Mohammad Sharif. Not necessarily the name I expected for my Catholic school religion teacher.

Up through fifth grade, we had been taught religion in the most Westernized and Californian of ways: reading cartoon versions of the Bible and learning how Jesus loved everyone. Sure, I knew other religions existed, but my complete ignorance about anything other than Catholicism made them exist to me the same way calculus exists to someone learning basic arithmetic. Until Mr. Sharif, religion was just another subject they taught us in school – an ultimate truth of the world, akin to 2 + 2 = 4. I didn’t particularly like the idea of an omnipotent creator, but in the same way that I wasn’t a fan of cursive. As a result, I listened to my teachers talk about how we would all go to heaven, I usually managed to stay awake through Mass, and I simply accepted God as a part of my life, 100 percent.

Before Mr. Sharif, a woman named Ms. Roberts taught middle school religion. She was the quintessential 80-year-old, morally upstanding religion teacher. Her lectures were rife with critical comments, warnings of the Hell that awaits those who do not remain chaste until marriage, and a self-proclaimed omniscience that might have fit in well during the Spanish Inquisition. However, for whatever reason, she was not teaching the year I entered middle school.

The first day of class with Mr. Sharif, none of us knew what to expect. I, with my normal skeptical attitude, was not optimistic. We were just beginning to get a glimpse of the wonders of middle school, but religion class managed to turn us upside down.

When we walked in, nothing could draw our attention away from the peculiar man sitting at the desk. His dark black hair flowed well below his neck, looking still wet, even though it was afternoon and it must have been hours since his morning shower. He displayed an impressively thick black beard, giving volume to his face that made him warm and inviting in a Santa Claus kind of way, but also making it clear that he was not to be trifled with. Mr. Sharif moved smoothly across the classroom as if he were gliding on ice. We had not even begun to settle down when he began to speak softly and rhythmically, instantaneously subduing the class despite his low volume. He wrote his full name on the blackboard, a nine-word sentence in which not one of the characters even remotely resembled English. We all thought it was cool at the time, albeit insignificant, but it wasn’t until he began to explain the plan for the year that everything truly changed.

“Now, we’re going to start the year off with some simple Bible study, looking at the Old Testament.”

Nothing strange so far; it was exactly what we expected from middle school religion class.

“After that, you’re going to learn about the other major religions of the world: Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, and many others,” he continued. “Personally, I’m a Muslim, in a specific sect. We pray five times a day, and fast for Ramadan. It’s really quite fascinating, compared to Christianity.”

The room became silent. Some kids knew what he was talking about; most of us didn’t. We all had the same bigoted, crazy thoughts in unison. Rambadijinadaban? Other religions? Muslim? Aren’t those the terrorists?

I suppose I was ignorant of all that then, but in the weeks that followed, I heard hushed conversations among my peers about Mr. Sharif.

“My mom says that because he isn’t teaching us how to be Catholic, we won’t be able to learn the truth.”

“My dad said that if we learn about other religions, they might be teaching us stuff that’s wrong.”

“It’s super weird that he’s Muslim.”

“I know. We really shouldn’t be talking about this.”

On the day after Martin Luther King Day, class began with our normal routine. Mr. Sharif wasn’t a fan of the traditional way of taking attendance; instead of calling our names to evoke a simple “here,” he had trained us to say our names in alphabetical order, preferably as quickly as possible.

After attendance, without any introduction whatsoever, Mr. Sharif began a speech that he seemed to have memorized, saying he was delivering the words of Martin Luther King Jr. He talked of civil rights, of transcendence, and threw in catch phrase after catch phrase. I shivered from the power of his speech, embracing the magnitude of his words and the importance of what they stood for.

When I got home, the first thing I did was try to look up that speech by Martin Luther King Jr. I searched and searched on Google, putting in as many words or phrases as I could remember. However, I was unable to prove that Martin Luther King Jr. had said anything close to Mr. Sharif’s speech.

To most, Mr. Sharif represented the ultimate enigma, but now I realize that there was a method to his madness. When he lectured us on how many different ways societies looked at issues, he wasn’t indoctrinating us to his viewpoint; he was allowing us to think freely. When he would identify the flaws in our argument, he wasn’t belittling us; he was teaching us to think deeper, to understand that there was no certain truth, and we could do no more than dance around the edge. He taught us of the tragedy of the commons, where an entire town destroyed their communal field by abusing it, ruining the beauty for everyone, and how the pencils in the classroom would soon run out for us if we didn’t put them back.

I can’t remember much about the religion he taught, but I do remember slowly moving away from my Catholic-school mindset and thinking more freely in all facets of my life. Mr. Sharif was and is exactly what our school needed and still needs: someone to break the silence forced on all of us through years of memorizing Our Fathers and Hail Marys, someone to change the way we view religion – not as an answer, but as an unsolvable question.

One day I walked into class and something was different. There were computers on every desk, looking quite inviting to us middle school boys. As we settled down, Mr. Sharif began, “Today, class, we are going to take a quiz to see what religion your beliefs are most closely aligned with.”

Our class buzzed with excitement. We quickly got to work. There were multiple-choice questions with up to ten answers, asking about everything from how we viewed God to how we should live our lives. As I clicked through my answers, I thought back to how much I had changed over the course of learning with Mr. Sharif. What would have once been immediate conformance to Catholic scripture was now a defiant certainty of my own uncertainty; I answered questions about my supernatural beliefs with “I don’t know” or “I don’t care.” I trudged along, question by question, until I eventually reached the final page that would reveal how close my beliefs were to the beliefs of other religions.

As I saw the result that appeared on the screen, I realized just how far I’d come since the beginning of middle school, the great leaps and bounds I had made in understanding my own spirituality – just how much I had changed in my desire for free thought above all else.

“Secular Humanism: 100%.”