I can honestly say now that I look back on it, I was only a muslim because I was born to a muslim father. I was never a muslim because I believed in it, not even when I threw myself into the deen could I say I was choosing my own path.
I was stuck on a path my birth put me on, not one I chose.
Were you a muslim because you were born one?
Did you actually choose to be a muslim?
Did you feel you had other options if you were born a muslim, or like me did it never even occur to you to be something else?
I felt like I had a religious experience at the age of 14 when, after "submitting to Allah", I felt so pure I wanted God to kill me and take me to heaven. I thought at the time that my brother effectively proved to me that Islam was the true religion, and although nothing of what he said could have been verified (it was largely predictions about day of judgment) it felt like I either have faith in Allah and jump into the black hole or I am too scared to jump and stay back with the Jews who will be slaughtered by trees and rocks on the day of judgment. It was a very surreal experience, no doubt because of the surreal stories my brother was telling me about. He converted to Islam about 2 or 3 years before I did. Soon after though, I started thinking of more logical (but still very simple) reasons for my faith in Islam, such as that there can only be one god (backed by various poor philosophical arguments), scientific miracles in the Qur'an, the unchanged Qur'an, and the overwhelming feeling of peace and love I would receive from praying or just thinking about Allah. At one point I thought I experienced a miracle, but it seemed like such a mundane miracle that even though there was no explanation (except that I could have been massively mistaken... it happens) it didn't really affect my faith... but it got me thinking. I asked fellow Muslims that were there at the time and they were baffled too. I asked them if it could be a miracle, and they said it could be but I could see that they thought it was a pretty mundane one if it was, aswell. Eventually, I realized I was committing the huge fallacy of already accepting Islam to be true and then just looking for reasons to back my belief up even more, rather than judging the evidence for and against Islam being a true religion, without any bias. That shook my faith.
I'd be so convinced of Islam that the prospect of meeting Allah after I died felt as obviously real as the prospect of meeting my parent's after school. Often I would plead with people to just accept what is obviously true and embrace Islam. Yeah I was brainwashed alright. It came as such a surprise when I suddenly left Islam for purely logical reasons that my non-Muslim sister (who was angry when I became a Muslim) was actually just as angry when I left! She asked me a million and one questions and I gave her simple logical answers, to which she wasn't very impressed (she isn't very well educated... she would have been more impressed with illogical but emotional reasons for leaving Islam, like "a lot of Muslim friends were bullying me so I told them to stuff their religion"). I think she thought I was messing her about. I might not have shown it on the outside but realizing Islam wasn't all I thought it was was incredibly emotional for me. It was just like my best friend had just died.
Topic: Why were you a muslim?