy decision and reach a right conclusion. As a matter of fact, when one wants to see something as right, one sees it as right. He perceives a thing as evil since he already decided it to be evil beforehand.

The most important thing about this matter is that these prejudices and presuppositions are rarely formed individually. From the beginning of one’s life, one is doomed to contamination with countless prejudices that society instills. Our family, friends and close relationships determine our value-judgements. Media especially has a great power to condition peoples’ attitudes toward certain subjects. Newspapers and television have the power to show the right as unpleasant, unaccepted and even harmful and the wrong as good and desirable to spectators at a great extent. 

A person, who readily accepts these prejudices instilled by society, loses a great part of his personality.  He acts under the influence of prejudice-instillation exposed by others, and do not behave with a free will and mind. Others' instillation determines his behavior. This way, this person can only accept the values that are shown to be true as true. On the other hand, when we consider that different societies with different cultural backgrounds happen to believe in different rights and wrongs, we can see that there is not much sense in following the society without questioning its value-judgements. Again, what is currently agreed to be wrong and immoral will be considered acceptable in the future. Eating human flesh is very normal for cannibals, and obeying a crazy leader in a fascist society like Nazi Germany was absolutely right for the people who followed and supported him at that time. The number of examples can be enlarged. What we want to say is, being able to think independently of society's instillation, suits a person of wisdom. Since,  that person is aware of the fact that those values imposed by society may be wrong and could cause problems if adopted. 

Religion is one of the most important subjects about which countless prejudices are produced by society. Especially today, there are innumerable prejudices about religion in  society. The instillation imposed by some part of media has formed many prejudices about religion, which are hard to overcome.

As a result of these prejudices in our society, religion has become a concept which most people either do not consider important, or believe they do not need to think about, but prefer to stay away from it as far as possible. People who fit into this definition can not be said to have adopted such an attitude consciously though. For them, religion is a simple subject that’s of no benefit to them. On the contrary, it puts some restrictions upon them. Those having such a point of view would claim that he is a Muslim when asked, although religion may be one of the less important matters of his life and one of the subjects of which he is very ignorant.

Indeed, this person has never thought about religion seriously, not even for once. He has probably never thought seriously on questions like "what is the purpose of life, why do I exist? Why does the concept of "religion" exist? For him, religion is a matter that generally concerns aged people, presents some ethical values, but mostly brings lots of boring, tedious prohibitions and restrictions. Though, he agrees to practice some of the religious rituals on days of religious holidays, feasts and at some important days like the death of a relative. Yet, he finds some of these formal rituals right and necessary and consider some others as ancient and outdated. Although he usually does not deny religion, he tries to avoid it. When it comes to establishing relations with religious people, he usually does not want to talk or keep in contact with them, and even avoids them. Since, the media labels religious people as "religious fanatics" or "radical religious people", and he considers these people dreadful and "dark". 

This wrong perception towards religion originates from accepting presuppositions imposed by some part of society without use of independent thinking. On the other hand, reasoning and pondering on every aspect of life is a very important issue, as human beings possess the power of reason, which makes them different from animals. In the basic reference of Islam, the Qur'an, the importance of thinking is emphasized in many verses as follows:

"Say: "To whom belong the earth and all beings therein? (say) if ye know!" They will say, "To Allah!" say: "Yet will ye not receive admonition?"  (Al-Mumenoon 84-85)

"And We have indeed made the Qur'an easy to understand and remember: then is there any that will receive admonition?" (Al-Qumar 17)

"...This is Allah your Lord; Him therefore serve ye: will ye not receive admonition" (Yunus 3)

"Is then He Who creates like one that creates not? Will ye not receive admonition?" (An-Nahl 17)

Those who can not think independently from society’s instillation about religion will make two great mistakes. The first of these is not being aware of the real purpose of religion. To be precise, this is not being aware of Allah as a result of trying to avoid religion.

The second fault is thinking that religion is there to drag people to an awkward and bigoted position full of pressures and to impose duties on people, which are against the very nature of them. One of the important reasons which incites the "religion is boring" syndrome is the repulsive view which is created by some people who degrade religion, deliberately or out of ignorance. However, these derogatory acts are not included in the religion and in fact against the essence of the religion.

Once one frees oneself from the first mistake and starts getting to know the Creator and the Creator’s attributes, he also gets free from the superstitions which keep him away from religion. The sharpness of the mind in seeing things and sensitivity towards the need for searching for the truth come with solving this fault which in turn resolves the second fault as well. It engenders a skill to separate religion from other false structures under the image of religion. Then one may realize that religion is easy to live and brings the real happiness, wellbeing and freedom to one's life.

In summary, the society we live in has formed countless prejudices about religion. However, while approaching religion, the basic criterion must be its original references like the sacred book, and not peoples’ sayings about religion. In the Qur'an, it has been indicated that obeying most of those on earth would not necessarily lead us to Allah's way.

"Wert thou to follow the common run of those on earth, they will lead thee away from the way of Allah. They follow nothing but conjecture: they do nothing but lie." (Al-Anaam 116)

When a person stops "following the herd" and begins to think with his soul, he personally sees the reality emphasized in the Qur'anic verse cited above. He steps into a “new world" that the majority of people are not aware of. This step will keep him away from the all-dark, awkward, penury side of his old life and take him to countless beauties of religion and to deep wisdom and self-enlightenment.

Before reading through the rest of the book, let us remind you that the word “religion” refers to Islam alone, as "The Religion before Allah is Islam" (Al e-Imran 19)
 

You can read the rest of the booklet from here.