The Muslim ex-Muslim
OP - March 20, 2018, 01:00 PM
Note: Just a short essay I wrote some days ago, and most ex-Muslims who are stuck will find it fairly relatable, I think. I'm also aware that I have been somewhat unfair, but I was feeling angry when I wrote this and I've decided to leave it in its original form.
Much has been said recently on the problems of ex-Muslims in the West. The Normalising Dissent tour by EXMNA, and the efforts by CEMB give one hope for the ex-Muslim community in the West. Good, encouraging progress has been made, and will continuously be made. But I, here, am concerned with my people: the men and women of reason who are paying with their lives, and their liberties, and the peace of their minds for their ability to think freely. I here am concerned with the abandoned many, the oppressed that have no champion; I am here concerned with that ever-growing, increasingly forsaken group of the damned that must by necessity rot in the prison of their own minds, or the prisons of the State; I am here concerned with those who must choose everyday between losing their lives and losing their sanity; the unpitied, the voiceless, the wretched; I am here concerned with the Muslim ex-Muslim, that bastion of free thought besieged by the holy powers of unreason, and betrayed by those who swore to protect it.
I suppose the term “Muslim ex-Muslim” deserves some explanation. I mean by this those (un?)fortunate few who were born in Muslim families and raised thus, until at some point they realised that Muhammad was a child molestor and a rapist, that invisible, sentient beings made of fire do not roam freely among us, that the Quran is an outrageously misogynist collection of ridiculous and self-contradictory tales, and that there is probably no god. These people (MEMs, if I may) reside in Muslim countries, among Muslim families and Muslim friends, and therefore must pretend to be Muslim in their daily lives in order to keep their heads attached to their bodies. Too often we are haunted by depression, of which the cause we cannot share with anyone. What are we to do? The world is indifferent to our sufferings.
It is no secret that in this age of unprecedented human progress, nigh on two full decades into the twenty-first century, there exist 13 countries that punish unbelief by death. It is no secret (nor, indeed, a wonder) that these 13 are all Muslim-majority, where Islam is enshrined in the Constitutions and the very framework of the nation. And there exist several other Muslim-majority countries, where to not believe is to be, in short order, killed, even if the State does not sanction it; Bangladesh, in recent times, has shot to fame for being a leader in this ghastly sport. I have in the past compared the plight of the atheist in a Muslim country to that of the Jew in Nazi Germany; though it obviously is not nearly as bad (the lack of concentration camps being something of a giveaway), I maintain that this is solely because it is somewhat easier to conceal your apostasy than it is to conceal Jewish ancestry.
The plight of the MEMs (although easy enough to imagine, methinks) is too often overlooked. Many find it difficult to understand why my people feel so abandoned. On multiple occasions, on the Internet, well-meaning folk who were far luckier than I in the accident of birth have explained to me patronisingly (a weakness of the whites, if ever they had one) that I ought not feel so hopeless. I am informed that all I have to do is hop a plane to Europe, claim asylum and then proceed to live in peace and prosperity to the end of my days. I acquiesce, being (naturally) far too depressed and unmotivated to explain to them the depths of their ignorance.
But the truth is that even if I had the funds to hop a plane that far (which I evidently do not - nor do the vast majority of MEMs), my asylum claims should in short order be rejected and I would find myself forcibly removed from the free lands with nothing but the bitter remembrance of breathing the free air to show for it. The reason is simple. I cannot prove that there is a threat to my life.
What a ridiculous notion! What laughable absurdity! No threat to my life - I, who live in one of the aforementioned 13! I, who live in constant fear, and permanent misery, who dare not name my country of residence for fear of retribution! Yet to the skeptical officials of the warm-hearted European nations, I am under no threat. Nor can I blame them for thinking so. I cannot produce before them any witness of the threats I have received. Who would help me thus in my cause? Nor can I ask my threateners to be so kind as to do so in writing and in such a manner as to make sure our European officials cannot accuse me of forgery.
This leaves but the devil’s choice. There is no question of the MEMs staying in their barbaric lands of origin. It would be madness. And this I mean literally: what mind could bear such perpetual strain? The constant fear of discovery, the knowledge that the vast majority of people surrounding you want you dead. The knowledge that your own family may prefer your cold, unbreathing corpse over the person you truly are. Your own parents, your siblings, your friends! What friendship is possible to us? Nothing but lies upon lies, and even if some of your closest friends may be prevailed upon to continue honest friendship, always there is the distaste in their eyes, that reluctance to shake your hand, how they shy away when you make sudden movement - as though it were a contagious condition you had, a disease, a monstrosity! And then having to pray five times a day in the mosque (though I hope my fellow MEMs are not so unfortunate as me in this) and one wonders we do not all end up in asylums (puns are all the life left to me). What mind would bear it? What mind? What mind! No. Are we to stay and live a life that is not considered life? All the noise the West makes about freedom and individuality and the merits of being yourself ring hollow in our ears.
Which brings us to the devil’s choice: the Muslim ex-Muslim may slit their wrists; they may stay, and watch as the very fabric of their sanity is torn apart and they are hapless to stop it; or the MEM may provoke a threat public enough, loud enough, to reach the benevolent ears of our skeptical officials directly.
Why, we have a foolproof plan before us! Swift death will follow those who dare such blasphemy. Those few who manage to escape and gain asylum will be held up as undeniable proof of the magnanimity of the West. As for the dead, and the insane, we will be but a drop in the ocean of the unloved who have preceded us.
It matters not. The world is, after all, indifferent to our sufferings. Not that I blame the world for it, for so are those we thought were closest to us.
Topic: The Muslim ex-Muslim