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Theme Changer

 Topic: Heres my story

 (Read 13260 times)
  • 12 3 Next page « Previous thread | Next thread »
  • Heres my story
     OP - May 13, 2010, 01:37 AM

    i grew up in a small town in an european country where religion is not really a part of society anymore. people used to be christians here but long time ago people stopped going to church, and today most people would find you very strange if you told them for example that you believed that Jesus was the son of god. one might say my country has gotten rid of religion, and the christian belivers today are  mostly older folks, very very few in my generation are religious these days..

    i was never in to religion growing up and neither was my family. i also think i might have cursed "god" more than a few times
    for making my life suck so badly at least i thought.
    but really religion was all imagination to me, like the tooth fairy or santa claus. anyway i got into a lot of trouble in my teenage life, getting involved with drugs and doing lots of bad stuff i guess. this was all cuz i wasnt feeling very well of course, my parents got divorced when i was a kid and things were always tough around me.

    anyway i finished ground school but i didnt make it through college, i found studying was just not for me.. so there i was 20 years old without a job or an education and i was living in like four different places because of family difficulties. i ended up living with my mom whom i had a seriously disfunctional relationship with. as you can tell, there wasnt much stability in my life  Tongue .

    as time went by i was becoming more and more displeased with the way things were in my society. i felt like people didnt care about anything any longer, and i felt like everything kept getting worse and worse. i started hanging out with muslims, they werent religious at all but their heritage was islam. i often discussed with them what a "fucked up" society we lived in which they agreed in. i guess this is when it all started.

    i started studying islam and right before you know it i stopped eating pork and drinking alcohol. i started to look down on a lot of people and i felt this anger building up inside of me towards society. one day i decided to read a translation of the quran, and after finishing reading the whole thing trough i was hooked. i felt like it had all the answers. there was no going back now and i decided to say the shahada.

    so there i am in the local mosque with a bunch of people. it was time. the imam asked me if i knew what i was doing and so on and i told him i was fully ready to become a muslim. then i had to pronounce the arabic confession which went fine because i had practised a lot. anyway i felt like it was the best thing i had done and all the muslims were like "mash allah mash allah"and hugging me and shit haha crazy.. i later changed my name, stopped shaving and all that other stuff.

    my muslim friends who i knew outside the religion so to speak never wanted to join me to the mosque, so i always went by myself. i prayed the obligatory five times a day and even did night prayer and washed before everyone prayer. you had to wash in a certain way, pray in a certain way, and even stand in a certain way. i was turning in to a fuckin robot. i was convinced that the quran and muhammed was the best thing ever happened to humanity.

    as i was visiting the mosque i met a lot of new people. i started talking to a guy that seemed very liberal and friendly, and he was one of the people promoting "the peaceful religion of islam". but then he introduced me to this other dude, and this was the beginning to the end. at first i was happy that he took the time to learning me about islam and muhammed and everything, but something just didnt feel right. he started telling me to read the hadith, and he turned out to be an anti-democratic salafi bin ladin loving nutjob. this is what inspired me to do some more research about what religion i had gotten myself in to. i started reading the hadith and i noticed what an evil cult islam really was. it promoted hate and fear, and death to those who insulted islam or the holy prophet. there was no room for individual rigths or freedom. i decided to re-read the quran, this time a lot more critically. my world was falling apart, i realised i had been brainwashed by the quran all along. insane. i had to get out. now!

    i started searching the internet how one leaves islam. i got a lot of help from youtubers who themselves had left islam, and they told me all you really have to do was to stop beliving and stop praying and so on. i felt it was not enough, i wanted to do something more. they told me to be careful and that people even had been killed for apostasy. i felt pure panic and fear rushing through my body. nobody had told me about this shit before saying my shahada!! but then that panic turned into anger. what kind of sick religion does that to people?! this was against everything i stood for and i decided not give in to fear, letting the evil win. there was no way in hell i was going to be a muslim anymore. so i stopped praying, i started drinking again and started doing all that haram stuff  piggy and it felt better than ever before.

    but technically i felt like i was still a muslim because of the shahada and all, so i still felt something had to be done. i decided to revert to christianity, even though religion was now destroyed for me for all future i felt this act would completely wipe islam out of my system! after visiting a priest i felt that now i could go on with my life and i cut all connections with the islamic religion. at first i was thinking of keeping quiet about all this. but then i found this website and i thought hey maybe my story could make a difference to someone out there?

     thnkyu for reading my story.



  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #1 - May 13, 2010, 01:44 AM

    im glad you left the cult. by the way are you from Denmark? Huh?
  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #2 - May 13, 2010, 01:46 AM

    If he didn't specify the "Northern European country", I'm assuming he wants to keep that info confidential for now.

    fuck you
  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #3 - May 13, 2010, 01:48 AM

    So are you Christian at this moment?

    "If intelligence is feminine... I would want that mine would, in a resolute movement, come to resemble an impious woman."
  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #4 - May 13, 2010, 01:48 AM


    I love reading these testimonies. They are one of the best things about this place.

    Thanks for sharing that, Morpheus. Alot of people here will be able to recognise themselves in various stages of your tale. The vulnerability you felt at a certain point in your life and a kind of identity crisis that found answers in the certainties of Islam is something you hear time and time again.






    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #5 - May 13, 2010, 01:49 AM

    So are you Christian at this moment?


    Yeah, are you?


    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #6 - May 13, 2010, 01:52 AM

    technically im christian yeah. im not religious anymore at all, but it was a way to free myself of islam!
  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #7 - May 13, 2010, 01:54 AM

    So you're saying that you don't follow Christianity at all, and it was more of a symbolic act to draw a line under your Islamic experience? Wil you formally renounce Christianity at some point?



    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #8 - May 13, 2010, 01:54 AM

    Yeah, when it comes to having troubles with your life, Islam is like an AA meeting, then when you learn more about it, it turns out to be the kind of cult that says "Once you're in, you cant get out".
    I was born muslim, but it was really my curiosity about Islam and religions that lead me to leave my faith later on.

    I know someday you'll have a beautiful life, I know you'll be a star
    In somebody else's sky, but why, why, why
    Can't it be, can't it be mine

    https://twitter.com/AlharbiMoe
  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #9 - May 13, 2010, 01:55 AM

    Yeah, are you?




    Very funny, mister. Okay so that was worded a little funny, sue me.  wacko

    "If intelligence is feminine... I would want that mine would, in a resolute movement, come to resemble an impious woman."
  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #10 - May 13, 2010, 01:57 AM

    Quote
    Very funny, mister. Okay so that was worded a little funny, sue me.


    Sorry Eph, I wasn't being sarcastic, just seconding your question  Smiley

    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #11 - May 13, 2010, 02:00 AM

    Quote
    i started studying islam and right before you know it i stopped eating pork and drinking alcohol. i started to look down on a lot of people and i felt this anger building up inside of me towards society.


    This keeps recurring over and over again, you keep hearing this story don't you? Why do so many vulnerable and rageful people find solace in Islam?

    You have to hand it to the dawah merchants though, they often do go out of their way to connect with these kinds of people, at these vulnerable stages of their life. They've done their research.


    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #12 - May 13, 2010, 02:04 AM

    Yeah, thanks for sharing Morpheus. Even though I've read the stories of many ex-"reverts" here from Western countries, I confess I still don't "get it". I mean, unless you're marrying a Muslim why would anyone in a Western country searching for religion or spirituality choose Islam of all the possibilities out there?

    I mean, I get that a lot of people got into it by having Muslim friends first, but it's still really hard to wrap my head around.

    Even in my late teenage years and early twenties when I was really coming to terms with my Arab identity and was becoming proud of it, and still thought Islam meant "peace" did I even consider converting to the religion of my father. Not once even for a fleeting second. Granted at that time I had become very irreligious, but I think even if I did desire religion I still wouldn't have chosen that one.

    I dunno, maybe I'm just dense and I love pork and booze too much.

    Anyhow, if you, Morpheus, or any of the other ex-converts can help me understand not so much why you became religious, but out of the many choices you picked Islam, it would be appreciated. Is it just that Muslims you knew did a really awesome job of lying about and misrepresenting the religion? And unless you were an alky and an animal rights person, why would anyone give up pork and booze?

    fuck you
  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #13 - May 13, 2010, 02:12 AM

    why would anyone give up pork and booze?

    And sex.
  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #14 - May 13, 2010, 02:15 AM

    For dudes at least, I don't think that's as frowned upon in practice.

    fuck you
  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #15 - May 13, 2010, 02:15 AM

    Quote
    I mean, unless you're marrying a Muslim why would anyone in a Western country searching for religion or spirituality choose Islam of all the possibilities out there?

     

    Western Europe is probably the most secular place on earth. Its not like America in which there is a high level of religiosity. Christianity has a certain humility, a humbleness, an apologetic sensibility in western Europe. It isn't really aggressive, in general. (Pentecostal Xtianity in Britain is different, lets put that to one side for now). New Age religions, yoga and buddhism have a certain appeal, but they are quite gentle and non assertive by their nature.

    Islam however has a very great certitude, self confidence, and unashamed sense of itself, and it prosletyses and evangelises and fills a religious vacuum. It also appeals to people for various reasons, one of which is a sense of alienation from society. It draws from a well of immigrants and second and third generations with a certain complex set of resentments and revivalist mission and sensibility. Islam comes with a whole set of ideas about the world, and about the corruption of non Muslim culture and society, that just draws certain people towards it. Its almost like a political identity as much as a spiritual path. There is a coming together of personal vulnerability and assertive theological-political identity in many different ways and contexts.


    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #16 - May 13, 2010, 02:17 AM

    Leave it to billy to give the explanation.

    I get it now, well at least when it comes to European converts.

    fuck you
  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #17 - May 13, 2010, 02:24 AM

    thank you for the question Q-man. well i can only speak for myself why i got into islam. like i mentioned in my story i felt something was missing from my life and religion took that place. and because of all the anger and hate that was building inside me, the religion of islam was well designed for me to fuel that anger. i could very well have become the next shoe bomber. islam also made everything "easier", you didnt have to think all the time and wonder about why are we here, and why this and why that. islam explained everything. but truth is life is not that easy, but it was a nice release to believe that it was for a while you know what i mean? that is until you wake up from it all and realise it was all b.s. .  hope that helps your understanding of this phenomenah.
  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #18 - May 13, 2010, 02:25 AM


    Converts come from many different angles. There are 'fall-in-love' Muslim converts, Sufi types, Cat Stevens 'I-almost-drowned', etc etc etc

    But this angle really is noticeable, and so, so typical in modern urban Europe amongst those who convert to Islam.

     


    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #19 - May 13, 2010, 02:26 AM

    Good story Morpheus, good to know where you are coming from  Smiley

    "The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself."
    ~Sir Richard Francis Burton

    "I think religion is just like smoking: Both invented by people, addictive, harmful, and kills!"
    ~RIBS
  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #20 - May 13, 2010, 02:27 AM

    thank you for the question Q-man. well i can only speak for myself why i got into islam. like i mentioned in my story i felt something was missing from my life and religion took that place. and because of all the anger and hate that was building inside me, the religion of islam was well designed for me to fuel that anger. i could very well have become the next shoe bomber. islam also made everything "easier", you didnt have to think all the time and wonder about why are we here, and why this and why that. islam explained everything. but truth is life is not that easy, but it was a nice release to believe that it was for a while you know what i mean? that is until you wake up from it all and realise it was all b.s. .  hope that helps your understanding of this phenomenah.


    Yeah, that meshes with what billy just said, so between your two explanations I do understand better. Thanks.

    fuck you
  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #21 - May 13, 2010, 02:28 AM

    There must be folks who get converted into Islam in America from a similar place - alot of dawah in prisons too amongst the most alienated and angry.


    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #22 - May 13, 2010, 02:30 AM

    There must be folks who get converted into Islam in America from a similar place - alot of dawah in prisons too amongst the most alienated and angry.




    You know what interests me? If you look at the list of famous american converts on wikipedia , they are all rappers and people who come from Jail.

    "The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself."
    ~Sir Richard Francis Burton

    "I think religion is just like smoking: Both invented by people, addictive, harmful, and kills!"
    ~RIBS
  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #23 - May 13, 2010, 02:35 AM

    we might be on to something here people  yes whats a dawah btw?
  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #24 - May 13, 2010, 02:36 AM

    There must be folks who get converted into Islam in America from a similar place - alot of dawah in prisons too amongst the most alienated and angry.


    Yeah, I suppose that's true. I think that's an angle for a lot of the Black Muslims in this country. Not just prison, but political radicalization in the Black community too. I know at least one dude who came to it from that angle, though he's pretty much a lapsed Muslim at this point. Although in Philly there are so many Black Muslims, and for so long, it's hard to know if they're converts or they were raised in it. And it's not necessarily a topic that comes up in normal conversation. If they did hard time and/or are particularly observant I'm more likely to assume they are converts.

    fuck you
  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #25 - May 13, 2010, 02:37 AM

    we might be on to something here people  yes whats a dawah btw?


    Christians would call it "spreading the Gospel"

    fuck you
  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #26 - May 13, 2010, 08:54 AM

    Great story Morpheus and thank you for sharing Smiley

    I used to read loads of revert stories back when I was a muslim. It fascinated me that people wanted to join our religion and strengthened my faith, like other people see it to. But to be honest, at times I worried if these testimonies were false. I also thought they never went in depth, they just got it like I got it but they could never specify why Islam was good. Maybe because of strong prohibitions against drugs and "loose" sex, or traditional ways of life (patriarchy) or even disillusion with Christianity.

    But do you remember what exactly made you go this makes sense? Was it the way Allah asserted himself? Split the world into believers and non-believers? The way the Quran comes across as the only truth is quite fantastic. Everything else is either false or has been altered. Islam is the only truth. I guess if you are looking for a life-altering experience Islam is the religion for you, since it has rules about everything. Like muslims love to say "Islam is a way of life".
  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #27 - May 13, 2010, 09:53 AM

    Thanks for sharing your story, Morpheus. It is very interesting.

    If you don't mind me asking, how do you feel about the society you live in, right now? Do you steel feel anger and contempt towards it, like you did before discovering Islam?

    He's no friend to the friendless
    And he's the mother of grief
    There's only sorrow for tomorrow
    Surely life is too brief
  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #28 - May 13, 2010, 12:23 PM

    Fascinating story, Morpheus.

    I have to say, I understand what you mean about the contempt you felt for contemporary European society and all its 'decadence.' I think when people see these problems they can look elsewhere for alternatives to the culture of self-gratification that's so endemic to Western civilisation. Many seem to find it in Islam, with its prohibition of all things fun.

    Converts come from many different angles. There are 'fall-in-love' Muslim converts, Sufi types, Cat Stevens 'I-almost-drowned', etc etc etc

    But this angle really is noticeable, and so, so typical in modern urban Europe amongst those who convert to Islam.


    A lot of people seem to find religion when they have near-death experiences. Hamza Yusuf nearly died in a car crash.

  • Re: Heres my story
     Reply #29 - May 13, 2010, 12:36 PM



    A lot of people seem to find religion when they have near-death experiences. Hamza Yusuf nearly died in a car crash.




    I wonder if they really thought about religion before their near-death experience.
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