Whats up fellow murtads?
Originally came across this forum many months ago, I'd say late 2011 or early 2012. Back then I was still a Muslim with many doubts trying to hold onto my faith and viewing the forum never helped
I guess I kept coming back here as a lurker because I was curious to know what Ex-muslims were like and why they left Islam. So I finally decided to join up a few days ago after I left Islam in December 2012.
I'm a 19 year old guy from the UK, brought up in a religious British Pakistani Sunni Muslim family (my family were never as religious back in the 20th century). My mum enrolled me in Madrassah at the age of 5 where I went every weekday, 2 hours a day for about 9 years. Most of my friends (apart from one) happen to be Muslims, many of them quite religious - jubba, kufi, beard and all that, with the religious garb especially apparent on Fridays. I've been seeing my friends less and less...actually I've hardly seen them in the past 5 months. It was only a few weeks ago when I met a good Muslimah friend of mine who is another extremely devout girl, and a few days ago when I met two of my closest friends whom I grew up with since a toddler, also fairly religious muslims although not fully practicing (as in not praying all their salaah, both smoke weed occasionally etc). While in their company I had this urge to tell them about my beliefs and why I couldn't believe in Islam anymore, but I couldn't because I knew the reaction wouldn't be pleasant and the news would spread like wildfire.
As a young kid I was always trying to strive to become a better muslim, trying to please Allah courtesy of my upbringing and brainwashing in the madrassah. Especially in my early teens where I started praying 5 times a day and started planning to join hifz classes. This phase lasted for a few years. At the age of 16 I started researching Islam for myself and I loved watching videos on muslim converts. Eventually I stumbled across scientific/mathematical "miracles" in the Quran which I had never heard of before and I was blown away. At the time I finally realised what Allah meant when he said "I give signs to mankind, yet the disbelievers will still not believe" (something similar to that) , and thought to myself, those who read these "miracles" and still don't believe are incredibly arrogant/under the influence of shaitaan, or both - especially Atheists who worship science (which was just a backwards jab towards them) and deserve their punishment since no signs could possibly be more clearer than these. Obviously it was just Islamic propaganda by Youtube Dawah Merchants which managed to deceive me and many others alike. After that I felt even more guilty for missing Fajr Salaah, and committing sins such as maturbation, listening to music etc.
Before that the concept of Atheism was alien to me until I was 15 when I found out that people who didn't believe in religion/god actually existed! I couldn't get my head around this but understood after a while why people may have such doubts but disagreed anyway as the universe couldn't
possibly have existed without a creator. I tried to refute Atheists but ended up hating them instead since their arguments were so hard to refute
However, despite all this I knew of the stories of Aisha, Saffiyah, Banu Quraiza, Sexual slavery, and Shariah punishments such as capital punishments for apostasy. I was always troubled by this dark side of Islam and tried to rationalise it, in the end I accepted the apologist arguments though I tended to avoid these topics anyway because they always left a bad taste in my mouth and deep down, I probably knew that no amount of sugarcoating would change the respective ahadith which were clear and precise. Whenever these topics were brought up, I would either try to change the topic or end up doing something else
Apart from the crazy unethical ahadith, I loved reading the ahadith showing the merciful nature of Muhammad and his companions. I also loved reading ahadith pointing to the end of times, Dajjal, Gog and Magog, Isa's comeback, and his sidekick Al-Mahdi. But of course, the more ahadith I read, the more troubling ahadith I came across and this affected my faith big time. I didn't like the bad side and wasn't willing to accept the way certain ahadith pointed towards Muhammad acting like some sort of twisted psychopath so I decided any ahadith that contradicted the Quran should be discarded but after a while I knew that we couldn't pick and choose which Sahih ahadith to follow so I became a Quran Only muslim at 17. I considered Quran Only Islam the true form of Islam and Sunni/Shia Islam as corrupted the same way the Jews corrupted Judaism. But at this point I was a far more liberal person and demanded logical reasons instead of faith. Things such as punishing people in hell seemed barbaric to me. I also wanted to know why Allah forbade pork when the meat is perfectly ok to eat when cooked. This was just the tip of the iceberg and I twisted the Quran to mean all sorts of things to the point where I considered hell a metaphor for something else, pre-martial sex as fine, marrying an Atheist not only ok but preferable (since they weren't bound by dogmatic beliefs) and a whole load of other crap. I still identified as a Muslim...an agnostic muslim. Obviously I didn't go around literally telling people I was an "Agnostic Muslim". Anyways, in late 2012, the idea of God and an afterlife was too hard for me to believe in without some form of evidence. So I ditched the leap of faith that required me to identify as an agnostic muslim, and as of December 2012 I completely left Islam and am now an atheist.
As for my family, my mum is a no-bullshitting devout muslimah although she doesn't know much about Islam besides the basics. Just mentioning relationships and sex is extremely taboo. Music is avoided. Whenever a song comes on TV, my mum rushes to change the channel and I can't help rolling my eyes and face-palming at the same time. She prays all her salaah as do my grandparents. And my aunty who wears the niqab and has 4 kids, 3 of them young girls who all wear hijab, the youngest being 3 years old. Not only that she plans on getting her daughters married off to religious orthodox muslim men when they hit late teens!
Yeah, my family has its fair share of nut-cases, my mum and aunty being the worst offenders. I also have 3 younger sisters who I really feel like helping and somehow getting to know what the life is like outside and without religion as they've had an extremely sheltered upbringing, thanks to my mum. I plan on coming out to my family about my apostasy later this year, or next year depending on how things go to plan since I hate leading a double life and pretending to relatives/friends simply for the sake of family honour. The outcome won't be good but I personally can't wait to leave and become fully independent.
I could add a lot more but it's already too long as it is, also I'm not sure if I should be posting my story here or in the Bio section...
Topic: Ex muslim reporting in