Hello all
OP - December 26, 2012, 03:06 PM
Just want to share with you how my life has changed. I think many ex Muslims can relate to this. I am Moroccan BTW.
This is basically how it went.
I was born and raised a Muslim. I did Ramadan, feared God, prayed and believed in the prophets, angels and the devil. I believed in heaven and hell and the day of judgement. To me this was the meaning of life. God was testing us in this life, a short one compared to eternity in the afterlife as I kept reminding myself. We would all be judged in the afterlife and those who believed would gain entrance into paradise, those who didn’t would go to hell. I would not question our religion, that was wrong, a sin. I was ignorant of other beliefs and this made my faith stronger, the little I knew about other beliefs the better for I could focus more on my own religion and the little I knew about other religions was a clearly a deception, a work of the devil. Every argument that accorded with my religion I approved of and further strengthened my faith, and any judgements that proved other religions wrong were convincing and apparent. I had no doubt I was on the right path and everything made sense. I was happy; my mind was in peace, I was proud, I felt safe and protected.
In my mind I would associate everyday events with my superstitious beliefs and I would construct coherent interpretations of these events based on my biased beliefs. Nothing was random to me, everything happened for a reason, there was an order and things followed a set system of choice between good and evil - God or Satan. It was up to us, we had to choose between God’s words or follow the Devil. Our destiny is in our hands.
According to my beliefs at the time, any mishap, bad luck or disaster was our own fault, a punishment from God, and any good was a reward for the devotion to God. To me there was a logical coherent reason behind everything and it all made perfect sense. Nothing was random to me, there was no such thing as chance or probability. I always had a biased interpretation of outcomes of events, good or bad, and I believed them to be signs and proof of the existence of God. I was so deluded I would come up with explanations for why my prayers where not answered, and when they did come to pass I would attribute it to God, not to chance or probability.
I honestly believed that I would hold these beliefs until death. I thought I would never change. I thought that the day I stop being a Muslim I would also stop being a human being and that would be the end of my life. I felt sad, depressed and terrified by the thought of losing my religion, my purpose of life. My religion was so strongly embedded in me, any decision I made had to comply with my religion. I was a slave,I had no freedom, but I felt safe and protected. The thought of being alone, no God looking over me, no direction, no order, and no reason behind everything scared me. There had to be someone looking after us. I held onto my religion like a baby holds onto her mother and rejects everyone else. I sucked on the tity of religion and it felt good, warm and satisfying. I felt that I needed to follow the rules; I needed them to guide me through life.
This went without saying, it was common sense. I guess it is human nature, we need affiliation, and we need order, meanings, direction and a goal to keep us going. But most importantly we need to feel that we belong to a group. My thoughts and actions were not actually my own, they where part of a collective way of thinking and acting, what they thought and did I thought and did too. It was our timeless habits and beliefs that controlled us. We lived in a familiar world which everyone could and should recognize. The problem with this is that it was common sense and so it was untouchable and invisible to us insiders. Thankfully I stepped outside of the box and could see things from the point of view of the outsiders. I became aware of the components of this tangle of beliefs, practices, judgements, emotions, etc that made up the system of Islam I was in. I could see how absurd and ridiculous it was to be part of this group and share the same thoughts, beliefs and life with them. I stopped praying and following the religious traditions, I cleared my mind off all the superstitions and false beliefs I accumulated during my life and went to live the free life.
I will be honest with you, I still had the dim hope that God did exist, but totally disregarded and avoided religion. I demanded answers to God, if he existed, no answers I got. The answer was clear to me then, there was no God.
I was outside of the box, free at last from the chains of religion. Gradually and for the first time in my life I started to experience real freedom, the liberty to think without limits was the first stage of my freedom. Since I was liberated and out of the little box I wanted my family and friends to observe their common sense world from a different point of view. I wanted them so contemplate life from a different perspective; I wanted to show them the absurdity and the reality of their system. They were secured very tightly to their chains and would resist any kind of help. They were too comfortable in their current state and too terrified to leave their little box – as I learnt from questioning and interrogating a few of them. These discussions and dialogues where not welcome in my circle of family and friends. They would say that I had weak faith and that the devil was taking me off the right path, the devil was going to take me to hell. I was being accused of having evil ideas because I was showing them the fallacies and faults of their system. Ad hominem attacks are what I mostly got, but from some of their discourse I could understand that they had this fear of being alone in the world with no God, no affiliation to a group with common goals in life. I too felt like that in the beginning. I was in their same situation before I stepped out of the box. I felt that they no longer trusted me; they feared that I would corrupt them with my blasphemy. When I began to discuss these issues with my Muslim friends they started to despise me and avoid me. My family just ignores me and avoids these discussions due to, as I tell them: luck of faith and fear of losing their religion.
At least I was free; I was out of the box. I could live life without any worries or concerns. I could eat with my left hand, walk in through the door with my right or left foot, I didn't have to announce the name of God before eating or drinking - at last, I could do everything for me.
Now, the more I learn about our nature, our origins and our ancestors the more certain I am that religion is not a creation of God. Religions have existed since our first civilisations, it is a human creation used to achieve certain goals. I also learnt that I am not free as I thought I was. I have been programmed to be and moulded into what I am since I was a single cell. My mind, my personality, my character are determined by my genes, personal experiences and conditioned by the environment I was brought up in. Who I am depends on my genes and the surrounding influences. With this I don’t mean that our lives are totally out of our control; we can mould or lives into whatever we choose. I think it is necessary to understand that our subconscious mind is where our experiences, ideas and our instincts are catalogued and this is what constitutes our common sense. It is our subconscious mind that makes decisions and choices based on the information in the subconscious catalogue. If it is a Muslim, or any other religious catalogue everything that comes from it will be common sense and will go without saying. I still ask myself what we are here for and the answer I give myself is that we are biological creatures carrying genes from millions of years ago and our purpose in life is to pass them onto the next carrier.
Thanks for reading.
Topic: Hello all