‘Inception’ and Sunday school

By now many of us have seen the recent Leonardo DiCaprio film “Inception” and left the theater chattering about the dream world created in the movie. What did the ending mean? Do we naturally dream ideas into our subconscious that affect our lives? And how powerful are these dreamed perceptions? Well, Inception for Muslims and many others isn’t just make believe. It likely happened at a mosque near you, although probably in a less dramatic fashion.

The crux of the movie’s plot line deals with dreams in a way that is familiar to, well, all of us who sleep. In the film, DiCaprio is a thief who enters people’s dreams to steal their deepest secrets and thoughts.  But he is eventually paid to enter a dream not to extract thoughts, but for “inception,” a process where individuals enter another person’s dream to plant the seeds of an idea.  The planted idea is expected to grow in the person’s conscious, and it eventually influences their thought process, perception of reality, and general behavior.

DiCaprio describes dreams as the product of the reality we perceive.  In one scene, he says that our minds constantly create and recreate our individual realities every minute.  What we see as reality, he says, is essentially a subjective construction. Although the influence of dreams on reality is debatable, it’s not farfetched to draw a very relevant lesson from this discussion: that the ideas others put into our heads can essentially reshape our entire concept of reality, and this ultimately impacts how we live our lives.

If you think about it then you might find that organized religion and religious figures have been performing inception for centuries. Religious institutions and religious figures are constantly shaping our realities and histories by the ideas and thoughts that they produce and share.

For example, one may say that inception happens at Sunday school, during khutbahs at Friday prayers, or when an imam provides advice in the form of an idea.   Add to the equation the fact that religious figures and institutions often carry unparalleled weight and authority that has an even heavier impact on our perceived realities, and you will quickly realize that the concept of “inception” dreamed up by Christopher Nolan, the director of the film, isn’t fiction at all.

Think back to when you were in Sunday school. Whatever you were taught at a young and impressionable age likely influenced a thought process that eventually grew into deep-rooted convictions.  You may have been fed a certain interpretation of a Quranic verse on gender roles, meat, or ways to interact with non-Muslims that has influenced the way you feel about those subjects.  If you were told that a verse regarding meat requires you to eat zabiha meat, then you may have continued to only eat zabiha while your non-zabiha meat-eating friend may have been given a different interpretation at the mosque on the other side of town.  In both of your minds, you’re safe because you are following what your imam told you when you were five.  Ever wonder why you feel uncomfortable eating with your left hand or avoid touching dogs for fear of a seven-part ablution? Inception.

Those thoughts, planted as seeds, may have influenced behavior significantly. Without your full realization, the thoughts and ideas presented to you at Sunday school could have determined the course of your personal history, the way you live your life, and the way you perceive reality.

If we think about this on a larger scale, then we can see that our mosques and this conception of inception in real life has very real ramifications for the Muslim community and Islamic history.  Contemplating inception in this way helps us to fully realize the great importance our mosques and religious leaders play in our lives and in shaping the history of our community.

If our mosques present positive and constructive ideas, then Muslim individuals could, eventually, perceive their realities in a more constructive and productive way.  This will allow individuals to be more engaged, well adjusted, and positive in their day-to-day lives, in their interactions with others, and in their practice of Islam.  The ideas that our mosques and leaders present can also alter the course of history.  More recently, the Muslim community worldwide has been faced with a plethora of negative and extremist thought.  These ideas have likely been fed to children and individuals at mosques and madrasas on a regular basis, and these seeds of thoughts have translated into counterproductive extremist behavior, misunderstanding, and stagnation that will have an impact on the entire ummah for generations to come.

The good news is that this dialogue and the patterns can be changed.  It is up to each individual, each mosque, each parent, and each religious leader to change the way we discuss ideas, and to change the ideas themselves.  Sure “Inception” was just a film, but it may just be a film that causes us to take pause at the power of our own ideas and the impact they have.

As a community, we must recognize the power and weight of the ideas we circulate amongst ourselves, and we must realize that in order to truly progress, we must give more thought to the seeds we are planting and the ones that have been implanted. It’s not wrong to have adopted practices you were advised to take on as a child, but we should ask more questions about the way we live our lives and why we practice in the way that we do. This can apply on a large or a small scale. Do some men truly understand why they roll up their pant legs above their ankles when they enter a mosque, or do they do it because a bearded man told them they should? Do you eat only halaal meat because you were told to do so or because you have come to understand a prescription that you feel is compulsory? So the next time you rinse your right arm before your left, or dart your eyes to the sidewalk as a beautiful girl walks by, ask yourself where that came from. Was it inception, or real inspiration?