Deconverting From Radical Islam
OP - March 09, 2012, 10:53 PM
I realised just recently that I've never really told my de-conversion story before so I figured I'd use this thread to do just that, it's a long story and it'll probably take a few posts to finish, but I feel I have to do this. I need to get all of this out of my system so I can finally make my mind up what to do with my life. I've tried writing this to myself before, but it doesn't mean anything for me to read it. I've had to convince myself of their evil, but as I was brought up in that wickedness it doesn't mean anything to me to say that they are wicked. So, while trying not to seem too much like an attention whore. I need attention.
With no further ado, I'll begin.
My father Is a psychopath. That is said with as little emotional bias as possible, meaning, this conclusion is not reached due to any emotional contentions within myself. My father is literally insane. No matter how much you may empathise with me saying this, or perhaps find it irksome, I can not elucidate in words exactly how crazy crazy can be. You have to hear my experiences to understand.
I don't particularly know if converting to Islam was a turning point in my father's life, as I was only just conceived. However, after reading an article which suggested that psychopaths could be particularly adept businessmen, I question what ill thoughts or deeds plagued his mind before conversion. I recall, quite vividly, a story he shared once, speaking concerning an individual he clearly despised. My father lent a large sum of money to this person, yet upon the date the debt was to be cleared, the debtor would not oblige. My father, in the situation he was, did what any respectful business owner would; he summoned a band of undesirables from his dark past, then kidnapped and beat the man to horrible proportions. After the ordeal, he set the man free and the following day he received the entire sum of money he was due. One may imagine this story cast as a film noir depicting the protagonist's emotionally justified violence. Scenes such as those may be cathartic when perceived by people in similar circumstances, but in the real world, with people that bleed and spit real blood, it requires an unstable, broken mind to undertake this.
I'm not sure if my father was overtly Muslim when I was born, although, it seems apparent that he was, as I was named Adham Khalil Ibrahim, but I don't have memory of seeing anything even remotely Islamic in the early years of my life. We celebrated birthdays, my mother didn't wear hijab and we visited our non-Muslim family quite often. I believe the turning point came when my father lost his wealth. I think there was some sort of recession in the 80s, he lost a lot of money in real estate and his insurance company fell to pieces. We moved from living in a mansion in North London to a small mouse infested house in Tooting. We called it "The Mice House".
Quite a number of things happened during my life at this age (3-4). I was was taught a lot about Islam around then, but I was also physically abused. You know that stereotype where the atheist is only atheistic because of bad experiences they had that made them think bad of god? Well, I fit that that cliché like an tailor made glove.
I gained a considerable amount of interest in martial arts while we were in the Mice House but I wouldn't be allowed to take part until I was 4 or 5. As I waited, I'd enviously watch my father and brother Khalil come home and reminisce about the classes.
My father had a considerably large collection of martial arts movies, around 2000 films, I used to watch them with my brothers a lot and still remember many of the titles. They were incredibly gory and at some parts disturbing, but I was quickly desensitized to it by my father who said "You need to see these things, you'll see it in real life someday". That statement, by the way, is at the bottom of the list of crazy things he's said to me. To clue you in on where this is headed, keep in mind he didn't mean that I might see those things in a medical setting.
It was around this time that my father met a radical militant Islamist that taught interesting things. The most curious of all being that taking the wealth and lives of non-muslims was permissible, necessary even. This enthused my father, he was fine with the idea of the lives of the majority of people meaning nothing. Once, when the Islamist asked his followers whether they had what it took to kill someone, no one answered positively but my father. Most said they couldn't, one particular individual with serious anger management issues said he was unsure, but my father, being the psychopath that he is, was sure he could and, trust me, he would; he's tried.
That aside, you can probably guess how bizarre it would be being brought up by a psycho that had no problem with killing people. Bizarre is a little of an understatement, but, alas, the human mind is extremely malleable, I had no idea that the ideals I was given were a major aberration from general human morality.
"What do you want to be when you grow up?" this was a question our father had programmed in us a reply, which was, "Be a soldier for Allah" or "Kill the Infidels", any other reply would be met with disappointment or a lecture. I was taught that the Kafirs (Infidels) were plotting our imminent destruction, that they would not change, they would not listen to reason, they had to be killed and that we had to rule them through fear. I was told of the life of Muhammed and how there was a lesson to learn in it. Muhammed preached peacefully for 10 years to little effect, but when he waged a holy Jihad for 10 years, everyone fell into submission. You see, as my father put it, Kafirs don't listen to peace and discussion, as a matter of fact, whist Muhammed preached for those 10 years he was actually attacked and insulted whilst his followers were tortured. This was proof that Kafirs were incapable of reason.
To make matters worse, the same thing was happening in our time. It seemed, to us, Muslims were being killed by non-Muslims, just for their faith. Particularly in Bosnia at the time. I remember being shown, at a young age, videos of Muslims tortured maimed or dead; real live shots of Bosnia at its worst. It was far worse than the gory martial arts movies. It disturbed me to no end. I still have grotesque flashes of it in my mind while writing this. My father would make us watch them so we didn't feel any pity for the enemy after seeing what they were capable of doing. In the small indoctrinated world I lived, Muslims were hated by everyone and the only way to stop ourselves from being put into the same situation would be to fight back ruthlessly, showing no mercy to anyone and having the capacity to kill on command. At that time, I knew it was my destiny to follow this path. To save Muslims from their plight.
Of course, it was bullshit. Muslims were targeted just as much as anyone else was, if you focus on any large group of people you'll see how another opposing faction of people maimed and killed them for a time, just for being who or what they were. Inside individual groups we are pretty good at looking at people like us and empathising with their problems more than others, deeming other group's problems as insignificant. In the end humans kill humans, it's one of those human problems we're trying to deal with. The answer to humans killing humans isn't humans killing humans. Muslims too have been contributing to this human problem for centuries, but of course that's not how I saw it back then.
In the small world I lived in, I heard a lot of justifications for Muslim's own ill deeds and even explanations for the lack of Muslim persecution in the UK (where I grew up and lived). As it was put, Muslims had to kill non-Muslims to make them afraid enough not to kill us back. It was demonstrated, to me, that throughout history whenever Muslims stopped prioritising "the Jihad" they were destroyed by the non-Muslims. Now, of-course, that's not exactly what happened in times afore; Muslims lost plenty battles whilst they were jihadding and while they were not (thats usually explained away as "They weren't good Muslims"), but specific events like the fall of Baghdad and the plundering of Andalus (Spain) by the "Kafirs" were largely considered, by radical Muslims, punishment from Allah for not jihadding and therefore the reason why we were supposed to constantly kill people, mostly because they'd kill us, but also, because Allah will make them kill us if we didn't.
As for the apparent tolerance and kindness of the British government and people, "it's a trap" apparently. General Akbar would be quite amused.
Many religious people (and I see this in many religions, not just Islam) love to play on the idea that people without their beliefs hate them for their virtuous faith, which serves only as an excuse to hate other people because of theirs or, in my particular case, kill for it. There are various degrees that this can affect someone, but despite seeming like a scary ideal that makes the world an unhappy place (for the believer), it can be an extremely comforting ideal to believe. I think it's because it replaces an uncertain feeling of confused empathy for a feeling of justified loathsomeness. You see, the Abrahamic religions teach the idea that their just and loving god will torture people endlessly for not believing in him, which leaves their followers in a predicament where they have to reconcile how this ever-so merciful god will torture the many good people in this world that aren't really doing any wrong, or even those that go out of their way to help people, endlessly. For many like my father, it's easy to conclude that the only good a person can do are deeds done for his own god and all other seemingly good deeds mean nothing (I think the Quran actually says something along these lines too), but for me, and many others, the predicament is a little harder to deal with. Initially I assumed that Islam was an obvious truth to everyone and the people that didn't follow it were choosing not too because they didn't like the idea of praying, fasting or following "good" morals. I believed this in light of my own doubts about Islam. I explained away my own doubts, to myself, with "I might doubt Islam, but I'm still a Muslim, so it must be obvious to me somehow". That being said, there's a lot of ways that people deal with the eternal merciful torture paradox. I later met a Christian that dealt with it in a completely different way.
"We're all sinners, we all deserve to go to hell, we Christians just unfairly have a way out of it," but all of them seem to be based on a completely ridiculous system of morality. Again, another debate for another time.
So there I was being brought up in this morally bankrupt household by a maniac who had no value for human life. I think, if it were not for my mother I would have been quite the psychopath myself right now. My mother was a very lovely person. She didn't grow up in the greatest household herself, but she wanted to give us much more than she had. It's not a huge surprise she liked my dad, even that she loves him. My father is superficially charming (a symptom of psychopathy). I assure you reader, if you were to meet my father tomorrow, without knowing who he was by my words, you would think that he was the nicest bloke you'd ever met. People love my dad, he's awesome most of the time, but when you get to know him - when you really really get to know him - he changes. Another factor that played on my mother's heart was that he was also very sexually promiscuous. As a matter of fact, I just happen to have 2 siblings born in exactly the same year as me (from two different mothers), whilst I love them very much, I would never want to change the fact that they were born, I hate how my father hurt my mother in doing so. I can wholly understand that a man (or woman) makes his (or her) mistakes from time to time, that's perfectly understandable and, of course, that my mother chose to stay with him afterwards, that's her privilege, but I've never seen even an iota of remorse in his face, voice or eyes when he would talk about it. As a matter of fact, he seemed quite proud.
My mother derived a lot of purpose from my father, she had a very "Western" life-style growing up, but she also felt very neglected. She never felt as if anyone truly cared for her before she met my father, she derived a lot of comfort and security from him. She endured her fair share of bad experiences in the past, these were things she had hardly told anyone, but talking to him about it she'd really appreciate how he'd listen and comfort her. She interpreted a lot of his actions to be a result of love. I can't personally say what my father feels most of the time, I don't quite understand his mind, but I do believe he loves my mother. He's always described her as his only friend. She's the only person that stuck with him his entire life. Everyone else dwindled and disappeared, but despite his madness, despite his violence and radically Islamic disposition, she willingly stood by him. I've never once suspected that she wanted to leave.
Of course, all that is just my opinion, which was for a great many years horribly biased in favour of him. Though my words so far may have cast him in villainy, my father isn't the kind of cartoonish villain you may currently perceive him as. He was also a very loving and generous person. He'd happily give away his money and earnings to help a friend or family member, he'd obsess over helping Muslims, providing them their basic needs, he'd tell us often that he loved and cared for us all and never actually seemed distanced from us. I could easily share a joke and laugh with my father about nearly any subject, for the most part he was a very normal loving person. That being said he had a violent temper and taught us that non-Muslims were, all but, a scourge that should wiped from the face of the earth.
"We can't kill all of them, I suppose. So some of them have to be slaves and pay the Jizya [tax]." that quote is pretty high up on my list of crazy things my father has said to me. It is now very apparent to me that a person can be loving and generous whilst being absolutely grotesque in nature. To further my point (and give more credence to Godwin's law), it is said that Hitler also had a nice personality. The people that lived with him found him quite pleasant. This, to me, seems perfectly consistent. In real life, with real people, real feelings and real emotion, we don't need cloaks, fangs or any stereotypically evil behaviour to do or think horrible things. We just need one of them deluded human minds. A lovely religion can help too.
I question, sometimes, whether it was religion, particularly Islam, that made my father the way he was. In many cases it was, but I do have my doubts that religion can affect a person's mind to make them something they aren't. Personally, I feel Islam gave my father an outlet; somewhere to direct his broken mind. Islam itself seems, to me, more or less harmless in the mind of the usual person. It's a religion alike many others, a system of old age laws that people take far too seriously, but the usual human being gets their morality from their culture, the society they grow in, not from the books they read later in life. People actually tend to interpret the books to fit in with the morals they already adhere to.
"Do you think the Quran is just a comic book?" My father was constantly concerned about how Muslims ignored the violent rulings of the Quran, especially us. Be that as it may, time moved on and my father was back in business again, as I said, he was quite an adept businessman. I can't quite recall if this all happened before or after we moved to the council flats in Wandsworth, my memories are fuzzy around this area, but it was around this time my father began alternating between spending 2 nights at my mom's house and 2 nights at his other wife's. At some point, my mother agreed that he could marry a second wife. He did. I remember calling her my aunt. She was an interesting person. During their marriage she gave birth to another of my brothers, soon afterwards, my mother gave birth to what I thought was my first sister, (it wasn't the first). This was all while we were at the mice house.
My sister was different. Different in the sense that my father favoured her a bit and allowed her to do many things we weren't allowed, although we never envied her, at least I didn't. It was a curious experience, which led me to later conclude that girls were almost a completely different species to boys. My sister's behaviour was vastly different to ours, which was mostly a product of different treatment. She wasn't as abused as we were, not yet anyhow, so she'd throw a lot of tantrums to get what it was she wanted, I simply paid her little attention, but it drove everyone else crazy. If we boys were to do that, we'd have been beaten raw for sure.
A deal of interesting things happened at the place in Wandsworth, my memories of that place are much clearer than anything before it. To start off what was to, no doubt, be a fantastic lodging, the place had no carpet. The lack of carpet meant that we constantly walked on flat wooden boards, which, somehow, caused us to constantly have splinters pierce the soles of our feet. I affectionately remember my mom spending lots of time pulling them out as we cried and complained.
Living with an abusive father that wasn't always around appealed more, to me, than one that was. My dad worked a lot. He was quite the workaholic. He also had two wives, so every now and then he wouldn't be around at all. Those were my times of peace. I feared my father, as did my brothers. I'm not quite sure about my sister. Just hearing his massive collection of keys jingling at the key hole would send electric fear through my body. It was hard to avoid being beaten by him, nearly anything could set him off. Was the house tidy? Did I use the vacuum and miss some spots? Am I praying on time? Did I run to him immediately when he called my name? Did I sit down before he did? Did I forget to give drinks to his friends? Were my manners perfect around them? the list goes on and on.
Once my brother Bilal said to me.
"I don't like dad" hearing him say it, I empathised, but I didn't think it was right for him to see things in that way so I replied.
"Why?"
"He's a monster" I wasn't quite sure what to say to those words. To Bilal, everything was a monster. He used to shout randomly in the dark sometimes, saying, "SHUTUP" to what he said were the "monsters". This led my parents to believe he was seeing Jinns (Demons). He'd experience a lot of what I believe were hallucinations, once it was revealed to him that what he thought was a "hedgehog jinn" was actually just a pair of pants (a very good pair if I may add). He was just 4 years old at the time.
"Dad's not a monster" I said, trying to comfort my disillusioned brother, "He only beats us because he wants us to be good Muslims and go to Jenna (Heaven)" . I can't remember exactly what I said to Bilal after that, but it seemed to convince him of my position. I had become quite the skilled liar.
It was around then I began to question everything. When I say "everything" I don't mean my religious beliefs, I mean "everything". I was a bit of a solipsist. I wasn't sure how I could be sure anything existed except myself. I kept imagining that it was very possible that I was surrounded by some kind of circular television that made it seem like other people existed, but they didn't. I used to disprove that to myself by touching them, I reasoned that touching them would demonstrate that they weren't just something on a television in front of me, but when I wasn't touching them I was never completely sure if they were there or if the memory I had of feeling them up close was implanted into me and didn't actually happen.
To address this logically, one could debate whether even feelings are subject to being, somehow, an illusion, but I was only about 6-7 at the time, so bear with me.
I would also, around that time, dream up ideas of grand schemes being plotted against me. I thought that perhaps everyone around me were not my family; my parents not mine; my siblings just actors and I'd look for clues to see if these things were true, like if they were smiling sly-fully at me from behind or laughing about it when I wasn't in the room. I think I thought these things because of a certain philosophy of Islam my father taught. Taqqiyah, but it may also be because my dad is paranoid schizophrenic. Perhaps I am too.
Along with the belief that we were, in the future, supposed to kill Kafirs (specific references to Surah Taubah Verse 5 were made, seriously, read that shit). We were also instructed to never disclose our identity as Muslims, instead we were made to identify as Christian. We were given a variety of rules around this time. They were vaguely repetitive and demanding. My father called them the "7 Golden Rules". I don't really remember them, but the gist was "Allah is great and listen to your dad". He'd made us repeat the 7 on command from time to time, to ensure that we had remembered them (I have purposely deleted them, and a lot of other stuff, from memory). We were also trained vigorously, both mentally and physically. Every now and then my father would order us to run several miles around a park in Clapham. We did as we were told. We were also compelled to attend his martial arts classes, I've been practising since I was 3. He also gave us intricate tuition on what to say and in specific circumstances like police interrogation or being in the presence of his non-Muslim associates. We were never allowed to accept gifts or food from non-Muslims and if Muslims gave us food we had to report to our father before we were allowed to accept. We weren't allowed to make friends outside, we were rarely allowed out of the house (unless it was to fight someone) and we wouldn't be allowed to go to school, until my mother persuaded him otherwise, which was on and off. I attended year 4, year 6,7,8 and 9, but that was all.
This all happened because around then my father started a cult. Of course, I didn't think of it as a cult then, it wasn't until I described my father to a scientist friend who immediately said "Ah, a cultist.", that I would come to see it that way. It bothers me that I didn't realise this even after I deconverted and several months had passed. I still hadn't completely digested everything that happened to us.
The people in the cult had it pretty bad too. It seems stupid that they'd join the cult in the first place, but my father is extremely good at convincing people of things. By using various hadith and verses in the Quran he made them believe that they were commanded by Allah to follow a group or a leader of some kind and it later turned out that surprisingly the leader would be him. He told them that the punishment for leaving the group or not joining was eternal hell-fire, they believed it. As a result they pretty much sold their souls to him. Their morality, money, time and integrity were all sacrificed for the hopes of saving themselves from a place worse than death. He had them committing every manner of crime from fraud to near murder all by his command.
I'm not quite sure how far I should go in explaining the extent to which the cult strayed from anything any system of ethics imaginable, but here's one example. A certain member of the group didn't particularly enjoy fighting, so my father accused him of cowardice and ordered 2 other members to take him around London at night where he'd have to batter the shit out of random people until he began enjoying it. Soon, that became the remedy for dissidence within the group.
Eventually the group crumbled as my father tried to take it in a new direction and convinced them all to move to the middle east, or as he would put it "The Holy Land", telling them it was a "Hijra", which he made out to be the duty of every Muslim. It wasn't financially sustainable and many of the members dwindled and returned to England, leaving my father, and several failed businesses, to continue alone.
One of the ex-cult members spoke to me recently. A guy that was probably the smartest of the lot. A normal Muslim whose friends pulled him into the cult after a few sessions at one of my father's Islamic study circles. He constantly opposed my father and kept trying to convince his friends that leaving the group would not send them to hell. After a long discussion about what my father did to them he said:
"What did he want from us? When someone is evil, you can usually figure out what they want and just give it to them so they leave you alone, but I can't figure out what he wanted from us!" He also told me few things my father did to them that even I wasn't aware of.
Around that time, I was pretty much a drone. With no education, nor friends and having the things we watched or read controlled by my father, I didn't know any better. Still though, I had serious doubts about Islam, but there were plenty of ways my thoughts were limited. I was taught from a young age that thinking Allah has actual hands or thinking of his body was a sin that took you out of Islam and would send you to hell forever. So because of that and similar things I avoided thinking too much about Allah or questioning things and because the Quran promotes the fear of Allah and having absolute certainty, I thought this was good. It was however, just a way to moderate my thoughts. A very effective one. Nevertheless, I loved to wax philosophical about just about anything and I soon begun questioning things that weren't completely connected to my faith in god.
Once, a girl asked my father "How do we know that Islam is the truth?" and his answer satisfied her, but I found it lacking. I honestly can't even remember what he said, but I remember feeling like it wasn't a good answer. I tried to ignore it, thinking it wasn't an important question, as I still hadn't quite figured how I knew other people existed yet, but it nagged me from time to time, especially when I was reading the Quran.
I remember being told that the Quran was supposed to increase your faith when you read it, but it had the opposite effect on me. I had been reading it since I was 5-6, but as I got older I stopped seeing any wisdom in anything it had to say about nearly any subject. It seemed manipulative, like someone was trying to get me to think something in order to control me. It sounded like my father wrote it.
My father is really good at manipulating people. It's been said that he's made someone take their shoe off and sold it to them. Spending years watching him get people to do things and laugh about it with other friends allowed me to see through his deceptions and controlling behaviour. When he'd try to do the same to me I'd see right through it, but I'd still obey, because despite him being the crazy person he was; despite his evil, I loved him. Perhaps that's how it works...
Though, being able to see through manipulation gave me the eyes I needed to see through the Quran. Eventually it got to a point where reading the Quran was a very uncomfortable experience. Any verse could set off my critical thinking, even something innocuous sounding like:
2:13 "When it is said to them: "Believe as the others believe:" They say: "Shall we believe as the fools believe?" Nay, of a surety they are the fools, but they do not know."
Why was it said to them to believe as the others believe? You shouldn't believe something because other people believe it. Although the Quran wasn't using this to prove itself, it bothered me that the god of this universe would quote someone that told people do something because other people were doing it, but then I thought that perhaps it was just telling them to believe like those other people, not because those other people believed, but then it becomes an empty request with absolutely no appeal to obey it. Thoughts like these would spiral through my mind at the tiniest suggestion, so I started looking through the Quran for a reason to believe it, but for a book that talks a lot about proofs, it gives absolutely no reason to trust it. It's extremely assertive and confident in what it says, but provides absolutely no justifications for it. Which was just like my father.
What's more, I found the story of Muhammed's life to be something I couldn't particularly admire. No matter how much I tried, I couldn't like the dude. When I was young, the fact that he had sex with a 9 year old didn't bother me, but slowly as I got older it started seeming more and more abhorrent. What bothered me most was how often he'd promise heaven to people that did what he needed. From a religious point of view, there was a god that was telling some extremely convenient things, but if there was no god telling him these things, then he would be one of the most evil people imaginable. Willing to send people to their deaths with false hopes, purely because he wanted power. I believed the former, but the fact that the latter was even a possibility bothered me from time to time. Now I think Muhammed, if he existed, probably was honest about what he thought he saw, at least sometimes, but this was not the way I saw it at the time.
Throughout my life I've been exposed to all manner of people that have had supernatural experiences. In the cult, there was a common thing people would see. If someone was a good person, they'd say they could see a light in their face. This light (Noor) was one of the indicators of whether someone was a good Muslim, whilst a darkness would show in the face of the most wicked Kafirs. I've heard a multitude of people say "This person had so much noor in their faces" or "That person's face is really dark" (lol writing that sounds kinda racist). I've also had people tell me of certain feeling they get during prayer or a feeling they get at a Islamic gathering, a lightness or a inner relief. I can say for sure, spending 22 years as a Muslim, I never saw or felt any of those things once and that they made up a good percentage of the awkward lies I've told.
I was also possessed twice. The first time, I was young (about 6-7) and stupid. I thought it'd be funny to pretend to be possessed... Everyone believed it and I got a lot of attention, so I kept it up, partly because it'd be awkward and embarrassing to suddenly admit I was lying, but also because I knew so many people that were having supernatural experiences and I couldn't make sense of why I wasn't. Whilst it begun as a lie, eventually I convinced myself that some of my own thoughts were the voices of demons, telling myself that was what everyone else was doing.
The second time I was possessed was a little more interesting. I was about 15 when we had an exorcist visit us for a "check up". The moment I heard this, I became afraid. I thought I may be possessed. Our father, who is a little paranoid schizophrenic, was constantly warning us that Jinns (Demons) were trying to destroy the family and that they'd do it by possessing one of us and making us evil or something along those lines. So he gave us some incantations to read every morning that'd protect us from the deadly deadly Jinns. We had to say something like "There is no god but Allah and he has lots of power, he is a sovereign and a king to him be praise and he is over everything in the world" in Arabic 100 times every morning. After spending a few minutes saying that 20 times, you get tired and stop, despite the fact that my father promised excuciating punishments if we didn't do them.
So, if my dad was correct about Jinns trying to destroy the family, he wasn't, I was probably already possessed. I thought about that for a while. "Am I possessed? How could I even know? I'm about to find out, but if I am then my dad will know I didn't do the incantations and punish me". I became really afraid of the exorcist at that point and when he started his test I began visibly shaking. He said that meant I was posssessed. That kinda sucked, because then he basically began trying to torture the demon so it would leave me and in order to harm the demon, they had to hurt me. Of course, I pretended to be possessed, who wouldn't in that situation?
I sort of beat myself up sometimes for not seeing it all for the hoax that it is despite my doubts. I always doubted, but I never once thought that there may be no god. Probably because it was drilled into me from a young age to hate kafirs and I just couldn't see myself as one of them, but my actual deconversion process began when I found the internet and spoke to my first atheist.
I used to be powerful, then I started
blogging.
Topic: Deconverting From Radical Islam