Hello everyone, I've been kind of a lurker and I've been meaning to take a more active role. You might be able to tell already but my name is Qasim, I'm currently 16 and I guess I've been a Muslim my whole life. This post was going to be really long but I guess I can save it for another time
I live in a town which is the namesake of a certain sport, popular in six nations
and grew up with a strict religious upbringing. I was the golden child, youngest of three, as I (thought I) knew the most about the Quran, hadith and the sirah. My parents decided to be more strict with me than my siblings as they turned out rather rebellious. I always had a strong interest in science and felt strongly that Science was the best thing to happen to mankind (after Islam) and I tried promote good scientific awareness at school and at home. I also totally believed science and Islam was the same. For a long period of my life I was extremely indoctrinated by mosques, madrassahs and lectures (another complete post
) somehow I was both a moderate and fundamentalist and became a Grade A apologist.
I always had doubts about Islam for as long as I can remember but the fear of hell was too great for me to pursue them, many times did I read something online or learned something at school that contradicted my faith but I just tried to ignore it and thought there must be some sort of context. I would watch videos debunking people such as VenomFangX and everyone else and loads o episodes of The Atheist Experience. In all the videos I always agreed with the atheist but still didn't scrutinize my own beliefs. Then finally through a trail of videos and links stemming from 'Richard Dawkins reads his hate mail' (so I could laugh at him) I ended up unable to deny evolution and other scientific discrepancies. However it wasn't just science that made me stop believing but also the historical and moral arguments that show how artificial and horrible Islam is. For about a week I was a Quran-aloner then I realised that was crap too and had my first bacon cheeseburger on my 16th birthday.
So now I am an atheist, one of the best decisions I've ever made. It feels like I was one all along but it's only been a few months. I look forward to hearing more from you all.
P.S Thank you CEMB for your videos on YouTube that helped me out and I am especially grateful and thankful to TheRationalizer, TheIslamMiracle and others for all of your videos that helped me escape this crappy religion. Lol this post was still longer than I expected
Topic: Hello World, Ex-muslim from England