I would say my religious life actually really started in my teens when my more religious mom thought I was old enough to at least fast and pray in Ramazan, and I really looked forward to it. Before that, I always had some local Qari visit us and teach me recite the Quran from a young age, but I was never asked to do Namaz etc by family until I was around 12-13. It started my religiously devotional phase which reached its zenith when I was around 19-20 years old.
My dad has always been the relatively non-religious type, save for Ramazan and the occasional prayer on the insistence of my mom; he always was slightly cynical about me being religious as a kid but I thought he was just dodging Islam, but as an ex-Army man, he has always been a strict disciplinarian and very conservative thinking as well about raising kids. My sisters had their phases purely because of my mom's insistence, but deep down they are least bothered about religious practices.
As a Shia, I took my belief VERY seriously in a country where the majority is Sunni who are sometimes very cynical and rude towards Shias, not to mention hateful given the anti-Shia terror attacks that have been going on in Pakistan since the late 1980s. A lot of innocent doctors, engineers, officers, businessmen, scholars, and Namazis etc have been murdered in cold blood just because they were Shias. So to me being a Shia in Pakistan was an act of supreme defiance and pride, though I was always hesitant (and was asked by family to be so) to avoid confrontational questions from Sunnis who are mostly grossly ignorant and plain idiots about Shia beliefs.
-some claim Shias commit adultery in Muharram and name the illegitimate children Hussain and Zainab etc
-some claim breaking fasts with Shias makes their fast null and void
-some claim Shias spit in the food served to Sunnis
-and so on so forth
Naturally, these obscene examples of religious hatred amongst the increasingly Wahhabised Sunnis of Pakistan made me very strong in my belief. The whole stories of Karbala, Abu Bakr etc usurping Ali's right to be the first Caliph and Imam, the Hidden 12th Imam, Iran's defiance to the world etc etc...they really appealed to me and I took them to the heart.
As early as 3 years ago I firmly believed Shia Islam was the true Islam and it will prevail the Muslim World and then everyone will cry for Hussain and the 12 Imam shall return and form a tag team with Jesus/Issa and win the WWE World Tag Team Championship........ok I made up the wrestling bit just now (I havent watched pro wrestling since 2006 lol)
What initially changed me to become more secular was the whole degeneracy of the Danish cartoon drama. I wanted to justify the rabid reaction against it, but then I thought that freedom of speech should not mean death just because someone said something we dont like. I was very turned off by the riots, destruction, and even deaths of people not even related to Denmark around the Muslim World that I thought something is VERY wrong with Muslims.
Then reading about the gross abuse the Iranian Shia mullahcracy dished out to their own people in the name of Allah. From corruption, to persecution of Baha'is, to funding Shia reactionary groups around the world, to ridiculous religious idiocy in an otherwise liberal-minded country. I got dissatisfied with trying to be a 'Pan-Shia Islamic revivalist' as I once called myself around 2 years ago. I became less religious daily, but kept fasting and attended the Muharram majalis in Manchester during my Uni years away from home.
I got more and more secular, but I still kept the faith and thought it was true. I became more open-minded, and in the summer of 2008, out of sheer boredom I discovered science documentaries about space, science, and of course evolution. That really moved my mind to the extent I really wondered why should I accept shit spat out by a bunch of bronze age goat herders who had no idea about science, philosophy, and knowledge.....I really started to question God and what He supposedly is and definitely isn't. The likes of George Carlin, Bill Hicks, and to an extent Pat Condell (whom I really hate now because he looks like some angry old grandma and a poster boy for right-wing nutters) made it even more curious for me.
By the time January 2009 came, I was an atheist & secular humanist. My journey to leave Islam was complete, much to the annoyance of my mom
Topic: How many of you were religious, practicing muslims before your apostasy?