Another story
OP - March 25, 2010, 03:16 PM
So here is my story. I’ve been meaning to write it even before I sign up to this forum, but procrastination got in the way.
As I had said in my introduction thread, I am female, aged 27, born, raised and living in a North African country where Islam is religion of state. I hold a university degree, have a full-time job in a multinational company, and for the first 25 years of my life, I was a muslim.
Like every kid around me, I was taught from early childhood that God is the creator of everything, that Mohammed is His Prophet and that I must be a good girl in order to go to heaven. What is heaven? Would I ask. “it’s a place where you can get EVERYTHING you ever wanted”. To me that meant all sorts of pastries/sweets, so it was rather exciting. Also, I had formed this image of God in my head: a huge, kind-looking centipede that would give presents to good people using its multiple hands. I was taught to recite Surat al Fatiha even before I started going to school, and learned how to pray at around the age of nine. It didn’t seem like a big deal because I liked imitating my parents. After puberty, though, it became a chore. I wasn’t very regular in my prayers, and would sometimes just pretend to do them. All in all, religion never seemed too complicated. I learned about it in school, had to memorize surat there, and also started memorizing surat on my own, without having anyone telling me to. The thing was: I didn’t really understand them. I never gave much thought to my beliefs in my teens. I was just content to be a muslim, just like my parents and everyone around me. When I turned 17, things began to slowly change. I started paying more attention to Islamic lectures, started reading books, made the resolution of being more assiduous in my prayers, even considered wearing hijab, when my own mother didn’t wear it.
At the same time, contradictorily, I developed a huge interest in heavy metal music, and was known to spend hours on various forums (not local, though, they were mostly frequented by Europeans and Americans) and to talk online with the people I met there. This is how I came to know a European young man and started a long distance relationship with him. It was naïve and stupid, I realized it later, but at that time I was so passionate about everything, I thought he was the one and all that. We had never met (we planned to meeting eventually, of course) and would mainly chat online and talk on the phone, and yet it got serious to the point that there were talks of marriage. The main issue (or so I thought) was that he was agnostic. Since I was very much convinced that Islam is the true word of God and that it is impossible for him not to see it, I undertook my mission of converting him. At first he was cooperative because he wanted to please me, but eventually he told me that it wasn’t possible for him to believe in my religion, that the Quran was filled with contradictions and too hateful for his peaceful nature. I was appalled, horrified that he would say such things about the most sacred and perfect of texts. I tried to discuss it with him but my arguments were weak. I thought it was because I wasn’t knowledgeable enough. Eventually I gave up and decided that the man just wasn’t meant for me. I thought it was all the work of the devil, who was preventing him from seeing the light, so after a while I moved on and decided that I was better than that, that I deserved a true muslim for a significant other and that God had better plans for me anyway. It was painful at the time, but I turned to religion even more fervently for solace. My mother had heard about that relationship and told me that if I thought that my parents would allow me to marry a foreigner, I was deluded. I argued that I had tried to get him to convert, but she said that “Western” converts could not be trusted, and proceeded with telling me stories about this and that woman who married a foreigner and ended up miserable, and ended by telling me that I should praise Allah for guiding my way back to reason. I didn’t question her words then, and did just what she said. After that life became simpler. I started immersing myself even further into religion. I started rethinking my vision of life and was quite convinced that my fate was to be a good muslim housewife, to have several kids and raise them to be good muslims. Most of all I wanted God to be happy with me and to grant me a loving marriage.
So I just went on with life. I wouldn’t say there weren’t any doubts, but I was pretty good at sweeping them under the carpet. They would mostly arise when reading particular topics in internet forums. I have talked about my love for metal music, and for several years I’ve been a member of this particular message board that was filled with very interesting people and where all sorts of subjects were discussed. Religion was very often discussed, as well as science and evolution. I was in the tiny minority of believers, and the people (mostly Christians) who would be too vocal about their beliefs would be systematically annihilated with the help of logical and reasonable arguments. I didn’t like that at all, so I would keep quiet about my religiosity, and even avoid reading those topics. But I gradually started being interested in them. I couldn’t say exactly how or when that change happened. I have a particular recollection, though, during the summer of 2007, of reading a book about various mythologies and ran into several mentions of virgin births and floods. I was baffled. It sounded like Abrahamic religions had copied legends that predated them. So I turned to my then best friend, who is a very intelligent person, yet (at the time I wouldn’t use the word “yet”, of course) deeply religious. The sort of person who makes you think “If he believes that religion is right, then it must be” and I asked him about that. His only response was “well, did it occur to you that those mythologies came up with the concepts of virgin births and floods after being inspired by Abrahamic religions?” I didn’t say anything, but I was far from being convinced. I questioned him about evolution and how does it sit with our religious beliefs, and he said that science hasn’t yet proved that God didn’t exist. That wasn’t convincing either. I ran some google research about the subject and read article written by Harun Yahya and decided it was mainly bullshit.
I tried to push it all away in the back of my mind and just focus on my life and seek distraction with music and books and movies, but I could feel the doubt gnawing at me, day after day. I started shying away from religious talks with my relatives because I felt like arguing with every point they were making. I thought I could start reading Quran all over again, surely I would find answers and solace there, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it because I knew (having read it several times before) it would only make things worse. To be honest, the more doubt grew, the lighter my conscience became. I could almost physically feel the fear of hell fading away, and the guilt for not doing things the right Islamic way just disappeared.
It really felt like that seal that the Quran talks about was lifted off my heart, and made me to see the light, but in the opposite way that Allah intended. Suddenly I was able to think critically of things I used to see as scared and granted. I didn’t have to make up excuses anymore for verses or teachings that were fishy. When I admitted to myself that Mohammed was probably the author of Quran, it all made sense. For some reason, unlike many ex-muslims (well, the ones whose stories I’ve read, at least), Aisha’s marriage never really troubled me. Probably because when I was taught religion, emphasize was never put on how old the prophet was then. And I was also fed a lie: He married Aisha when she was nine and consummated the marriage when she was eleven. That was acceptable to me, because eleven was the age my grandmother married (her husband was fourteen, though). As for the issue of 4:34, I had somehow come to term with the idea that hadith contradicted the verse, so it was all ok. I swallowed the crap about how verses ordering to kill the kuffar were taken out of historical context (and regurgitated it, too). And now I saw all that what it was: the ravings of a sadist and misogynist with a god complex.
I thought this was all fine and dandy because I could just get on with my life the way it is, without pressure of the afterlife and an eternity of burning and torture (that was a huge relief because physical pain is one of my greatest phobias), and nothing needs to change because of it… that is, until I realized that I didn’t want this life, after all. As a muslim woman, having finished my university degree, gotten a decent, well-paid job and having my eldest sister getting married (I’m the second), the natural step for me was to get married and start a family. Now I realized I wasn’t sure I wanted that. Not that I didn’t want a family, but not in the environment I was raised in, and definitely not with a muslim man. My elder sister married her boyfriend of seven year, a young man who is a muslim in name, but doesn’t pray, barely fasts, doesn’t seem to care about religion and yet is very decent (I said ‘yet’ because we all know muslims’ opinions about the immorality of non-believers). She is very happy with him and I envy her freedom (well, you can’t really call it freedom in an Islamic society, but it’s still better than what I have), but my mother sometimes complain to me about how they made a poor decision in allowing them to marry because she would have liked a devout muslim for a son-in-law, and she talks about how she won’t make that mistake with me, and how it is important that I marry someone who knows his deen and sticks to it. I find that prospect scary. My parents will never force me to marry anyone, but they are the sort who will not let me marry someone they don’t approve of. Thankfully I haven’t had many “suitors” so far. A cousin of mine tried to set me up with a coworker’s brother, who was supposedly very attractive, very religious and who has an engineering degree (which was just perfect for my mother), but I refused to even meet him. I talked to him on the phone once and was just appalled at how little communication there was, because he simply didn’t understand my questions, and was very shy, and didn’t have any interest in books, movies, music, or anything at all. I simply told him I wasn’t the right person for him and left it at that. My mother threw a fit, saying I was being shallow, and I will end up a spinster and regret it bitterly. I just told her I couldn’t even consider being with a person like that.
And that’s where I introduce my current boyfriend. He is Scandinavian and is a member of that internet message board I mentioned earlier, and I have been talking to him online for three years. A year ago the nature of our relationship shifted to something romantic. I was still a muslim when I knew him, and he is the first person I came out to with my change of beliefs. But even then, I didn’t think what we had was serious since we had never met, and since my parents would never approve of such a relationship anyway. The plan was to enjoy it while it lasts and to meet as soon as possible to see how we fared in real life. It didn’t happen until ten months afterwards, because there are very few countries that I can visit without a visa, and applying for them is a long and uncertain process. So last December I did something I thought I never would do. I lied to my parents, told them my job was sending me on a training abroad (I forged papers to make it seem real), to a different country, and instead flew to my boyfriend’s city and spent two weeks in his apartment.
I had never really been in a relationship before him, save for that aborted long-distance thing. I was raised to believe that my reputation was important, that boys were perverts who just wanted to use me for their pleasure and that if someone really loved me, he’d go straight to the engagement stage and not fool around with me. I was already a very insecure person (mostly about my physical appearance) so if someone showed interest I would get scared and push them away. So I was completely innocent to “being with” someone. Those days spent with my boyfriend were a shock to me. I never thought being so close to someone, both physically and emotionally, could feel so intense.
Also, I wasn’t used to the freedom of being out of my parents’ sight and control, of doing anything I wanted and go where I wanted. Another thing that came like a shock to me was that people simply didn’t care about what people around them do with their private lives. That’s an alien concept to me. At home, wherever I go, people watch, people listen and people judge. I felt none of that in that country. And of course, the economic and social advancement was attractive to me. So I have been entertaining the thought of moving out of the country (and in with my boyfriend) ever since. It doesn’t sound very realistic from where I stand. My parents are somewhat conservative people. Both have university degrees and are retired from long careers; my father as an engineer, and my mother as a teacher. When compared to many parents around me, even in my own extended family, they were open minded and ‘cool’. My sisters and I were always encouraged to pursue studies and careers, never pressured into wearing hijab (my mother only started wearing it about five years ago herself) and in general were never bugged about religion that much, except with the occasional “have you done your prayers yet?” or “change your shirt, it’s too short and too revealing”.
And then my mother retired from her teaching job and just stayed at home all day watching religious tv networks (particularly Iqraa, my personal plague), reading Quran all day, and she just changed. I don’t recognize the woman who raised, the rational (as rational as religious can be) woman who would question the veracity of this and that hadith. She just swallows everything now. She has become a bigot, and a racist, too. Calling anyone who isn’t a muslim an animal. I just can’t speak to her anymore. I remain silent. Whenever she goes on her religious rants, I hold my tongue and swallow my anger and frustration, because I have a short temper and if I start arguing with her I might let it all out.
So right now I feel trapped. I don’t want to live and raise my future children in this country anymore, I want to be with my boyfriend, I do not want to have religion shoved down my throat wherever I turn, I do not want to live all my life under the authority of a man (father or husband), I don’t want my private life to be controlled by the whims and views of a mother-in-law, because almost ever Algerian man is a mama’s boy. I want to be my own person. I want to enjoy my life, since I only get this one shot at it. I want to raise happy, mentally healthy children who will also enjoy their lives and hopefully leave a positive trace in this world. But I can’t, because my parents won’t allow it (though I’m determined to fight them for it), and I can’t just grab my stuff and leave because, whatever their faults, they are still my parents and I love them, and I don’t want to cause them pain.
I don't know where to go from here.
He's no friend to the friendless
And he's the mother of grief
There's only sorrow for tomorrow
Surely life is too brief
Topic: Another story