an aged egyptian who had a long experience in life is telling us stories of tens of million people. he says: i lived in the sixties, and even part of the seventies, in psychological comfort, as the way of religiosity of society was comfortable, there were no veiled women, in the current sense, except within a certain category, and the name of the piece of cloth that was placed on the head was a scarf.

we did not know men with the prayer mark in the middle of their foreheads, nor did we see a man wearing a short dishdasha or veiled women.
the women of the family did not know religious lessons except when needed, the religion was simple and clear, as it was always the case. 

he adds: “religious education on television was also limited to the “noor on nour” program, and on friday, its presenter wore an elegant suit. even in ramadan, the lesson of preaching did not take more than minutes, and the speech during it was calm and tolerant. our visitors did not come and make a fuss asking for a prayer rug, and asking loudly about the direction of the ka’aba, and exaggerating in showing reverence and religiosity.”

work is a kind of worship, it did not stop to catch up with the noon or afternoon prayers, and we were trying to perform the hajj once in a lifetime. 
there was one mosque in the neighborhood, and it was enough for all of us and no one was keen on reciting as faith was fi lling hearts, and ibn taymiyyah did not have this presence, and the majority did not even hear of him and there were no classifi cations of wahhabism, salafi sm, the brotherhood, and so on.

the sound of the qur’an was not heard loudly in the street, taxi, or any hall, and no one paid attention to it, but when we hear it we listened.
nobody ever talked to us about the torment of the grave and the bald serpent. there were no high wages paid for the appearance of the clergyman on the tv channels, nor money paid to promote their ideas as is the case now after religion became a great business.
 our governments were not complicit or promoting sects and spreading division among their followers, or between muslims and christians, and between the religious and the liberal, and between the veiled and the unveiled.
we never bothered to ask our classmates about their religion, and we believed that the earth is round, until someone came to force us to believe that it is flat.
the egyptian concludes his talk by saying he misses the old times during which he was raised on noble morals and the ease of religion without hypocrisy, without boasting about prayer marks on forefront, without short dishdasha and long beard.
the brazilian poet mário de andrade says: i went back to my years and realized that i had less time in life than i had so far. 
i feel the feeling of that same boy who, having got a bowl full of cherries, began to devour them one after another but as soon as he realized that there were only a few left, he began to savor them slowly and more sensibly and enjoyably.
i have no time for endless conversations, no point in discussing the lives of others i don’t care about, no time to consider the sensibilities of the immature, no desire to confront those who struggle for power, my time has become scarce and i want only substance, my soul is leaping in haste, and my cherries in my little bowl, i want to live near men who laugh at their missteps, away from those who have become arrogant and overconfi dent in their victories and far from those who are full of self-importance.
confucius says: we have two lives, the second only begins when we realize that we only have one. 
in conclusion: life is short and there is no need for all these religious battles.