An Ex-Muslim Within Muslims
October 13, 2016 at 11:20 am
(This post was last modified: October 13, 2016 at 12:14 pm by Defender.)
Hi everyone,
I'm a new member in your forum which is great. I'll be talking in this post about my life and how or why I left Islam. It's a frustrating topic to talk about and I'm quite sure you've heard about ex-Muslims before and you head about their horrific moments with their communities. Let me assure that my story is unprecedented and probably you'll never hear such story in your lifetime except this one.
My only wish is that if words can fully and sufficiently communicate our feelings. Sadly, they simply don't suffice in this case. Though, my story began really at the age of 14, I was a young teen and something I can't deny is that I was very curious. very curious that I didn't know any limit and so even religion was in my menu to experiment with. I began to ask myself just like anyone else who left religion, why am I here? Is my religion right? How does Christianity differ from Islam? What's unique about Islam? And the list of questions goes on and on. Luckily, I had an access to the resources that would enable me to search and find answers to my unbearable questions. I began my search and I was furious to answer all of them and for sure I was extremely confident that what my family and I believed in was the right path. I can't state a number of how many articles, books, texts.... I've read ever since. I became addicted to reading like never before only to solve my questions. My best readings were about philosophy, I loved that so much and I still do because in philosophy there's nothing called taboo. I was eventually able to find a conclusion to my life, this conclusion changed me before it changed my beliefs. Incredible things in life happen without any prior notice. I hope you agree. And here I left Islam and became a Christian and all of that was kept very confidential.
I kept quiet, since stating that you're not a Muslim in a Muslim society is terrifying as you all know. The fact is my family is Shia Muslims that follow Sistani. This is kind of scary situation and for sure I experienced the abuse and humility of this doctrine. My family began to notice that I no longer do my prayers, I stopped attending mosques or religious temples. I was still young during that time, very young to defend myself and needless to say I was beaten, insulted, I even spent days hungry as I would escape from home for a while then return back at night. I didn't have any place to go anyway, so when they used to beat me up I thought I lost my humanity by leaving inherited religion and doctrine that I didn't myself believed in by my own conscience. Physical abuse wasn't the only option used against me by the family, this extended to psychological abuse. The worst form of abuse in my perspective that any human could possibly encounter isn't the physical one, it's the mental abuse. I lived my life since I experienced the horror of being myself isolated from others, and given one important fact that I belong to an Arab country and not surprisingly religion is also part of the constitution. The constitution in the country where I currently still live doesn't state any punishment for leaving Islam, but blasphemy still applies to us. The constitution stated that scientific research cannot be critical of Islam. What sort of freedom is this? What sort of scientific research that's bound by Islam? This means if you say that the atom consists of neutrons, protons, and electrons and you were able to prove it, but Islam says there are no atoms at all this literally means you violated the constitution and you'll be jailed for blasphemy. As a person who loved science and respected scientists, in my interpretation religion here in my country is above the scientific truth.
My life went on despite the sufferings, days of torture and the simultaneous abuses. Remember when I said I isolated myself? As a result of that I wasn't able to integrate into my society, I don't attend any occasion and seldom I go to visit anyone. My fear that they'll ask me to pray, something I do not want to do. After reading Sistani's ideas and thoughts about apostates I became very sure that death could be imminent. This was stated clearly in his writings that the apostate must be killed and according to him this is the punishment from Allah. My whole formal education was in public schools, we were forced to memorize the Koran, and some teachers were very fanatics. They talked about fundamentals of Islam and in some cases also about Jihad and infidels. Although there's a division in my country, some are Sunnis and others are Shia, we had our local schools situated in our area where the majority of them are Shia students, but the curriculum was in the Sunni version of Islam. Teachers harnessed their time to warn students about different matters, for example about masturbating or watching pornography, they were very obsessed with these talks. They absolutely enslaved us in that school, we were bound to their religious talks. We couldn't state who we are, instead it was stated for us. As young adults, we didn't get the chance to talk about our sexuality, who we love or what's even love. Love was only to Allah, clerics who encourage people to rebel in order to form an Islamic republic like that of the Iranian version and that's it. I didn't have any good relationship with my family, not even a friend or someone to share my emotion with, so virtually I was say in a solitary confinement of some sort.
I finished intermediate school and this was my next move to high school and still my relationship with my family remained the same. Something unexpected happened! The so-called Arab spring began and my country was in turmoil as well. Shia protests were common and everywhere, Shia clerics began to show up more frequently and a lot of commonly known Shia organizations pledged their support to these protests. I wouldn't go further in details here as I'll limit my post to my personal experience only and I prefer to omit other details so I keep this post concise. In fact protests began at the very end of my final year at intermediate school and continued during my high school years up until the moment. The same agenda was applied to us in high school, we were forced to memorize sections of the Koran in order to obtain grades and we had our religious studies normally, it was a public school after all. Honestly, I've been amazingly patient and how hard it must be for you not to integrate with your own people and to lose the love of your parents and not only, to know that your parents follow clerics that encourage your death. In this situation, how would you feel safe? How would you feel about your parents? My readings brought me to the core truth of Islam and I was never once able to lie to myself and go back to Islam just to pacify my society. I entered into pathetic psychological states during my high school years, I became unable to sustain myself. My psychological trauma caused me to be extremely angry and my behaviors began to show lack of self-control with continuous state of sadness. There I began to cry warm tears; I still remember how warm those tears were. I began to think to end my life, I was scared to move towards this unthinkable step at that time. I was really exhausted. Let's not forget that Shia perform a lot of excessive religious rituals, usually and most likely these rituals are performed at morning and night. They use speakers for those rituals and the shouting continues till the middle of the night, so I’m constantly deprived from sleep. As a good student I was careful not to lose for my problems, I had to move on and pass high school and get nice grades so I specialize in science. And that’s exactly what happened, I graduated as the first student in my class and I obtained high GPA. By the end of my high school years, I became an agnostic.
Now and a period of pain in high school ended and I recovered from my psychological wounds and I was moving ahead to enroll to college. First I decided to work as I wanted to escape from the country, I already had enough painful memories by that time. I wasn’t able to find a job or I found jobs but the wage was very low to get me out of the country, very low that the money will be consumed on my own needs. I decided to recover the relationship with my dad to convince him to send me outside to continue my studies. While I did magically heal the relationship, I failed severely in convincing him to send me out and he argued that I should remain in the country. My relationship got worse with my mom as she in some instances opposed my decision to be out. However, all my attempts to go out failed miserably. Again, I was not able to think about continuing my painful life for other painful years, but the choice of the choice less, I enrolled to a local college. The pity the condition of education in Muslim countries and being a student in science that specializes in technology proved to me how detrimental their education system is. My hope was that offences and abuses will stop as a college student, that didn’t go well when a teacher inquired about my beliefs and stupidly I answered that I’m not a Muslims in a classroom with 30 or more students. The class hated me and they viewed me as a burden in some forms. We ended the class that day where a colleague of mine approached me with a harsh language, it was the first time I talked to him and I said: are you attacking me? Only then he changed his harsh language and he began to talk about my beliefs in a despicable manner in which I said: I have my beliefs and you have your beliefs and I stopped talking to him. We were not allowed to eat inside the college during Ramadan, we were allowed to eat only in one private room. We were humiliated if we eat during Ramadan with the worst unimaginable words and that room was full of foreigners and there were absolutely no students that belong to my Shia community. If this shows something, it shows the mentality of the Muslim world where dialogue isn’t allowed. I was frustrated again as such mentality and people are simply incapable of teaching science nor respecting logical arguments. Being at this approximate (very close to a closed society) I could tell you what their ambitions are. Their ambitions don't go outside the circle of religion.
In a country where religion is above the scrutinized truth, where the constitution punishes blasphemy what else can be said? All the facts point towards one thing, if you come from a Muslim family, the choice to change or even express doubt of your religion is taken as if you’ve killed someone. There’s a Muslim imam that actually said being an apostate cannot be forgiven, it’s like killing someone and then apologizing. And he went further to say the UN isn’t above the law of Allah. While it’s true that not all Muslims support the death penalty for apostates, but Islam does! Most honest Islamic scholars believe in this and you can see that today in their books, seminars and they insist on that. You cannot label someone to be radical simply because of their true interpretation of Islam. So to those that say there’s a moderate and radical Islam, I don’t believe such thing exists. There are only two groups: people who interpret Islam honestly and those who interpret Islam to avoid critics.
- My wish that this post won’t end my life.
- I intended to be vague in some places for security.
and I hope you stick around.
