![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
NaNo: Character of Dr Hashim
The next supporting character of my novel, Dr Hashim, was actually inspired by multiple doctor friends. These were people I'd spent the formative years of my double digit ages with, so I like to think that I know them pretty well. Most of them were pretty ambivalent about religion when I first got to know them.
When they starting studying and practising medicine though, a lot of them started going to church. Bewildered, I asked them why they would commit a large part of their weekend when they were very busy. I got a lot of non-commital answers like, "it's something to do" (like they didn't have enough to do) and "I believe in God" (without wanting to go into why their belief flared up just about now).
Fast forward to my novel, when I'm thinking about a doctor figure. Because my novel is about meshing dreams and technology, I started to think about what other things that sound like opposites at first, but are actually pretty complementary. That's when I started to think about my friends who were doctors, technically science people, but also very religious.
Unfortunately, thinking of a Christian doctor didn't sound very extraordinary. But I knew my friends worked with Muslim doctors too. Add on the fact that I’d read a lot about advances made by Islamic doctors in the Middle Ages, I became intrigued by the idea of making a Muslim doctor one of the characters in my novel. That was how Dr Hashim came to be.
I only read about Ibn Sina after Dr Hashim’s character was fully formed, but I think it’s just proof that a person can be interested in science and yet consider themselves religious.
When they starting studying and practising medicine though, a lot of them started going to church. Bewildered, I asked them why they would commit a large part of their weekend when they were very busy. I got a lot of non-commital answers like, "it's something to do" (like they didn't have enough to do) and "I believe in God" (without wanting to go into why their belief flared up just about now).
Fast forward to my novel, when I'm thinking about a doctor figure. Because my novel is about meshing dreams and technology, I started to think about what other things that sound like opposites at first, but are actually pretty complementary. That's when I started to think about my friends who were doctors, technically science people, but also very religious.
Unfortunately, thinking of a Christian doctor didn't sound very extraordinary. But I knew my friends worked with Muslim doctors too. Add on the fact that I’d read a lot about advances made by Islamic doctors in the Middle Ages, I became intrigued by the idea of making a Muslim doctor one of the characters in my novel. That was how Dr Hashim came to be.
I only read about Ibn Sina after Dr Hashim’s character was fully formed, but I think it’s just proof that a person can be interested in science and yet consider themselves religious.