What religion are you in a taxi?
There are several annoying things about riding around in a taxi in Cairo. Including but not limited to; the near misses of pedestrians, the inhaling of all the fumes from all the excessively polluting cars in front of you, the driver himself smoking cheap cigarettes, the traffic, the high probability that the taxi will break down.
But one of the more annoying things is being asked what religion you are by every driver you try to talk to (talk to for the sake of improving your Arabic speaking ability). The question is a multiple choice question with two possible right answers:
A) A) Islam
B) B) Christian
All other answers are wrong. The main wrong answers are; Jewish or Atheist. To give any other answer than A or B is to invite problems.
There is also another religion here that is an offshoot of Islam, similar to Mormonism being an offshoot of Christianity. That religion is considered apostasy by the public at large, and the followers of the religion are persecuted by the government (I suppose much like the Mormons were in the US when they first came out). I think that it is funny that you can see an Egyptian at a party committing all manner of sins, and you if you mention that religion to them, they will shake their head at the mistakenness and wrongness and apostasy of the religion, and talk about how it is not a real religion, like Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. So I like to suggest that the person saying those things should probably make friends with somebody from that apostate religion as they might be roommates in Hell. But that sometimes doesn’t go over so well.
But about religion question by taxi drivers. My favorite answer is:
THERE IS NO GOD YOU SUPERSTITIOUS FOOL
Not because that is what I believe, (I don’t’) but because it will make the taxi drivers head explode, or he will probably try to kill you or drop you off far from your destination.
If the taxi driver is Moslem, and you tell him you are Christian, he will tell you how close the two religions are, and how you can be friends and generally talk about religion asking all manner of questions about Christianity that you may not care about or want to answer. If your Moslem driver that you are Moslem, he will be your best friend immediately and tell you that you are an honest, hardworking, generous, and handsome guy. And he will probably request confirmation that over in America Moslems are also the bestest people that there are.
If the taxi driver is Christian, and you tell him you are Moslem, being that you look like you are either from Europe or America, he will ask ‘why’. “Why have you chosen to make that mistake?”. “You are from the west, you people are supposed to be smarter than that”. “You have been fooled by the lies these people say”. If you tell the Christian taxi driver that you are Christian, he will talk to you about how great it is to be Christian and then proceed to talk more about Christianity than you want to talk about. About when you go to church, about what branch of Christianity you are. If you try to say that you don’t go to church and instead commit a steady stream of sins. Then the taxi driver is likely to ask if you can hook him up with some prone to sin western women.
If you refuse to talk about religion the taxi drivers will immediately assume you are Jewish and thus a spy for Israel.
I am told that if you are a woman, the taxi drivers mostly ask if you are married. And if you are not, they ask if you want to be their second wife.
