I am feeling so frustrated with my efforts to get my sister to see what I see when it comes to Islam. Honestly I feel kind of offended that she doesn't take my word for it. I don't tell lies, and I certainly wouldn't lie about something so serious (damned soul and all) if I knew otherwise.
Sure it takes some people ages to let go of a belief system, but I'm her sister, why isn't MY word, my learning enough for her?
My older sister became an apostate when I was 13/14, but she never gave reasons for it apart from "I hate the bastards" (my parents) and "I want nothing to do with my past" which weren't enough to make me aware that there was something more. I just chalked it up to what she was saying, she left islam because she had learnt to hate her past. (ok so my parents are doing the same thing, and so is my sister, but I am actually verbal with my reasons, reasons that aren't about my past, but about Islam's past.
I just don't get how she still prays, how she talks about putting a hijab on, or why she still hasn't gone to verify these things herself if she is finding it so hard to believe my words alone. I have even given her verse numbers, hadiths, emailed her links to all this information yet she remains a weak muslim.
Yet even as a weak muslim she is limited. She doesn't drink because she is a muslim, she will be fasting, although her doctor says she shouldn't fast this year, so she will have to pay everyday that she misses a fast, again something she could avoid if she would just open her eyes. She talks about wearing the hijab, and even tried yesterday to pretend that hijab wearing is actually totally comfortable (when for years she has complained about the actual physical headaches she gets from it and the strangling sensation).
I know what her deeper reasons are, she is currently my fathers favourite daughter, a position she has back stabbed and betrayed and bribed to maintain for so long, and she will do anything to keep that favouritism alive. I on the other hand am the black sheep of the family, I may have been daddys favourite girl once but I was never prepared to play the games necessary to keep that spot.
It's a very competetive way to live and I am way to lazy ( and kind hearted) to be competetive the way they are.
I won't go running to my father or step mother to betray a siblings trust with some juicy scandalous gossip on them, just to see what it will net me, or to go up in their estimation, but she would in a heartbeat.
Ach what is the point in telling her, she avoids finding out because she doesn't want the grief that will come with finding out.
It's not just her though, both brothers it went in their ear and out the other
, seriously why waste my time?
(just so you know I am not some fanatical ex muslim preacher towards them, but the subject does come up sometimes and I will be verbal when it does)