Hi, my name is Nahid. I'm almost 21 and living in Bangladesh. I'm a web developer and studying business. I'm a guy BTW, in ex muslim chats people often think that I'm a girl from Iran
"Nahid" is a gender neutral name in Bangladesh.
I was born in a Muslim family. My parents are religious but not too crazy about religion. They are harmless prayer oriented Muslims. They pray 5 times a day, fast in Ramadan, even though we are not rich they pay zakat correctly, and the one I never liked - slaughtering animals in Eid al adha. Growing up I always tried to be critical about religion but always felt this barrier in my reasoning. Monotheism vs polytheism was the first thing that I tried to think critically. In winter, when rice fields are empty, everywhere in the country Muslims arrange evening time gatherings where renowned preachers come to talk about Islam. Other than fabricated, made up stories about the greatness of Islam and prophets' miracles they used to make degrading comments about Hinduism and laugh about the silly things that are practiced by Hindus. While they won't talk much against Christianity and Judaism, they would blame everything bad that happens to Muslims on Christians and Jews. I found that very annoying even as a Muslim.
Religion is a must read subject in Bengali medium schools. There are different textbooks for Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity. Probably something like ethics for others, it's a compulsory subject for first 10 years of school. The first chapter of Islamic Studies, textbooks always said monotheism is the truth because if there was more than one god, the universe wouldn't be so perfect. Probably because of my faith in Islam, I took "imperfect" as total destruction of the universe.
There weren't many resources for me to know about the dark side of Islam at that time. All the Islamic books that I found in my parents' room didn't have anything violent like ISIS styled jihad. Imams in mosques used to talk about jihad but they mostly talked about jihad against mind, to stay away from sin. Even books written about jihad talked only about defensive jihad.
When I was 13 I got my first phone. Withing some months I found Bengali blogs. Atheists were ruling in blogs at that time. First thing I read was about Muhammad's character, his sex slaves, Aisha. Like most Muslims, I heard only the heart warming good stories about Muhammad. This time my ears got warm.
I was a Muslim who didn't pray much but tried to follow the Islamic lifestyle. Even though the language Bengali atheists used to describe Muhammad felt very disturbing to me, I kept reading and searched for counter arguments. Pretty much everything atheists write about had counter arguments in Islamic apologetic websites. Now that I look back, I never read those weak arguments and simply became happy that there were arguments against the cases atheists raise.
Like many Muslims I tried to prove Quran's divinity through science and failed. I was checking the big claims Zakir Naik was making because those scientific miracles seemed too good to be true. I had my doubts but denied to think without boundaries.
In 2013 I started watching movies, imdb250 kind of movies. After watching some movies on slavery I was shocked. Didn't know that it was so bad. Still I thought it was not bad in Islam. Maybe some people became slaves because they were in debt or as a punishment for big crimes or something like that. Muhammad encouraged to free slaves and told to treat them well. Preachers never talked about slavery, textbooks were just praising Muhammad for freeing slaves. As I was thinking more and more about slavery, I became sure that Islam banned slavery, how can a human "own" another human! Didn't have the courage like many times before to search about that.
One afternoon I was browsing facebook and two university teachers were discussing slavery in comments of a status about human rights and something caught my attention. One teacher claimed that Islam banned slavery, the other asked for references and no answer from the claimant. Finally I decided to find out about slavery in Islam. From 5pm to 3:30am I kept reading every apologetic website. For the first time I was actually reading those counter arguments and found out Islam permits slavery, sex slavery and my beloved Muhammad had sex slaves. No excuses could convince me that Muhammad did the right thing and I went asleep an ex Muslim that morning. I remained an agnostic/agnostic Muslim for couple of weeks and read a lot about the accusations against Islam. I tried to go easy on many things Muhammad did like the marriage with Aisha but the "correct for at that time" argument failed for most things. I came to the conclusion that Muhammad was just an ordinary man who did good things and bad things and some of those bad deeds were monstrous .
I was already living by the "won't harm anybody knowingly" motto even as a Muslim so the "where to get my morality from" phase was not long. I have already read about the flaws of other popular religions to strengthen my faith in Islam, something that religious people do to feel secure about their faith. I realized that religions are like an unnecessary firewall software that is never updated by the programmer, making it more and more useless with time, something that has no use but divides people and creates hateful identities. After watching Hitchens, Dawkins, Sam Harris and tons of other atheistic videos I decided not to believe in a supreme being without any sort of evidence.
I'm still in the closet but I criticize Islam to my parents, especially when they claim that Islamic terrorists are not true Muslims. Being a supporter of the governing secular/semi secular party my father can't say much when I trash talk Islamic shariah. After the Gulshan cafe attack in June I got so mad when my father told me these terrorists were not true Muslims, I pointed out hadiths and quranic verses to show him how Islamic their actions are. I don't think I'll ever come out as an ex Muslim to my parents but they realize that I'm not the kind of Muslim they want me to be. My friends know about my secular views. I might come out as an atheist to them in future.
Leaving Islam has changed lots of things for me, but the only thing that I actually subconsciously worry about is how an introvert like me is going to find someone in Bangladesh to love who is religiously unaffiliated
not too worried though. I left Islam in a very important time of my life. Even though it felt great to be free, it left an impact on me. In last two years I made no progress in my study or work. It's become hard to concentrate on anything because I can't stop feeling "cheated" by Islam. Pretending to live a life according to doctrine that I hate is tough. I still fast in Ramadan because I don't want to hurt my parents' feelings. Wish everyone could just leave me alone and try not to dictate how I do every freaking thing in life.
I hope someday it will be completely safe in Bangladesh to live as an atheist.
Topic: Bangladeshi X Muslim Atheist