Hi everyone!
I have known this forum and have been registered for a while, so it's now time to introduce myself!
I am Amy, I'm French and I was glad to discover this site because we don't have the equivalent in France (that I know of). I'm sorry in advance if my English is not perfect, I'll do my best.
I was born and raised in a loving "quite moderate" muslim family. I think that I started to have doubts about religion when I was around 12 years old. Some things just didn't make sense. I couldn't comprehend that all my friends who where not muslims will go to hell even though there were good kids. But I didn't talk about it at the time because I knew that it could cause me some serious problems.
Later I decided to really learn about Islam by myself. I was confused and had more doubts. But I couldn't accept that my entire family and entourage could be wrong about something so important. I certainly was the one who misunderstood things. So I started unconsciously to make excuses for Islam, I started to read the Qur'an with my own liberal interpretation in order for it to fit my principles. And I was happy like that...
Some of the best memories of my childhood were when my sister, brothers and myself were watching the moon in a telescope that my father build himself!
When I was older, I bought my own telescope and sometimes I watched the moon and felt nostalgia about those days.
Watching the moon was fun but I wanted to learn more about it... and about the planets... and about the stars... before I knew it I was an astronomy addict reading tons of books and watching all the documentaries I could find. I think I then caught the science bug, I wanted to learn always more... about cosmology, biology... I started to learn about evolution and so much more. I had no idea that so much was known and that we could explain almost everything without the help of religion.
And then... revelation! I experienced something strange, I suddenly felt totally free and weirdly good. I later saw a Youtube video who described exactly this experience.
It's called "Why didn't anybody tell me" by user Philhellenes, here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyjNXdEGjO4 After this "revelation", I knew that I was now an atheist and that there was no coming back from that.
My family doesn't know. I will maybe tell them someday but for the moment I prefer to avoid the storm it would create.
So I pretended for a long time...I was so angry and tired pretending to pray, to fast etc...
The best solution was to get my own apartment. My parents were of course totally opposed to it. An unmarried woman living alone?? Impossible!
But I got it anyway because I knew that they love me very much and would not repudiate me just for that. The first few weeks were hard but it's ok now (they still want me to marry a good muslim guy asap!)
I'm happy to have joined such a nice forum where I will be able to discuss and share with people who understand me.
Take care and talk to all of you soon
Topic: Hey there!