Hey, first and foremost welcome to the forum! Have a parrot
I'll answer your queries in parts.
I am very afraid and feel alone and lost. I cannot confide in absolutely anyone as I belong to a super conservative Arab community.
This is a very familiar story for *many* in this forum, and I too belong to a highly conservative community (thank YOU Arabs for invading our lands! Psh!
) As a result, you have no more reason to fear, nor shall you grieve. Your heart shall be at rest. For lo, you belong to a community of the ones who fell. The ones who turned. The ones who decided enough was enough. For we, are the ones who were brave enough to think beyond the societal norms and we were brave enough to say "It is enough".
Then got badly beat by the imam but we'll overlook that part
but the biggest practical problem I am facing now is the prospect of marrying a Muslim.
Ha! 20s. Arab community. Again, thank yoooou for spearheading our wife burning norms (okay there was some blessing there - and yes you've probably guessed by now, I *am* of Pakistani origin). So yes, by society it is now expected our wombs are ready (yeah I'm a guy but screw the system!) for the bun making factory setting. Society has decided that. And yes, it *must* be done in the fold of an institutionalised mass system of union. Of course. Yes, I speak of the the forbidden M word - MARRIAGE. That was hard, I know. First and foremost, it is *your* choice to decide when you are ready. It is your body. No amount of pressure and downtalk can ever change that. Though you say you're in a RELATIONSHIP *gasp, shock* with a guy (most likely non-intimate). As a result, he is most likely *not* ultra-conservative, but may still have reservations about your struggles. He may do what others do and brush it off as a phase, he may completely flip. I'm sorry to say this, but the only way to do this is to one day sit him down and drop the pipebomb. Get some candles, set the scene. Get on one knee (I'm totally mixing customs here - screw the system!) and just say, "Will you accept me? I am having doubts". No but seriously, you do need to ensure he knows what he's getting himself into. It'll leave you with greater pain and misery if you don't go about doing this.
My other question involves fate. Now that many of you are former Muslims, how do you handle moving forward in life without that anchor of fate, without knowing that everything that has happened or will happen to you is because of some grand plan? That belief sustained me throughout my life and as I'm rapidly losing it, I feel like I'm in unchartered waters- hence the freaking out.
Well, as a physicist, I can say there is only so much one can believe in fate. I believe in a stochastic universe. One that abides by the laws of probability. And if you look at our planet, it is at one tiny small corner of the solar system, orbiting in one tiny speck of the milky way, which is amongst billions upon billions of galaxies. The idea that we, these tiny insignificant specks in one tiny corner of the universe have some driving force known as fate guiding us, as though the very strands of space-time connect one event to another beyond the models of causation, is highly improbable. Rather humbling, for me to know we're rather small. And rather comforting that we are a moving system of mass and energy, and luckily thermodynamics prevents that from ever being lost. We live to become a part of the universe manifesting itself, and we die distributing our matter and energy in the universe to allow another thermodynamic system to exist. We become a part of the universe after we die, never lost. Information is conserved. And I find that beautiful. That's enough for me, I don't need any higher driving force in this anymore.
Hope this helps!
Topic: Newly ex Muslim and freaking out