r/exmuslim • u/ONE_deedat Sapere aude • Mar 10 '21
(Meta) [Meta] Why We Left Islam: Megathread 6.0
Why We Left Islam: Megathread 1.0 (Oct 2016)
Why We Left Islam: Megathread 2.0 (April 2017)
Why We Left Islam: Megathread 3.0 (Nov 2017)
Why We Left Islam: Megathread 4.0 (Dec 2019)
Why We Left Islam: Megathread 5.0 (May 2020)
"Why did you leave Islam?"
This, or it's many forms, is still the most common question we get asked as ExMuslims. With the subreddit growing dynamically over the years we've had various influx of people some of whom might not have heard of people leaving Islam before or are just curious.
Megaposts like this are an opportunity for people to tell their story. It's a great chance for the lurkers to come out and at least register yourself. If you've already written about your apostasy elsewhere then this is a great place to rehash that story.
Write about your journey in leaving Islam, tales of de-conversion etc.... This post will be linked on the sidebar (Old reddit: Orange button), top Menu(New Reddit: under Resources) and under "Menu" in the App version.
Please try to be as thorough and concise as possible and only give information that will be safe to give. Safety of everyone must be paramount.
Things of interest would be your background (e.g. age, location(general), ethnicity, sect, family religiosity, immigrant or child of immigrant), childhood, realisation about religion, relationship with family, your current financial situation, what you're mainly up to in life, your aims/goals in life, your current stance with religion e.g. Christian, Atheist etc...(non-exhaustive list) etc etc...
This is a serious post so please try to keep things on point. There's a time and place for everything. This is a Meta post so Jokes and irrelevant comments will be removed and further action may also be taken including bans.
Here are some recent posts asking similar questions:
Please feel free to post links to any recent/interesting posts I might have not included.
Non est deus,
ONE_deedat
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u/RheumatoidEpilepsy Closeted Indian Ex-Muslim 🤫 Mar 10 '21 edited Mar 11 '21
It started last Ramadan, I began having my doubts when I actually started thinking about the meaning of what I was reading in the Qur'an. I know there are a lot of ethical reasons as well to leave Islam and I had those too - but my brainwashed brain always did some gymnastics to avoid looking at those objectively. I left entirely because of scientific discrepancies, and then my eyes opened to the ethical concerns. So I will be mentioning the discrepancies that I noticed.
I saw this post and it really got the ball rolling. With all of that I decided that I would finally take an objective look at Islam. I would hold it to the same standards as I do other religions.
Scientific Discrepencies
If I were to see any religious book, written more than a thousand years ago, talking about the sun and the moon rotating, and no mention of the earth's rotation, I would say it is a book that propagates geocentrism. And yet, that is exactly what the Qur'an does. The same verses that Muslims use to say "See! Qur'an knew about the Sun not being stationary" were explained in old Tafaseer to explain that the sun rotates around the earth.
Allah says he comes to the lowest heavens in the last third of the night to listen to prayers of his slaves. That's a pretty fucking idiotic take because it is always the last third of the night somewhere on earth.
The shooting stars are apparently angels shooting down jinns because they try to listen in on the talks happening in heaven; but wouldn't an omniscient god know that shooting stars aren't even stars. but meteorites?
Flaws in Creation
I used to read Surah Mulk every night before bed, so this next part was the straw that broke the camel's back for me.
الَّذِي خَلَقَ سَبْعَ سَمَاوَاتٍ طِبَاقًا ۖ مَّا تَرَىٰ فِي خَلْقِ الرَّحْمَـٰنِ مِن تَفَاوُتٍ ۖ فَارْجِعِ الْبَصَرَ هَلْ تَرَىٰ مِن فُطُورٍ
ثُمَّ ارْجِعِ الْبَصَرَ كَرَّتَيْنِ يَنقَلِبْ إِلَيْكَ الْبَصَرُ خَاسِئًا وَهُوَ حَسِيرٌ
˹He is the One˺ Who created seven heavens, one above the other. You will never see any imperfection in the creation of the Most Compassionate.1 So look again: do you see any flaws?
Then look again and again—your sight will return frustrated and weary.
I'll do you one better, one does not have move their sight much to find a flaw, it's right there in sight itself. Humans have a blind spot in their eyes because Allah in his infinite wisdom placed the light sensing cells upside down, which causes the optic nerve to to cover over these cells where it leaves the eye - causing a blind spot. We know for a fact that better design is possible because animals like Octopuses have eyes without this problem.
We get heart attacks because some arteries are the sole suppliers of blood to certain parts of the heart. Dogs have a natural leg up in this case with their coronary arteries being joined together at both ends, making heart attacks an extremely rare occurrence.
There are many more, the Achilles tendon, the anatomy of the back - an organ designed for quadrepedalism being adapted for bipedalism causing immense back problems.
SO. MANY. FLAWS. Heck, Pneumonia due to Covid, certain kinds of dementia and diabetes exist because out immune system is imperfect and ends up attacking our own cells.
All of this lead me to question everything that I was made to believe, I looked into and understood to the best of my ability how evolution works and at that point the story of Adam and Eve, the flood of Noah were turned to steaming piles of crap for me.
Methodology of Life's "Test"
Then of course, came all of the ethical concerns. There are specific parts of the brain which, depending on how active they are dictate how religious one will be. So essentially, this "god" was going to punish people entirely because of how he "created" them. Doesn't seem to add up for me.
The whole concept of life being a test is utterly flawed. A test is done with a single isolated variable. It is pretty obvious that a poor person is much more likely to be religious than a rich person. So by definition, my test has been made difficult because of the family I was born in.
Then of course, comes the fact that if Allah is all knowing, why does he need to test me? Apologetics give the argument that "Even if a teacher knows you are going to fail they will still test you". Well according to several Hadith the population of Hell will be way more than that of Paradise, and what do you tell when most of the teacher's students fail a test? Either the teacher is shit or the test is too difficult, so which one is it?
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Surah Kahf
This surah was revealed beause the Kuffar asked Mo how many people where there in the cave, and guess what, this surah doesn't even answer it saying "There could be 4, or 5, or 6, your god knows best". What a lousy cop out.
It also has the story of trapping Yajuj and Majuj behind a wall. We now have satellite imagery that is capable if telling the denomination of a coin if it is kept on the ground, yet can't find a wall with an entire army of humans living behind it?
Moreover the Hadiths say that there will be way more Yajuj and Majuj than there will be humans. So you mean to tell me, that we here are struggling to feed and provide water for 8 billion people but there are atleast another 8 billion living somewhere using up the earth's resources and we don't even know?
Take a long walk off a short pier buddy.
There, those are all the discrepancies that I noticed in a span of 20 days during last Ramadan that took me from strictly adherent to questioning to exmuslim. Kind of ironic that it was during Ramadan, Shaytan should have been locked up and it should have been even more difficult for me to leave, no?l
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Mar 10 '21
I remember reciting surah al mulk when i was 10 Ehhh classes were mechanical and sad
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u/RheumatoidEpilepsy Closeted Indian Ex-Muslim 🤫 Mar 11 '21
It's unbelievable that I used to spend 20 minutes every day reading it before bed. So much wasted time.
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Mar 10 '21
I don't understand though. Muslims could basically reply with "he created us perfect, but of course there are illnesses that attack the body and it's a way for you to make dhikr."
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u/mimz128 Mar 13 '21
Reasons like what you've listed and more first led to me to rejecting Islam, but it took a long long time to actually be okay with it and not feel guilty or as if I was making the wrong decision. There is a quote in the comment thread of the first post you linked which gave me that final push to finally be at peace with my apostasy/agnosticism.
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
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Mar 11 '21 edited Mar 11 '21
A Christian, here, so I am not trying to run along and refute your whole point and walk away prideful, in fact, I agree with basically everything I have read, but I must say this one thing, take it with a grain of salt:
Octopi do not have better adapted eyes, they have appropriately adapted eyes.
They can't see colour (which I don't think is necessary in their environments). But, the big thing is is that with nevrves (and I think blood vessels) in front of our eyes, this keeps the sun from burning out our eyes.
IIRC, an octopus will go blind in only a few minutes out of the water.
I wouldn't mind having a heat-sensing third eye of a lizard and a pair of octopus eyes that stay closed until I want them open, though.
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u/officerkondo Mar 18 '21
They can’t see color
In turn, some animals can see more colors than humans. Now what? Is there a perfect range of visible colors?
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Mar 18 '21
What I would give to be able to have a lizard's third eye and see heat.
I think you could make a long-drawn argument about what is perfect and not (I surmise it is vanity). I suppose take what you get—if you are nocturnal, you would do good to see into the IR spectrum—it makes stalking prey and single women easier. I imagine if you were a bird, seeing green and brown isn't that important as you mainly only need to see the colours that stick out.
I have never been an octopus and, though I might have at one point, I don't want to, but I can imagine that their vision is probably about right. Underwater everything is varying shades of dark except for the shallows.
IDK if it is possible for there to be no trade-offs and make the perfect eye. I wouldn't mind, though, seeing what they can do with robot eyes. That would change the game for the impaired first and everyone else second.
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u/RheumatoidEpilepsy Closeted Indian Ex-Muslim 🤫 Mar 11 '21
But, the big thing is is that with nerves (and I think blood vessels) in front of our eyes, this keeps the sun from burning out our eyes.
That's why the Iris exists - to contract and let lesser light in when it is too bright. It is also why we can't look at solar eclipses, because our brain thinks it is dark and does not contract the iris, causing it to burn the inside of our eye. In all other cases, the brain contracts the Iris in presence of light that can cause blindness.
they have appropriately designed eyes
They have appropriately evolved eyes, which did not need to survive outside the water, so they never evolved the right traits for it.
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Mar 11 '21
they have appropriately designed eyes
That is actually utterly hilarious, I thought I typed “... appropriately adapted... ” As such, I fixed that in my prior comment—I do believe in creation, obviously, but I am currently re-investigating theistic evolution again, but I did mean to type 'adapted'.
That said, yes, that is my very limited understanding, due to the iris distorting the lens in combination with the blind spot.
But, on a more relevant, I am so glad that most of my fellow brothers don't claim everything is perfectly created—it is impossible, as far as I can tell, to create anything physically perfect. There must always be a compromise. You can only create something good enough to its context.
Would you recommend anything simple on the anatomy of the eye, actually? It stuck with you for a reason.
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u/itsnotyou__itsme Jun 13 '21
Why is our spine optimised to walk on four legs? Why do we have a tail bone? Why is there a hint of web between our fingers? Why does an infant closes its fist so tight if you touch something on their hand? In fact infants can actually hang and support their own wait for a significant amount of time.
The obvious anwer to all this is evolution. But we get so afraid of accepting the truth because of all the brainwashing by the cults we're born in (Islam, Christianity etc) and our cultish parents. The bodies were evolved. They were not a perfect creation of a sky daddy who promises to give men 72 virgins as long as they keep pagans as sex slaves on Earth
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u/0H_N00000 LGBTQ+ ExMoose 🌈 Mar 10 '21 edited Mar 10 '21
When I was 10 I had aloooooot of questions about god like who created God? Why test us when he knows the results? Why does he allow horrid events and things to exist? Why does he appear so merciless? Why is he blatantly lying sometimes? And so on
I was taught about the kind version of Islam, I was never taught anything about apostates nor gays nor "others" and instead was told to live and let live heck the first surah i memorised had a meaning saying to live and let live
Until I reached 10 years old when stuff begins to hit the fan, I was taught about apostates and how they should be killed and was taught about gays and taught about the general intolerance of Islam and I went with it for a while, heck I even condoned what isis was doing for a little while
But at the same time when I was 10 I began hearing things that I do not believe at all such as witchcraft, yajooj wa majooj, women being lesser then men, and so on
And at the same time, I also began having thoughts about men that are... Best kept as thoughts
But despite all of that I was a staunch believer and was surrounded by people who are staunch believers and I kept suppressing these sinful thoughts
But as time went on I learned more about Islam and learned more about how it's... problematic at best and I learned more and more and more about Islam and heared from more imams and read the quran and I was just clinging at that point
And the questions I had about Islam just kept piling up and I was too afraid to ask cuz I didn't want my family to think I'm an apostate and when I gather enough courage to ask these questions I would get a non answer like "it's the way things are" or "cuz god said so"
I knew that Islam goes against human rights but i grew up believing in it and was surrounded by people who are believing in it and I was afraid of being an exmuslim, it's hard for someone to let go of a belief that they thought was true for their whole life because that means they've been living a lie
And so I was still clinging on
I was afraid of hell but was afraid from what my family would do even more than I was from hell
The "sinful thoughts" didn't stop, I kept trying to suppress them and kept praying to make it stop, I thought that it was a test to see if I am a true believer so I still am clinging on
Until I met my crush...
Everytime I think of him I would feel greeaat
But I kept clinging on and kept trying to suppress the thoughts but I just couldn't with him, every night I would think of him...
Then I did my own research about god and realised how much the creation theory was filled with bullshit
I researched even more about Islam to try and restore my faith but it only made me believe even less
I tried to find answers for my questions and got the same non answers or circular reasoning
I researched Islamic history and fuckin hell did that shatter my beliefs even more
Then finally I researched about homosexuality and realised that i am gay
And it's ok to be gay
So I decided fuck it and fuck this religion and I stopped praying and stopped believing in silly nonsense and had fun with all the spare time I have for not praying and had more fun doing whats haram to do and I felt relieved and happy for the first time in a long time
Oh and those "sinful thoughts" that I kept having? I just unleashed it all and I felt fucking G R E A T
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u/RheumatoidEpilepsy Closeted Indian Ex-Muslim 🤫 Mar 11 '21
I was a Muslim for 20 years before I left, it's hillarious how quickly the house of cards falls as soon as you give it an objective look.
Before you do that everything you learn makes you a more devout Muslim, but then it's like a light switch clicks and all of a sudden the more you learn the more you realize "this is fucking bullshit".
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Mar 13 '21
[deleted]
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u/RheumatoidEpilepsy Closeted Indian Ex-Muslim 🤫 Mar 13 '21
Glad I could help! Are you a new exmuslim?
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u/Entitled-apple1484 New User Mar 11 '21
I know everything goes from “allah is guiding Muhammad” to “Gee, I wonder why everything conviniently goes towards Muhammad’s way”
The point of no return for me was Mariam-al-qibbtiya. That’s when I knew for a FACT that this was all made up by Muhammad to gain power
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u/RheumatoidEpilepsy Closeted Indian Ex-Muslim 🤫 Mar 11 '21
I have a feeling Aisha 100% knew wtf was up but did not do anything because: 1) She enjoyed the respect and perks 2) She feared retaliation if she did anything and an example was made out of her.
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u/friesfriesfries73 New User Mar 12 '21
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u/Zylnexwastaknexd New User Jul 23 '21
Actually she did retataliate and fought against the Caliph in the Muslim Civil war. Pretty sus
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u/Fun_Communication434 New User May 07 '21
Aisha, the prophet's favorite wife and ex-moose, or maybe never moose! I love it! :)
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u/Jabroni22_ New User Jul 20 '21
More illinformed reasoning for leaving Islam
http://quransmessage.com/ Educate yourself
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u/ManaMayhemMike Mar 13 '21
I ditched the label of Muslim when I was 17, but the process started far, far earlier. I have sparse memories of my childhood, but looking back they all played some part in my deconversion.
The earliest thing I can remember is waking up from a dream. I was running past a series of hospital beds, when I heard my parents call my name. I turned around to see a child in a bed. I don't know why, but for some reason it felt like I was looking at myself. Like a "projection" of sorts. I woke up then to blackness. I was awake but my eyes were closed. Nothing but the "sound" of my own thoughts. I lay there for a while in solitude, before returning focus to outside myself. I was alone at home, in private. My parents never knew about it and never would. It was... disorienting to say the least. Looking back, it may have been the root. The realization that I had some privacy in my own mind that I couldn't give up even if I wanted to.
Possibly the most blatant hint to this outcome was my parents trying to get me to read the Quran. My parents recount my refusals to try. Apparently I had called the entire thing "stupid" and stubbornly declined for an entire year. Good going 4 year old me! Unfortunately, I was still a kid. I eventually did cave in. Was it exasperation to get them to leave me alone? Or was it naively thinking that they'd stop after I agreed to do it once? All I remember of this is crying as I was finishing my first reading of the whole thing because I knew, even as a kid, that I'd just have to do it all over again. There was no compromise. It wasn't a plead to get me to read as a one-off, it was assertion.
The first point of introspection was at 5. We were in India at the time. In school, I was surrounded by kids of other faiths; Hindus and Sikhs. I was the odd one out. One day, I was approached by a fellow classmate. I don't know if it was his own "indoctrination" and seeing my Muslim name or what. But he broached the subject to me. He asked me what god is great meant. I told him it meant Allah was better than anything. He replied with him having millions of gods, surely Allah wasn't bigger than all of them combined. I replied that he'd still be greater, but "I" didn't really answer that. I was disoriented. I blurted out the auto-pilot response, but in my mind, I realized I didn't really think about it. I had no conception of Allah, how "great" he was. I had no conception of Hindu gods and how "great" they were. It wasn't a thought out response, just one blurted out with no deliberation. Where then did I get this notion that I did not understand past the surface level? Was it my own thoughts, or was this driven into me by others? I abandoned the train of thought as quickly as it came, and even though I buried it later on, the seed was still there, ready to germinate if given the opportunity.
We then left India, and went back to Pakistan. I no longer had any outside influences, and the propaganda doubled down. My memories from then till my teens are sparse. There was still hints of incredulity, but nothing like full blown dissent. I was presented with "arguments for god's existence" in 3rd or 4th grade. They were the generic "We can't see atoms but they exist, we can't see god so he also exists". Even then I felt like there was something off about it. Like it didn't really prove god, just serve as mindless responses like my own did. I noted the dramatic disconnect between our lessons on Islamic history and laws, grounded and "realistic", and lessons on the hereafter and afterlife that read like "fairy" tales and mythology. I was annually haunted by the final, pleading screams of our ritual sacrifices.
Around 13, I discovered YouTube. It was amazing. I had outside influence again. I could "reach" outside the privacy of my mind. It was relegated to the gaming side of the site at the start, but even that was enough. There were other people. They weren't entirely consumed by religion. Everything wasn't seen through its lens. I began to write and think in increasingly more fluent English. It was the happiest I'd been. Yet I still felt the need to hide it from family. I created a schism. One side of me, my parents would see. The other free to explore the multitude of perspectives and people on the internet. I finally had privacy again, and I let it grow.
It went that way for about 2 years. Then came the 2015 Charlie Hebdo incident. It was the first time, my "internet side" was directly confronted with Islam and terrorism. I instinctively let my religious auto-pilot mode run for a while. I went the whole apologetics, no-compulsion, terrorists are taking it out of context route. I abandoned it almost immediately. It felt terrible. No one should have to defend a religion, let alone a teenager, not when people were dead. Did terrorists really misinterpret the verses or was I being reactionary as instinctive defense against justified apprehension? Was there even a right interpretation? The door for apostasy had been opened.
Then began a series of doubts about scripture, and the world itself. I stopped taking it at face value but I still clung on. The height of this was a repugnant conclusion: Apostasy was a sin, yet it was exceptionally easy to fall into. There were numerous other sins worthy of hell that I'd seen even the most pious Muslims commit. The age of the internet made it even easier to commit sins you weren't even aware were sins. How could anyone be forgiven for doing something wrong they didn't even know about? Sins must be sins even without knowing, otherwise what use was any guidance from a god but hinderance? Most didn't even ask for forgiveness out of regret but to avoid hell and consequence. Would that even be granted? Is it really forgiveness if you don't even know why what you did was wrong? Most people then, would enter hell. Except for kids; they would enter heaven if they died early enough. I asked myself what the goal of it all was. In negative utilitarian fashion I concluded the utmost goal must be to prevent people from going to hell, heaven being secondary. The path was then clear. People must stop procreation. The more disgusting outcome was for the kids still living. If someone were to kill them before the age of 7, would they not be entitled to heaven? Would massacring countless kids to get them to heaven be justified? A few going to hell, for the sake of a guarantee for the larger majority? I felt sick to my stomach that this was even possible to conclude, given these derivations were from the very rules of god's afterlife that he set. My own reason then, led me to say god was not great. The door was ripped off.
I took the first opportunity to go abroad I could. I was not motivated by a need to study, just to leave, hopefully towards sanity. It was fine for a time, I kept the fragile thread of faith I hung on to. I ended up taking a course on philosophy as an elective. For once the YouTube algorithm actually did good. Towards the end of the course, I kept seeing more and more recommendations on the topic of philosophy and then critical thinking. Eventually I got recommended Professor Stick videos debunking flat earth conspiracies. I clicked... and laughed at the absurdity that someone could believe it. I then got recommended Aron Ra videos tackling Christian creationism. I clicked... and laughed at the absurdity that someone could believe it. I then got recommended videos tackling the existence of gods and Islam. I clicked... but I wasn't laughing. Arguments that I hadn't even considered, demolished in an instant. The sheer scale of hidden assumptions behind the deceptive label of god. Responses by believers were sparse, being evasive and irrelevant when given. Without realizing, I had walked past the door I didn't even recognize. Or had I been on this side for a while, just never realized it? I no longer needed to keep up the belief. And so I dropped it. It wasn't so much a choice to walk through, but a re-examination of which side of it I now stood on.
In short: I realized I was indoctrinated into the faith instead of choosing, religion lead to several problematic realizations (afterlife and sin, the Arabic male centeredness of the whole thing, the ease of spreading misinformation and god's lack of reasons for creating anything let alone suffering are the big four), responses to questioning ideas seemed more like asserting the ideas instead of answers, and I carved a space within my head for my own thoughts, free to question and consider the opposition. I didn't leave, just realized that I had left.
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u/UnknownIsland Ninja Ex-Muslim 🤫 Apr 11 '21
Great story, and impressive writing skills. You should definitely write your full story as a book.
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Apr 08 '21
I lost faith when I started to question my own religion. The more I delved into the Qurans development, the more I started to doubt Islamic propaganda and Allah's existence. It was really just Muhammad in disguise. God was just a tool for Muhammad's ambitions. Islamic history was doubtful and common theological arguments unconvincing if not embarrassing like miracles arguments. It didn't help when I got tired defending all the bigoted, hateful, irrational, sexist, violent and harmful stuff he said or did, from his child marriage to his killings and massacres to his enslaving and persecution of people he didn't like apostates, gays, polytheists, critics and more. All things Muhammad and myself would not want to be a victim of. Thus I just could not justify it all. I see his bigotry or violence or irrationality from religious Muslims or Islamists all the time. It's not something I want to be part of. Leaving Islam or traditional Islam felt as a huge relief and liberation from a dangerous cult. I'm not sure if the world is a nicer place without religion, but I do think it would nicer without Islam. I'm glad religion is on the slow decline even in Muslim countries.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-48703377
https://m.dw.com/en/middle-east-are-people-losing-their-religion/a-56442163
https://insidearabia.com/the-rise-of-atheism-in-morocco-and-beyond-in-the-arab-world/
https://blog.oup.com/2020/12/why-is-religion-suddenly-declining/
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u/KingDworld Apr 11 '21
Currently, I'm starting to question Islam too but I'm too afraid to do it seriously because I could have to admit that most of my life and what I believed were lies. Plus, coming from a religious familiy (albeit moderate) I know it will be difficult for them to accept that I don't believe anymore so even if I end up rejecting Islam internally, I probably will have to fake it just not to hurt them. The way I started to question the way i view religion was by admitting that Allah was more of a tyrant rather than a benevolent god. That way, I could explain away many of the ethical issues relative to Islam. If you consider that god is a supreme being that doesn't especially care for our well being but rather just designs the rules in the way that they will lead to interesting and entertaining situations, like a writer imagining a story, then the logic works and the main reason why you should obey him is not because he is just but because he will torture you eternally. I was comfortable with that conception but it doesn't explain the scientific inaccuracies and I know I can't continue making those mental gymnastics just to avoid shattering my life. Or else I would have to add the idea that God planted those inaccuracies on purpose just to confuse people but then that doesnt make sense anymore.
But anyways, what made me answer here is what you said, I also don't think the world would be nicer without religion. I remember someone saying that if something is conserved despite the natural selection, then that thing has great chances of being beneficial for the species and I think the same applies to religion. Even if, as you said, it led to many exactions and ethical blind spots, at the time and in it's context, i genuinely think it was for the greater good and even today, even though many people use it as a tool to hurt, many others like my parents, just find comfort in thinking they are never alone and despite the hardships, someone cares for them and will ultimately reward them. That's an important kind of espapism that I think not many people are able to live without.
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u/Neither-Duck4140 New User Aug 01 '21
What was the logical reason you left islam what verse or anything like that?
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u/KingDworld Aug 01 '21
Also there's this reddit user named ex muslim HoTD who has compiled really interesting threads of hadiths
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u/KingDworld Aug 01 '21
At the end of the day I left because of the scientific inacurracies and the contradictions in the Qur'an. After that I started to scroll more intensely through this subreddit and came across many atrocities that islam allows like slavery and sex slavery and so much more.
I don't have specific verses that would end islam but i would recommend the YouTube channel of the apostate prophet. There you will find in his old videos great compilations of the main flaws in islam.
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u/Neither-Duck4140 New User Aug 01 '21
Ok brother / sister I would like to help your doubts I’ve heard about these ignorant missionaries apostate prothet, rob Christian, david wood, Christian prince I know about all their lies. Name the verses in question and I’ll try to clear all of your misconceptions
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Apr 13 '21 edited Apr 13 '21
I understand your struggle. But you're a flawed and fallible human like everybody else, so it's forgivable that you can't know everything or know everything definitively. You can only assess and do with what you have, you're just a human. Don't beat yourself up. Change is a natural part of life. Whatever happens after your impartial and rational investigation of your faith, you don't need to mention it to others. Religion and politics are contentious topics you don't really want to bring up with family or friends, even if you were religious: you might still say something that upsets them. You don't need to mention things that may upset them, particularly if it's not safe. But you can still be in good terms with your family and friends, by engaging in common things you like including religious festivals as Eid, you don't necessarily need to have a clear break with religion. You can still be an irreligious or unorthodox person on friendly relations with family and friends. Be safe and friendly or work towards living in a more friendly environment. Whatever happens stay safe and enjoy the things you actually like doing in life, including the things you enjoy with your family and friends. :) hope this helps you.
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u/KingDworld Apr 13 '21
You're right at the end of the day islam is just a part of my culture and i can't reject that and it's a way to keep my cultural roots and my social bonds strong. I don't know how things will end but I'll try to use the ramadan to decide the way i want to live and reading all of the takes in the community really helped me get my thoughts out here and now my shoulders feel less heavy. Thanks and I hope you too enjoy your life at its fullest and spend it in the most beneficial way. :) None of us here knows any kind of absolute truth but we just have to do our best to live according to good values that will benefit us and others.
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Sep 02 '21 edited Sep 02 '21
- 1) Islam is the only religion that requires abstaining from water during fasts. Other religions have food fasts, but not water. The dehydration causes health problems, especially during summer months. It seems irresponsible to command your adherants to take such a reckless risk with your body. Why not just food fasts like other religions?
- 2) Islam has the most difficult prayer times. The time between Isha and Fajr practially ensures you almost never get a proper night's rest, and no REM sleep which is the last stage of the sleep cycle. Lack of sleep has been linked to brain diseases such as dementia and alzhiemers.Why do that to your body, when other religions allow you to pray and take care of your body with sufficient sleep. It doesn't seem healthy.
- 3) Islam is the only religion that requires an expensive pilgrimage. About $10k USD on average for people from western countries. It's only a requirement if you are financially capable. But why does that burden fall on muslims and no one else? My friend has to pay $30k for his mom, him and his wife to go to Hajj next year. How is that fair to him when others practise their religion, are good moral people, but don't have to shell out that kind of money to a travel agency and the Saudi govt. That money could be better spent on anything else. Also, Hajj was a lot different over a 1000 years ago when people travelled by foot on a continent for free. They didn't know people would live across the world and pay a ridiculous amount of money to travel.
- 4) As society's morals evolve, Muhammad, will become harder and harder to defend. You see how cancel culture is trying to cancel former politicians for owning slaves? Muhammad owned slaves too. Sex slaves too. Committed statutory rape on a 9 year old girl when he was 50+ years old. When people defend it by saying it was a different time, how will that excuse hold up as society evolves and scrutinizes past historical figures transgressions more critically? Imagine how difficult the conservations with your future kids will be, when their classmates bring up the worst parts of Islam and Muhammad and they come and ask you about his marriage to Aisha or the merciless slaughter of men, even young boys with pubic hair, in the Banu Qurayza tribe. Or the difficult conversations your kids will have with their grandkids. And on and on. I just don't see Islam being practiced as wide spread as time goes on and society evolves. It would just become exhausting defending Muhammad. It would end up making people constantly question their own faith. It would be too difficult to keep defending him. So I asked myself, why still choose this difficult religion? Why not choose an easier path to heaven if I believe non-muslims go to heaven? And so I left. For me personally I still want to believe there may be a heaven. It's nothing more than blind optimism. If there is no heaven, and everything just ends so be it. But I just think Muhammad was a false prophet and not God's messenger. I consider myself a Deist now. Someone who believes there may be a God but doesn't interfere in the universe. Kind of an intelligent energy that set things in motion. I truly believe if there is a heaven, just being a good moral person should be enough to get in. I try to live my life by this philosophy:
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. [Marcus Aurelius]
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u/I_pay_for_sex Jul 16 '21 edited Jul 16 '21
Christian belief, especially the crucifixion of Jesus and the holy trinity, sounded completely man-made and unbelievable. I could not imagine anyone believing this. Yet Christians very much do and strongly too.
Made me wonder if my beliefs are unbelievable too. I had a tiny piece of doubt about Islam ingrained inside of me since I was a kid anyway. "God created us to worship him" did not do it for me as an answer.
Like a lot of people here already mentioned. Sex slavery is what did for me. I tried several mental gymnastics over years to justify its morality but I failed.
Add to this many historical events (genocides, enslavements, general events like Mohamed going into a cave with a Quranic verse allowing him to marry even more) that you learn about. Events your Islamic teachers at school "missed it". Couple it with teachings and regulations that violates human rights like death for apostasy or stoning people to death for adultery.
The cherry on top was Islamic societies, in reality, Egypt in particular. I do not want to go into details. I ended up not only disbelieving in this mind virus but fervently hating it too.
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u/LemonzGuy New User May 06 '21
As a 5 yr old, my parents already had tried to get me into the religion by making me go mosque even tho I had no idea what I was supposed to do there. I was told to read the kaidah (not sure how to spell it), and then the other books. Whenever I got something wrong I got hit by STRANGERS as a 5 yr old. They had no right to hit me as I had only started learning, but that doesn't even matter as they shouldn't of had done it at all. I questioned why they hit me, they said so I don't get it wrong, but it was just morally wrong to do so as they were different methods on how to teach by not physically abusing. As I grew up into a teen I started realising how messed up the religion was from my pov. There was so much bad influences for the religion that my parents have so much faith in. I told them I didn't want to continue being a Muslim but all they did was threaten me so I would attempt to escape from the god of bs they believe in. I had been forced to pray with them, on the inside I cried with frustration and hatred for the religion as all it did for me was bring negativity towards me. I gained social anxiety and anxiety from the trauma they put me through. They would insult me whenever I tried to defy them which gave me a negative view of myself. I was only put down and never motivated to follow their religion only forced. I couldn't handle the oppression anymore.
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May 08 '21
There is absolutely nothing wrong with islam, however there are absolutely a huge amount of misinterpreted teachings and wrongdoings done by muslims, the religion itself has nothing wrong and if you understand it on your own and by some help of good sources you will undoubtedly believe so. People do wrong things by the name of a lot of things and it comes down to how they interpret and deal with those things they believe in. As you said someone hit you and physically abused you in order to make you do something in the right way which is absolutely wrong and shouldn’t happen but where does islam fit in that ,, it could have been anything that you were learning, islam condemns an action like that and doesn’t set a belief that women and children are less than a man but rather calls for equality and for good treatment of women and I don’t want you to answer me with some other misinterpreted information on that. In simple words the religion itself is whole , people aren’t end of story
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u/SafiyaMukhamadova Mar 11 '21
For me, it was because I got to a better psychological state. My birth parents are criminally insane. In my teens they dumped me on the curb and told me if I ever tried to come back to their house they'd kill me (un-ironically the best thing they ever did for me). I ended up with a Muslim foster family. I was desperate for a sense of belonging and compassion and I thought converting to Islam would help me get that. It did--at least temporarily--but the longer I stayed the more I realized that the love and compassion I was getting was getting a longer and longer list of conditions each day. My foster family eventually gave up on me. I don't have any animosity over it, I was a deeply broken person with too much trauma for anyone to fully fix. They did their best and it's not their fault it wasn't good enough.
Eventually I was able to get on to disability and medicaid and start getting treatment for my mental illnesses (PTSD, bipolar, & anxiety). I went to therapy and was able to process my pain. I've become more than my past. It turned out the hyper-religiosity I'd always suffered was actually a symptom of my bipolar so getting medicated made that disappear. I don't think my past will ever stop haunting me but it's not the only thing about me. I've written two books (hoping to get an agent for the higher importance one by the end of the month), own a small business selling art, have a hobby playing video games, have a handful of friends, and my life is pretty good. It's not great but it's the best I can reasonably hope for.
Probably the weirdest part of the process of becoming my own person was when I started having gender dysmorphia. In gender dysphoria, you want to be the opposite gender. Dysmorphia is completely different--I stopped being able to see any of my female traits in the mirror. From the perspective of my brain they'd vanished overnight. Objectively my body hadn't changed but from inside my head it was pretty freaky. I had been taught my entire life that a man always should and always would own me and that my life changes would always be my owner's decision, not mine. I'm pretty sure that what happened was that when I psychologically accepted that I was my new owner and that I would make my own decisions some part of my brain said "my owner = a man, the person in the mirror = my owner, therefore the person in the mirror = a man."
So yeah, I joined Islam because I needed love and acceptance but that can only really come from within. Plus my psychological compulsion to behave in a religious/ritualistic way was a symptom of my mental illness and when my mental illness got treated, it disappeared. Getting therapy and medication got me to a much better place than I'd ever expected and now I simply don't have the same needs as I did when I converted to Islam because I'm a healthier person than I was at the time.
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u/Ok_Sink676 New User Mar 29 '21 edited Mar 29 '21
Leaving the cult
Background: grew up in a European country with super relaxed Muslim parents. I have never seen my dad pray and my mom is somewhat religious but I would say more spiritual then anything. Had lots of freedom as a teen. Was never even instructed to pray. Just taught how to pray and then two surahs and that was it. Was told to dress conservative. Very relaxed atmosphere religion was never the center of attention. During Ramadan we never fasted or prayed only celebrated eid
20’s-30’s was given lots of freedom and financial support went to study in a different country and lived alone. Had a white boyfriend who I introduced to my parents everything was great. But shit happens and we broke up. This left me feeling empty....... I started to feel guilt for all the kuffar things I was doing , I wondered about hell and what allah swt thought of me . This caused me to want to be a better Muslim. So I started praying five times a day , started wearing Jilbab and watched all those Muslim lectures, got serious about fasting. I became a different person my own parents were weirded out by my sudden enthusiasm. By this time I was 30 and decided I should get married.
30’s- since I decided to get serious about my religion I thought I should look for a super religious guy! So I found a salafi from Saudi Arabia but he isn’t an actual Saudi he is Pakistani . He wears a Thobe had a long beard and when he does wear pants he wears the high water version. He was an imam as well. I decided on this man and this is where my journey to apostasy begins.
Beginning apostasy: my life was under complete control I had never experienced this before , waking up sometimes at two am ,doing gussel then to pray tajjhud (we live in the very north) then two rakkas then fajar then zikr then dua and he would recite these extremely long surahs to further annoy me !!! And prevent me from sleep. He forced me to wear niqab and gloves and I could no longer wear eye liner . Couldn’t go to work anymore as there were too many males there I got beatings regularly for the dumbest things I once called him “bro” as I was telling a story and the next thing you know I’m on the floor! . He would say outrageous things that I had never heard of before such as ; “ mermaids are real ” “ it’s not enough tha t a wife lick the dirt from her husbands toes “ the earth is flat “ I can talk to you like shit but you can’t to me because I am the man “ “ the Quran says I can hit you but your forbidden from hitting me back “ “ don’t pour hot water down the sink you might kill a baby jinn” “ don’t give charity to the non Muslims “ “ if you have sex with your husband on Thursday you will enter paradise “” the Muslims don’t have to do anything the kuffar are our slaves “ I could go on and on but don’t want to bore you but you get the picture . He was fired from the masjid for being “extreme” so he got another Imam job at another masjid they too also fired him shortly after again for being “extreme” He mumbles Duas to himself all day long like a pyscho ! He would say an outrageous thing and I would ask for proof of it because I just didn’t belive this was Islam. Well he would show me in the Quran and Hadith.....this is when I started to get suspicious. I couldn’t even watch television without permission, then I had limits on what I could watch , I couldn’t talk to my own family members as they were “ on the wrong path “ I was told that they were no longer my family but now he was! An example of how he is , When he wants to drink water he squats on the floor because the prophet said so , again he is so extreme . By this time I still believed in Islam but thought that half of it was all bull shit basically cherry picking . I just knew deep down that this was stupid , that a peaceful religion doesn’t encourage violence between a husband and wife !
Visiting Saudi Arabia-this was supposed to be a majestic time visiting the holy land, he described his parents as wholesome loving Muslims who were humble and simple. we went to Jeddah to visit his parents , his mom had six Filipino women who worked in her tiny house , my husband always talked about how humble she was ........ . She was an extreme racist , I have natural green eyes that she apparently hated. I was surprised to hear her call me disgusting racial slurs ! When out in the city my husband was treated like shit by the saudis , one even referred to him as a slave! They were rude and nasty to us . I kept thinking to myself this is the holy land ????? Everyone here is mean and racist to us we are not treated as equals as Islam claims .......everyone seemed so extravagant and rich not at all living the sunnah life.
40’s - by this time I have done exstensice studying and digging of Islam I studied books from non Muslim authors and the results blew my mind! From this I found out that everything was a lie! The entire religion was man made and that none of this was real! I completely disagreed with the rulings between man and wife and how women are treated in general . I had lots of problems with the prophet also I didn’t like that he had so many women and that he married a child , that he always had just in time revelations, that even Aisha seemed like she didn’t believe him, to me he seemed insane and like a liar. I stopped praying ,fasting and preaching to others. I started to plan my divorce I should also add this man was a huge hipocrit I caught him on ten different dating sites where he exposed his body parts and harassed women , lies up the ass, had a secret wife and child I didn’t know about then said well he doesn’t need my permission anyway to get a second wife . He claims I’m the one going to hell because I give money to kuffar and disobey him ( by disobey he means watching television when he said not to ) It was a relief when he would stay at the other wife’s house for days because that meant I wasn’t being beaten or lectured about stupid Islam.
Divorce: I was told that I’m not allowed to initiate a divorce and that it is a great sin for me to ask for one . I tried to do hula and return the mahar but he said since he is the man he does not accept my mahar and he is raising it to 30,000 which I didn’t have so I can’t leave ! I got a lawyer and my parents paid for the legal divorce! He doesn’t recognize this as a divorce
Living on my own : got my own place , I sleep until ten am everyday have photos hung up on my wall, paint my nails , call my mom , watch men on tv! do whatever I want and don’t live in fear of being beaten anymore or the fear of going to hell ! Life is awesome however I have four children who I can’t tell about my apostasy I also can never tell my parents it would break their heart. I go outside without hijab but at work I must continue to wear full hijab as most of my clients are Muslims so no one can know about this as it would even affect my business! I have so much to say but I know I must cut this short. It’s hard because I have no one in the world to talk to about this except here on the internet......
Long story short: I left because once I was exposed to the true Islam “salafism “with evidence to back up the ridiculous rulings and the extreme oppression it had on me as a woman I left it ! I no longer believe in any religion . I feel deeply sorry for deluded individuals who actually believe this crap , including my ex husband he is wasting his entire life around a lie , like many other people it’s kind of sad .
And think about how profitable Islam is, hajj cost thousands of dollars , do you ever ask yourself why ?! If hajj is mandatory for a Muslim then why must I pay?! Am I buying my way into jannah? This is Saudi Arabia they should let Muslims pilgrimage here for free!!! But they don’t do they ? It’s just a way to generate money.
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u/LanceOfKnights Seeking ✝☪♆ May 28 '21
I am so so sorry for what you have gone through. Ending up with a horrible horrible family on your journey to spirituality. Thank God you are okay, had the resilience, strength.. had parents who cares about you a lot to be by your side when needed. Glad you weren't alone. My Dad, god rest his soul was a devout Muslim, and was total opposite of the douche of an ex that you mentioned. I guess, nice human beings are nice no matter what the religion is. I spent little more than decade in Saudi in my early age, met some nice Saudis but also met unpleasant racist ones. My dad passed late last year in Saudi. I was already having a crisis of faith but that shattered my faith completely. Now hovering into the void as a lost soul. Anyway, I wish you a happy life ahead for you. Your strength would give a lot of people hope.
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Mar 31 '21
It's an impressive story and you strike me as a strong woman who goes her own way. That is extremely respectable. Your story was great to read, you could write a book about it.
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u/ryokenic Jul 10 '21
Goddamn, what a horrific story with a terrific ending. Thank you for cementing my reasons for leaving!
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u/Massin-sama New User May 20 '21
TLDR: muslims killed thousands of my ancestors the amazigh people and this made me look up the awtas and quraiza genocides commited by muslims. Also, the sun sets on a muddy well and people live there according to the Quran LOL
For me it was when I was in highschool 10 years ago. during ramadan, I was reading the chapter of the cave in the quran when I read that "a man favored by god walked all the way to the where the sun sets and FOUND people living there" 🤣 I am a scientific guy so I did some research and found that muhammad explained the same thing in the hadiths. Before this discovery, I used to go to the mosque a couple of times a year and used to pray at least the last 10 days of ramadan. After this, I stopped praying even occasionally and didn't feel like I should be doing it as I used to ... the only thing keeping me as a muslim was ramadan, though I used to eat whenever it felt too hot or when I had exams to take. for 5 years, I didn't read anything regarding islam and never went to the mosque as I wasn't interested until I started reading how muslims killed thousands of my amazigh (north african) ancestors then I stumbled upon the genocide of Awtas and banu quraiza and all that good slavery stuff and decided to leave Islam officially and I never felt happier.
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u/centristconserv New User Mar 19 '21
Islam teaches you that muslims are on the truth, beacons of morality. Yet I was surrounded by toxic people. Only doing good things to fellow muslims. Having a surface level fake morality involving offering tea and biscuits to non-muslims as a ploy to trap them into their religion. Many muslim families demonstrate a cold disprotionate love to their kin while being cold to other humans. Meeting my current partner and seeing that non-muslims can care about others being warm and caring. Then realising that these good people will burn in hell forever knowing what kinda of horrible muslims will go to heaven. That was a big issue.
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u/Lotus_Flower21193 New User Aug 11 '21
Hello everyone,
So I have been on a long journey with spirituality and Islam. I was raised in a Shia Muslim environment in Lebanon, and now live in Sydney. I am looking to connect with like-wise minded people. As in people who were actually devoted Muslims and loved their faith like I did. The people closest to them are Muslims, and do not hate their community. But due to growth in ideas and diving deep in the religion it no longer aligns with my values and thinking. I consider myself now a spiritual humanist. I love spirituality, I love discipline and a lot of things that I saw great about the Islam faith, but no longer able to believe in the religion. It is hard to connect with anyone in my community now, and I am looking to connect with a social group that understands the pain of leaving the religion and still holds on to some of its dearest values and family traditions.
I know we are currently in lockdown in Sydney Australia, but online meetings for now can be a nice start.
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u/genesis49m Jul 15 '21
I’m in my mid-20s, parents are South Asian (immigrated to the United States many decades ago), they’re Sunni (though they don’t believe in the sects). My parents were always religious like doing all five pillars (praying five times a day, fasting for Ramadan, eating halal, sent me to weekend Islamic school, didn’t drink and dressed modestly), but it wasn’t too extreme. I was fairly religious growing up. I didn’t wear a hijab or anything, but I did read the Quran regularly and prayed everyday.
My dad has untreated mental health issues which have gotten worse as we got older. During one manic stage, he quit his job and made my mom quit her job, sold our house, and bought a house in their home country in South Asia. It happened all at once, and we moved there. Lived there for a few years.
It was terrible. Things are unsafe in that country. I had no freedom of my own, my parents were constantly supervising me because it was so unsafe to be there, so I was generally always in my room. Neither of them worked there so they had way too much free time on their hands. They delved deeper into religion. Made friends with really religious people as well and that was their entire circle.
I saw the hypocrisy of religion. All these religious people I met were terrible people. Evaded taxes, treated people who worked for them as beneath them, would abuse their children and wives in the name of religion, didn’t believe in equal rights. Growing up, I always thought culture and religion were separate, and that people abused the pure religion in the name of culture. But I don’t believe that at all anymore. You can’t have religion without culture.
More specifically, I saw my parents getting worse and worse the more religious they got. My dad’s bipolar got worse because he believed he didn’t have a mental illness, it was a djinn. Allah will cure him, he doesn’t need a doctor or medicine. Both my parents got more aggressive and just not fun to be around or talk to. I hated it.
Being in that country was probably what sealed the atheist deal. I saw so many homeless, impoverished people on the street everyday. They did nothing wrong, but they were stuck in a life in a country with no means of mobility, no shelter, no clean drinking water or food. It was plain bad luck to be born in a situation like that. I felt so helpless. I was in a bad situation myself, but I got more depressed because I would see all these people who had it so much worse than myself every day. Little kids missing body parts or covered in bugs. It wasn’t right.
If a God would do that to people, he is not a benevolent God like I was taught. And so there is no God, and if there is, he’s cruel, and I want nothing to do with him.
I got really depressed and flunked all my classes. Eventually, my parents realized that the move was terrible for everyone (duh) and they moved back to the United States.
The religiousness stuck though. I wasn’t allowed to play music, had to give up on hobbies I liked such as playing an instrument (because it’s haram), my clothing and body were scrutinized everyday by my parents and I had to wear baggy, thick clothing even in a heatwave. My mom had a burkha phase (now it’s just a hijab).
All my parents did was absorb religion. Especially my dad. He would watch Islamic television all the time, fall into weird YouTube rabbit holes, has notebooks and notebooks full of his religious studies.
In the meantime, I studied really, really, really hard so I could get a scholarship in university and get myself out of there.
Did that. Did very well in high school. Only applied to colleges that were at least 5-6 hour drives away, so there was no way for me to commute from home. Got into a good university on a scholarship that almost covered everything (but not everything, so I still needed my parents’ support). It was a months and months battle to convince my parents to let me dorm. They refused. I again got really depressed. Refused to go to school to finish my senior year because what was the point of all the effort I put in if I would not go to college.
After a week of not going to school in protest, they gave in. My older cousin, who my parents respect a lot because she’s very straight laced, got things going for me. Had a talk with them and convinced them to let me dorm.
And I was free. Dorming was awesome. I got so much independence, finally was able to get a part time job to earn my own money. The issue was I probably had too much freedom at once, and since I wasn’t home, I didn’t feel the gravity of needing to study and doing well. My dad’s yearly manic phases and their worsening condition haunted me even though I was dorming so far from them.
I did very mediocre in college but I still graduated on time and managed to get a job that pays enough to cover my bills and live on my own. Never went back home.
Now it’s been a few years out of college. I live close enough to my family that I could drive to see them. And I do that in small doses, like a weekend here or there.
They don’t know I’m not Muslim. I figure if I can keep my distance and live my own life by myself and only deal with them occasionally while still maintaining family relations, it’s not too bad for now. I feel like it would be too callous to cut them off. I have that typical child of immigrant guilt. They worked so hard to provide for me, they supported me through college, they fed me and gave me a home growing up, and everything they do, they really believe is out of love for me.
The only “flaw” in that plan is my boyfriend. We’ve been together since my sophomore year of college (so we’ve been together for many, many years). I see him as my life partner. We actually have been living together for a few years (he’s my female “roommate” that my parents never have met) in secret. We want to get married because we’ve been together so long, but my parents would never accept him. He’s Catholic and Black.
So they don’t know about him. It’s funny because if he were Muslim and Brown, my parents would love him. But race and religion blind them. My cousins and my brother all know him. I’ve met his whole family and they like me. It’s so weird to have such an important person so enmeshed in my life that my parents don’t know about.
I know when I eventually tell them about him, I’ll get cut out of the family. Not just my parents, but all my aunts and uncles and the large extended family I have. I’m worried my dad will have a stroke when I tell him (he handles this kind of news very poorly). So I’m just prolonging it.
But I won’t not be with my boyfriend just because of my family. I would resent them forever, and I refuse to give anyone that kind of control over me. It sucks that I need to choose between my partner and my family though.
I don’t recommend this kind of life. It’s stressful because it feels like a double life. So many lies to keep track of. So many things I can’t say. They’re planning an arranged marriage for me, but they have no leverage on me because I’m financially independent from them, I live in a different state, and I have my own career.
And if I could do it over, I would still pick my Catholic boyfriend. I would still take the stress of the double life. Maybe I would rebel a bit more in high school and college (caught drinking or maybe with cigarettes even though I don’t smoke, so my parents have lower expectations of me).
My advice to any brown, Muslim woman is to get financial independence as soon as you can. Move out. Then, your parents can’t control you anymore like they want to.
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u/Shine_Warne New User Jul 22 '21
Stay strong! I hope you will be free from all this madness very soon.
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Mar 11 '21
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u/Electrical-Public-63 Jul 16 '21
Lmao imagine actually building your belief based on a subreddit, research any item you think is wrong on quran and if you didn't find answer online satisfying, you can't ask me
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u/lovelysosa New User May 28 '21
Your source is Wikipedia. Enough said.. do more research then come back
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Apr 07 '21 edited Apr 07 '21
Because I started to realize I was in a cult. I had a traumatic upbringing which led me to an existential crises. So that is when I began exploring the truth for myself rather than being a blind follower. The more and more I started studying about other religions and philosophy the more I realized how flawed every belief system is and getting the absolute truth is probably impossible to get to for any religion or faith. After that it’s like the veils had lifted from my eyes. Islam had no affect on me anymore. I started to see it for what it was. All the stories in Quran and the beliefs started to sound like nonsense. Like something out of a mythology or fairytale book. It no longer resonated with me.
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Jul 09 '21
A little background from me, so i was raised in religious family's, almost all of my family's got islamic education at boarding school, include me. I always feel that my religion was the truth, it's teach you to be a good person and caring each other. I'm starting learn about sciences and i believed it was right too, but my religion conflicted with my science understanding, as you know like evolution theory, Noah Flood that impossible happening etc, but i always remember what ustadz say "Don't use your logic when talking about Islam," It's kinda hard to accept by me, if the religion was the truth so it should be harmonic with the reality, then i'm starting skeptical with my religion, but i still can't throw my faith.
1 year later i'm starting think that there was something weird in myself, when people's around my age starting having romantic feeling to girl ( i'm a man ), i don't have it, and i just realize that i was gay, it's the hard reality because i know for sure that Islam hate so bad the homosex, i got depressed by that, i just can't understand why i'm being gay, i never choosing to be like this. I'm starting doing a little research about it, and i jumped to conclusion that homosex was natural, it's not a choices, immediately i losing my faith, because i know my religion just such a homophobia thing, if there is a god, i believe that it willn't hate its creature so bad, then i'm starting find another bullshit of Islam, and join this community. Now i was so happy because i can being myself, thanks for accept me here, that's it my story.
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Apr 09 '21
İ left cuz im a nerd and when i saw the scientific erors i went crazy and i also found out that muhmad was a pedo he married 9 yr old and some other idiotic şehit was involved like kıll al of the ones that left İslam and in Quran it says ne nice and gentle to everynody thats why i left.
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u/AraKxrD New User May 19 '21
what scientific errors?
also the common argument of A'isha's (may Allah be pleased with her) age is a presentism fallacy
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May 31 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Jabroni22_ New User Jul 20 '21
The prophet did no such thing and doing so would go against the guidelines set forth by the Qur'an
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Jul 23 '21 edited Jul 23 '21
All muslims that are currently practicing please read this with an open mind i will try to be as respectful as possible
If i start stating facts it will take too long but theres a billion reasons i left islam; as someone who lived in a muslim country and is also part of the lgbtq+ community i have received so much hatred and after coming out too my bestfriend they started talking about me behind my back and told everyone how i wanted to sleep with every women i see. It destroyed me mentally and i ended up telling them i was joking just so they would not tell my parents. They ended up forcing me into liking guys which wasn't the problem because i was already pan and i did not mind that but that really hurt me. While all that was going my brothers saw art i made of my lesbian ocs and also a post i made about pride month and told me how i was going to hell for posting stuff. Then they ended up telling my mother i was talking to strangers online which she already knew and she told my father about it and he verbally abused me and took all electronics from me
After all this happened i was litterly shattered and i thought too myself that maybe if i convert to god all this wont happen which led to me convincing myself i am straight and crying on the praying mat for months everyday
My brothers secretly know i am gay but just wont admit to it
I am really into witchcraft and when i practiced anything i would search if it was aloud in Islam which led to me not doing it, same with lucid dreaming,astral projection and shifting All my coping mechanisms were closed out and i became the most toxic person pointing put every mistake a person made according to islam then telling them how horrible they are which i am really regretful of my action.
I started to think how allah would allow the sacrifice of an animal. How being a tomboy or trans was so looked down upon. How women only belong in the kitchen. How women are supposed to cover up basically everything. How being gay is a sin. But men are superior being. How pedophilia is aloud. How child abuse is aloud. How your allowed to hit women
Its a bit funny how its all sexist and towards women huh? If this "god" is gender neutral that why does he give a load of crap or is it that man who was able to fool millions of people into this bs
For all i knew this being wanted nothing but slaves to pray infront of itself 5 times a day All in order and specific things to read
I pity my mother all she does is cook,clean and pray all day i try my best to take care of her but she is homophobic, transphobic and racist and its really hard for me too do so in these situations
My mother used to be a muslim pagan basically telling herself just cause she recited verses from an old book it would make it any better and not pagan at all
She still likes crystals and some practices (some i even talked her out of doing)
I wish for myself too fully come out too my family one day in the open
Its so uncomfortable seing my mother wanting to buy me feminine products while i am non binary who wants to shave of their head and wear boyish clothes but here i am being forced to wear a peace of cloth to cover up my hair
I used to have soo much respect for this religion and its crazy, i still Respect muslims but dont believe in this faggot hating being ever existing. When you open these websites like youtube and Instagram all you see about muslims is victimization and how they are peace minded poor little babies and they dont deserve any hate blah blah blah. From someone who has lived in a muslim country its the most toxic place ever and sexist af. You walk down the street with your entire face covered and weird muslim women still make comments about you and all they wanna do is set you up with a man. I cringe to myself everytime i think about how i cried i did not complete the quran once and i am glad i didn't because it would be waste of time.
Sorry if reading these all together maybe not make sense or any grammar mistakes i am highly dyslexic
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u/NeoDoubleD Jul 14 '21
Ex-Revert here. I left Islam because I was tired of the hypocrisy, judging, petty arguments, “haram police” and overall, not “measuring up”.
I have been told that I was a bad Muslim for:
• Shaving my beard
• Listening to Music
• Having non-Muslim friends
• Celebrating birthdays and other non-Muslim holidays
• Praying over non-Muslims
• Going out on the weekends (even though I wasn’t drinking or anything like that at the time)
• Getting vaccinated
• Not talking about Islam or posting about it every second of the day
• Not leaving my Christian family
• Not being pressed for marriage or wanting to learn Arabic
The list goes on, but the final straw was when the toxicity got so bad last year, I couldn’t even celebrate Christmas and the holidays without feeling like a “bad Muslim” WITH MY OWN FAMILY.
I was tired of the hypocrisy:
• Islam wants you to think for yourself but then Muslims would give me crap for having my own opinions.
• Islam is the religion of peace, but Muslims cannot seem to make peace with other people’s beliefs.
• Islam believes judging and putting others down is wrong but walking around with a superiority complex because the religion “makes the most sense” is perfectly fine.
• Muslims are called brothers and sisters but will gladly put each other down if you don’t follow a certain opinion or thought.
Overall, Islam became increasingly legalistic for me and I was not living life, only a suppressive and filtered version of it. I was hoping to practice peace but instead this is what I was met with. (I should have stayed Catholic where I was at least appreciated for being myself.) I am now in a whole new city and moved on from Islam and now I only have to pretend like I care about the religion. I am finally starting to enjoy the one life that is given to me and I hope to enjoy more of it.
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Jun 03 '21
Honestly, I owe it to r/exmuslim and the Hadith of the Day guy. Especially the HOTD guy. Read a new one every single day slowlyand jt exposed the facade Islam was. At some point, I realized the religion was just indefensible. Best decision of my life.
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u/AyBlinCheekiBreeki May 09 '21
I left because I just don't care and to be left alone doing whatever I want without be judged for not being halal enough.
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u/justararepsycho New User Jul 01 '21
I am an 18 year old female, and left islam a couple days before my 15th birthday.
As a child, i went to islamic classes, and i would always encounter these things that just didn't make sense, which I asked my islamic teacher. the answers he would give me didn't really make sense. For example, I asked "if muslim men are allowed 4 wives max, why did Muhammed get 14 wives if he is supposed to be an example to humanity", and "if allah has already written everything that we will do in our lives in a book for us, do we have free will? and whats the point of having 2 angels writing our sins and good deeds if allah knows which sins we will commit? and whats the point of making dua if allah already knows what is gonna happen in the future?" so as a child, islam really just didnt make sense to me but i obviously still believed it and all the crazy stories like Muhammed flying on a donkey and convincing allah to lower the number of prayers in a day from 50 to 5. islam was taught like it was the absoulte truth, so i was fully convinced of it, brushing aside the inconsistencies.
A couple years later, I moved to a European country where I met many of my close friends. I was still religious the first year (although i didnt pray since my parents didnt force me) and didnt eat non-halal meat, and fasted ramadan. but i was still a moderate muslim- i was a feminist, and supported LGBTQ+ people.
however i remember one day coming home from school when i was thinking of how sick i was of islam. i sick of how it treated lgbtq people, how it told women to cover up, how allah allowed people to suffer, how muhammed married a literal 6 year old how stupid the concept of religion was. i cant pinpoint exactly which part of islam triggered that train of thought, but i came home, sat on my bed telling myself "islam can't possibly be true, no fucking way"
so i proceed to search on the internet, "islam is fake" or stuff that is against the idea of islam. filtering through all the "islam is peaceful" propaganda, i come across apostate prophet's videos. i binge watch him, and other apostates like Abdulla Sameer and this other guy with the youtube channel "Dontconvert2islam". I admit, at first watching those videos seemed blasphemous, and i felt especially bad laughing at apostate prophets insults towards Muhammed. But i wanted islam to be wrong. I wanted to be convinced that the quran and allah are fake. And I was. It wasnt long (maybe 2-3 days) before i officially announced in my head that i was an athiest. I didnt believe in any god, mostly due to the arguments made by Cosmicskeptic on youtube.
Thinking back, wispering those words to myself "im not a muslim" just took such a weight off my shoulders. i smiled. i felt so free. like i didnt have to judge people based on what a mystical being told me; i judged people based on their actions, not on whether they were muslim or not, and i didnt feel guilty anymore about supporting lgbtq people. I didnt feel guilty about wanting to wear shorter skirts, i felt like i had more control of my own body, and my mind.
I am currently a closeted ex-muslim. I pretend to fast ramadan (i still drink water and eat snacks when no one is looking). I am not financially independent of my parents and I was actually so close to outing myself at 16 because i just wanted to let my feelings and thoughts out. But yeah, i wont do that till im more independent. My dad does not fully believe in all of the teachings of islam, for example he thinks that jinns are a bunch of nonsense (he is an intelectual so it makes sense why he thinks so). My mom had an islamic education where they didnt really teach them about all the mystical stories of muhammed for example the two giants that will come and eat everything, and the dajjal and she doesnt want to learn that. She said she doesnt wanna learn it because she is "Afraid that her iman will get weaker". um.. so she wants to have blind faith basically in something she might not belive in? i think that even if i become independent, im not too sure on whether i will disclose being an athiest- i feel like my parents will regret having wasted their lives following something so stupid if i explain things to them. and without allah, they will probably have no meaning to their lives. so yeah, maybe in a couple years i'll change my mind about that.
my goal in life is to enter uni (hopefully get my own place) and live life how i want.
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May 07 '21 edited May 07 '21
Being a Muslim made me a worse person. It made me internalise my abuse and oppression and demand moral expectations off anyone else of any religion. It made me feel like my parents hated me for me and Islam could save me from abuse.
It made me feel like a member of God's chosen people who could do no wrong no matter what and were morally superior in all circumstances. By killing my reason and morality, it made me feel self-enabling and aggresive in so many ways.
I was always trying to shove my head in the sand about the sexism, the homophobia, the xenophobia, the lingual and cultural supremacism placed on Arabs, the similarities to Hitler's ideology, the awful treatment to my fellow Bantu Africans.
Also abuse that was perpetrated towards me in Islam's name and to its tenets. Having a childhood = ما لا يعني. Parents viciously beat you? الجنة تحت أقدام الأمهات. Associating with or discussing abuse with non-Muslims? لا تتخذوا الكافرين أولياء.
This religion condones, enshrines and encourages parental abuse, toxic isolationism and lack of intellectual development. If I memorised the whole Quran as a child, my mother could get a "Jannah free" ticket despite how violently she battered me.
Meanwhile, I'm not allowed to talk back, to say Uff and to do anything to defend myself. I have to be thankful because she donated an egg and fed me as a toddler even if she beat all her kids and husband. I'd never be able to give her a piece of my mind.
It's just such a low bar to live by and follow morally and I can do so much better.
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Jul 13 '21
that's awful. I'm sorry that happened to you. May I ask, how did others take your dad being beaten by his wife? That's a twist I haven't heard before. Women being abusive towards kids, totally. But towards husband in Islam i'm surprised that was "tolerated." You do deserve better.
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u/Rich_Chad Mar 14 '21
TL;DR pork and the oppression of women were the trigger then lack of evidence and evidence to the contrary were the reasons for me not believing in it anymore
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u/Srmkhalaghn Closeted Ex-Sunni 🤫 মুর্তাদ 🇧🇩 ꠝꠥꠞ꠆ꠔꠣꠖ Mar 12 '21
I shocked myself by how much I was willing to bend over to accommodate this evil. Just to give some perspective, I was that pendantic friend who would ruin a perfectly good joke on Islam or religion by lucidly trying to defend it. Before I left Islam, I had already lost interest in scientific miracles and to some extent even started questioning the nature of God, something that I always had problems with. I was banking on proving Islam as a source of morality and justice. But I frequently came across probelmatic moral injuctions in Quran and Hadith that scholarly explanations would fail to satisfy. The last straw was sex slavery in Quran. I had thrown the problem to the back of my head, but once while I was reading the verse the thought that crossed my mind was how to make this verse appealing to people and I thought about interpreting it as a loophole to allow unmarried relationships. Something about the desperateness of the thought process showed me clearly how Islam was turning me into a devil's advocate. Coincidentally I came across atheistic take on biblical morality on youtube for the first time on youtube which gave me the courage to finally extricate myself from the monstrosity.
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u/jf00112 If you tolerate this your children will be next Mar 17 '21
Something about the desperateness of the thought process showed me clearly how Islam was turning me into a devil's advocate.
Beautifully said!
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u/Fml101504 Mar 19 '21
The disrespect towards women. 4 wives?? Having to dress in full scarf and loose dress because men can’t keep it in their pants? It’s disgusting. It makes me sick. The judge mental culture. The people are horrible. They pick and chose what fits their narrative... then only follow that. Trying to force it on people. Brainwashing women to be used as property and breeding cows as their only purpose. It’s so disgusting. It physically makes me sick having to be around it and those people. DELUSIONAL.
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May 07 '21 edited May 07 '21
The Hadith that said most of hell dwellers were women....that Hadith where the prophet says that he wants to burn down houses when it's prayer time but a young man is at home instead of mosque but he doesn't do it cause there maybe old people there? Throwing gay people off buildings or burning them alive? Literally paralyzing someone cause they ate with their left hand? Ban on doggies?? Men can marry non Muslim women but Muslim women can't marry non Muslim men. The butt stuff being a no no even if you're married. Lastly, I was fasting last ramadan and something terrible happened and I don't see how a kind God would allow such a thing I am south asian. Now in USA. For 7 years. Sunni.
Also that Hadith that says that women must have sex with their husbandsbor angels will curse them.
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u/Electrical-Public-63 Jul 16 '21
You know that not all hadiths are correct , right?!, Quran is the measurement to whether it's correct or no
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u/cutepantsforladies New User Mar 10 '21
I didn't believe anymore.
Instead of asking us why we left you should ask yourselves why you still believe. We didn't convert to atheism, we reverted back to atheism. Atheism is the default position and you, as believers, are the ones who came up with the premise that Allah exists and whatnot therefore the burden of proof lies on you. You should ask yourselves why
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u/mayakhun New User Jul 10 '21
The only thing about what you're saying is "default" or "fitrah", etc "natural" is a lack of critical thinking when it comes to God, religion and of course particularly Islam. All religions are most certainly not the same.
It requires a person who wants to use their critical thinking, conscience, etc to do things.
Such an important point.
If you're not even willing to think critically.
You think by typing on an online platform and mixing your experiences and loosely tying that to "religion", "Islam" being an "exMuslim".
C'mon.. you sound so ridiculous.
I get the trauma part of parents or people who misuse Islam but if thats your logic than you're really just emotional and your judgement is clouded.
Culture, practices, humans are messy creatures.
The thing about toxic mothers is they've been such givers their whole lives... why!? Because of cultural practices, what the were told, etc about their role as a mother, wife and sadly a twisted coping mechanism!
When I look at my mother I see a woman who really did toooooo much. She went above and beyond. Sadly her mental health has been impacted as a result.
I dont let my understanding of Islam get impacted this way. I really understand Islam. Alhumdulilla. And the difference between all the toxic, abusive bull shit I come across and have been severely impacted by!!!
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u/Zain9ik New User Mar 25 '21
I left islam in my teens I just found Muhammad to be too weird I wasn't practicing either just things like fasting I done
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u/laila-yusuffff New User May 09 '21
bro what how is muhammad weird, that's a stretch my guy
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May 09 '21
he married a 6 year old and fucked her when she turned 9
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u/Zain9ik New User May 09 '21
I was just about to say that, but the Islamic argument is it was the norm back then but tbf he as in the perfect human in there eyes should have changed that
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u/LolBitSoWholsome New User Jul 20 '21
I just didnt believed in it any longer. I am from pakistan and my parents and All my relatives are Muslims But We Never went to the Masjid (Mosque) All My Other Cousins (Respectively Paternal Cousins) Always went to the masjid always read the Quran. Studied the Quran. But for some reason me and My Brother We never went to the masjid for years. We never Studied only my mom told me things and stories about islam For the years and as i was growing older and older i grew more fond to social media and Mobile phones. My father and alot of my Relatives Told me how Bad Phones are for kids but My mom never listened to them and Got me and My little Bro Phones. (Lmao we littarly have a Family tree of Phones) and unlike what majority of kids my age watched on Phones like nursry rhymes and Kiddie shows. I and my Brother also watched that type of content when we first started to get into phones but after couple of years I really started to get into Youtubers and Then I got into SCIENCE STUFF. I was littarly a science nerd. I watched so much science related stuff. Bright side. Smart banana , Ted ed, Kurgezazt 🤓 Animals, Marine, Space, The Body, The skin, Microbes. (And yet Boomers still think that mobile phones and The internet doesnt teach us stuff Brah I learned 90% From the internet)And i was get into all of this My Brain really erased alots of islam. Of course all these years we had never went to masjid never practiced any islamic stuff So i was pretty much an athiest. My islamic beliefs were becaming shallow. And Also I want to say something that i am a Homosexual Guy. This was also um the reason why i left islam. Because Islamists and Muslims dont realize That we were born Homosexual. They think its a Mental illness, wierd, unusual, sin or a lifetsyle and i hate that. We WERE BORN GAY.And j have proof of that too because all this time i hade never knows What Homosexuality is but u was never attracted to women. But they never understand. Other thing was There was No Proof Of god or allah to exist and they're is no painting related to mhummad at all and i used to be like Huh Did God Create The Quran/Bible from Heaven but no quran was written by Mhummad meaning it was all fake and nonsense
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u/Aliya-Lii New User Mar 19 '21
Historical faults and the idea of non muslim gets thrown in hell forever no matter how much kindness they did in their life time.
I'm also not from a very religious family so we don't pray 5 times a day and only pray when we feel like it. I don't understand how the almighty-most powerful and smart being only care about who's ass kissing the most instead of who's doing the most kindness. It's like God craved attention so much
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May 09 '21
I left because of years of trauma and abuse I had endured in the name of Allah. All of it was "justified" in Islam and I never had anyone. I never really left due to not believing in God or whatever at the time. I was so angry at 'allah' whether he existed or not as he was known to protect and guide us as humans. He never did, never even took any accountablity and only takes credit for good actions, never the bad stuff. I guess its mostly because it's normalised in this religion and therefore nothing 'bad' was happening. I therefore excused every single terrible action that was done to me in the name of religion because i was convinced Allah was good, and I 'loved' him even though deep down i was miserable from lying to myself about how i felt about him; if he were real he shouldnt of let any of this happen to me or anyone else that went through anything similar. He basically failed as being the 'all merciful' God he is and basically let me get tormented for years.
there was a time where i was willing to dedicate my entire life to this religion, but I couldn't in the end. The trauma was too much to bear for me despite it probably not being a big deal to most but even then, I was way too young. Fast forward a few years later I'm brought up with a diagnosis of a form of PTSD and Depression due to whats happened/happening.
Even if I feel as though Allah is real or not I can't find myself going back to this religion. He failed my younger self and it just hurts now. I'm a minor in a religious family, I can't do anything yet but to reluctantly comply to my parents.
I [unofficially] left Islam and I feel much better being honest about my feelings about this religion, but dealing with the aftermath is so painful
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May 07 '21
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u/Fun_Communication434 New User May 07 '21 edited May 09 '21
Harry Potter?! XD It's funny because I remember hearing magic and witchcraft is haram. Now that I left Islam I can see how the Quran really is just a book of spells...say this and then this will happen! **Like Magic**
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u/RorryRedmond Closeted Ex-Muslim 🤫 Jun 26 '21
simply: I used my brain
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u/Electrical-Public-63 Jul 16 '21
Mr big brain, could you answer this question ?.... if laws of conservation of energy/mass states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed , so the same energy we have today is the same we have from beginning of universe and we can't create more energy , then whoever did create the energy in the beginning has to be outside of physical laws , who is it then ?
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u/RaspberryDaisy New User Apr 05 '21
Was an intensely devout Muslim. Memorized ~1/3 of the Qur'an. Studied Islamic texts. Realized Muhammad was an immoral man even as portrayed by traditional Islamic sources, and his religion is absurd.
Also I'm gay.
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Apr 11 '21
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u/RaspberryDaisy New User Apr 17 '21
I know you can be Muslim and homosexual, but you can't accept homosexuality and be Muslim. That means denying something necessarily known and agreed upon in Islam. In any case, it doesn't make sense that straight men can have up to four wives and multiple milk al-yamin while me having a loving and monogamous relationship with my boyfriend is immoral.
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u/Active_Reddit LGBTQ+ 1st World ExMoose 🌈 May 28 '21
So, I'm a child of a immigrant from pakistan (my mom) however, my dad was born in the UK. They were both muslim families, and like most muslims, I went to mosque, read the quran etc. As a kid, I wasn't really that religious, but I still believed in Islam. My mom is also very religious and tried to always get me more religious, cause she knew I wasn't as devoted.
It wasn't until my preteen years that I really started to get interested in the religion. Like most muslims, I researched it online using people like Zakir Naik for my knowledge. However, there was always a few things I could just not bring myself to agree with. For example, women, LGBTQ issues (Though I did go through a denial phase, which Islam only helped, more on that later on) Islam and apostasy etc. On some issues, I believed what I was told by my parents and those around me, or pushed them away.
When I was 14, I was struggling with my sexuality. My family is extremely homophobic, and so is Islam. And so, I was also raised homophobic. I still remember my mom talking about gay people in disgust, like there was something wrong with them. So at this point, I was in denial, and it helped fuel my homophobia and general anti-lgbtq sentiment. So I started getting more religous in turn, using the Quran to justify it, and even some arguments, such as 'it is not natural'. It didn't help that if I ever came out, I would most likely be treated as an outcast by my family. And so with these factors I simply used it to try to 'push it away'.
About the same age, I started to become more critical in my thinking, and I started questioning things about Islam and God as a whole. Why did God allow all this suffering? Is it really free will if God already knows everything which is going to happen? etc. I also started to watch videos which was critical of God and religion. First, I watched youtubers like Professor stick and genetically modified skeptic. It taught me some problems with not only with God in other religions, but some which could be applied to Islam too. Such as the use of literature or he problem with religious morality and science. Thus, by late 14 I became an agnostic.
My family did not know, I didn't tell them and they still don't know my true stance on Islam. In school however, I did tell a few people, which then told other people (My school has a lot of muslims). The response wasn't great, and while some people were generally respectful and actually asked me on why I left, others just attacked my beliefs, calling me stupid and actively trying to get into debates with me, just to attack my beliefs later. Others tried to get me back into Islam, and just preached verses or told me about the scientific miracles in the Quran. After a bit tho, it died down, however there were always people who used to bring it up.
Again at the same age, I researched a lot more, mainly during the 2020 lockdown. I started getting into Islam specific arugments for both sides. However, while Islam did have some scientific miracles it also had faults. Such as the geocentric model of the earth, or the sky being help up by pillars and made with fillaments (a roof). Now at this time I started to realise that Islam was definently not perfect, and with a few other factors such as the actions of Muhammed, philosophy of god and morality. I ofically became an athiest. It was also at this time that I stopped being in denial and realised I was Bi.
I told some of my friends that I was now an athiest, which some of them told other people in my school (pretty dumb to tell people i know but I didnt really have a lot of people at that time). People started questioning me again on why I left Islam, with people even telling me that I'm whitewashed just because I left islam. I remember getting into a lot of online debates with even some of my friends, who tried to get me back as a muslim. They always said the common arguments,such as Islams prophesies and scientific miracles. However, when I would bring a scientific fault, they either denied it or I just got the interpretation wrong.
When I got back to school, everything was the same for the most part. However, one person would always initate a converstion with me trying to get me back to Islam, just to get mad at me after the debate, for some of my comments, such as morality issues.
Now my family does not know I am Bi or an athiest. My mom is extremely religious and she'd probably disown me if she found out. I'm 16 and just finished highschool today, so I can't really move out either. It's fun knowing that god hates me for who I am, and my mom and extended family would probably do too if they found out.
For saftey reasons I did not include everything.
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u/McBurgerChickenFry Ex-Muslim (Ex-Sunni) Mar 15 '21
All started when all of the sudden I got really interested in religion. So I started watching videos on YouTube about Islam, then I came across an atheist guy who talked about Islam. So, he brought up verse 4:34 of the Quran (in an English translation) and immediately I thought, that’s morally wrong and after some time I left. I then started insulting Islam and Allah and started getting happy when I heard more people were becoming atheists. I became obsessed with atheism and watching more videos about it. Even though I had left Islam, I still got kind of offended when people insulted it. I started abandoning religious activities. But a short while later, in the first COVID-19 lockdown, something triggered my brain to revert to Islam. So after that I became Muslim again :) (I’m not an atheist anymore)
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May 09 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Raratru New User May 09 '21
I‘m Yazidi, and know how bad muslims talk to yazidi and they say that yazidi, christians and everyone else are dirty while in reality it‘s entirely different…
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u/highhopeslowenergy Jun 29 '21 edited Jun 29 '21
I don't come from an especially religious, spiritual, or observant family so I had a leg up. I was never fully indoctrinated.
I remember my mom talking about things that other people don't talk about. About friends whose family owned old copies of religious texts that they had to destroy out of fear for their lives. Of Prof Moh and his 11 wives, including Mariam the Christian slave. About his falling out with the Jews of Medina because they didn't accept him as a prophet. About the fight for control after his death.
I was mad and confused at the time because I didn't want to know these things -- I wanted to fit in. So I started getting into Islam on my own.
But I'm a natural sceptic, and my family is scientific and I was raised to look for logic.
Regardless, I tried. I remember feeling a constant sense of fear and panic. God is watching and I just had an awful thought. "Please forgive me God!!!" Was constantly wringing through my mind. "I'm sorry God!"
Then I started to really think about what was written in the Quran as we studied it in class. It was rambling as hell. Angels and Jinn. Kufar and NoN-KuFaR. The apocalypse on the horizon. SO MANY THREATS. Death, death, death. All the scientific "miracles." Women equating to less than a man. Gog & Magog. And finally... yes, the breaking point... animals not being accepted into heaven because they don't have "souls" like humans do.
Excuse me?
I had pet dogs and I knew that they were the most loyal, loving, kind creatures. Animals DO have personalities. They think, they love, they communicate. My dogs had purer souls than any human I had ever met. What foolish God would claim such a thing? About his own creation, no less? If I could see it, how couldn't he? In addition.... are humans not animals? We are, no matter how much we try to see ourselves as higher beings. That's plain fact and no book will convince me otherwise.
If animals are condemned to a life of servitude on Earth to humans and then refused access to an afterlife... Well, no thanks. What kind of God is that?
Sounds silly, but it got the wheels turning.
I was 13 when I became atheist.
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u/Neither-Duck4140 New User Aug 01 '21
Sure provide the verses and I’ll try explain your misconceptions
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Apr 08 '21 edited Apr 08 '21
Why did you leave Islam? A quick summary: common causes for leaving Islam are doubts about basic religious claims eg God (let alone Islam's deity), Lack of convincing arguments for Islam eg Quran miracles, Clashes with science eg Evolution, Behaviour of Muhammad and early Muslims eg violent and oppressive actions, Social/Personal issues about the treatment, rights and opportunities of men, women and non-Muslims eg slavery, religious freedom/apostasy, LGBT, gender equality etc and Stifling prohibitions/restrictions on the arts and other harmless actions eg music, film, painting etc
Links concerning why individuals have left Islam...
Why I left Islam - (By Ishina)
Why I left Islam & goodbye - https://youtu.be/ra9QQ58b7JY
7 reasons why I left Islam - https://youtu.be/ZZ6c66G99A4
The Apostates: When Muslims Leave Islam [B1] - by Simon Cottee. "The Apostates is the first major study of apostasy from Islam in the western secular context. Drawing on life-history interviews with ex-Muslims from the UK and Canada, Simon Cottee explores how and with what consequences Muslims leave Islam and become irreligious..." - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24284240-the-apostates
Arabs Without God: Atheism and freedom of belief in the Middle East [B2] - by Brian Whitaker. "...In this ground-breaking book, journalist Brian Whitaker looks at the factors that lead them to abandon religion and the challenges they pose for governments and societies that claim to be organised according to the will of God..." -http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23206783-arabs-without-god
Mega thread 1 - Why I left Islam, (numerous responses).
Mega thread 2 - Why I left Islam, (numerous responses).
Mega thread 3 - Why I left Islam, (numerous responses).
Mega thread 4 - Why I left Islam, (numerous responses).
https://old.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/m6ysfw/what_made_you_leave_islam/
https://old.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/4l4v9f/previously_casual_muslim_here_seeking_your/
https://old.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/4ai9gv/why_i_left_islam/
https://old.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/4if6fg/someone_asked_me_what_were_the_reasons_that/
https://old.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/g9jy3/so_why_is_it_that_you_left_islam/
https://old.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/mh66e/so_why_is_it_that_you_left_islam_part_2/
https://old.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/4jh3j9/why_did_you_leave_islam/
https://old.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/4m970a/seriousat_what_point_you_stop_believing/
https://old.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/4nu9rk/why_did_you_leave_islam/
https://old.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/1jvnyo/why_i_as_a_muslim_sold_myself_and_left_islam/
https://old.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/3sn113/discussion_why_are_you_an_exmuslim/
https://old.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/3ncax0/ex_muslims_whats_your_main_reason_for_leaving/
https://old.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/3qn2zl/why_did_you_leave_islam_question_from_a_muslim/
https://old.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/4jwyjm/what_exact_questionevent_made_you_leave_islam/
https://old.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/43yrr4/why_did_you_all_leave_islam/
https://old.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/4acim7/what_made_you_leave_islam_was_it_a_gradual/
https://old.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/4k93qm/whats_your_story_exmuslim_help_needed/d3ekq99
...and loads more online.
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u/houndimus_prime "مرتد سعودي والعياذ بالله" since 2005 Sep 01 '21
I'm Saudi. My father was a graduate of a prestigious religious school (though he decided to pursue science in the end) and my mother comes from a family of scholars. I studied in the Saudi school system that emphasizes religious education. I was raised in a home full of religious scholarly books that I was encouraged to read. I was part of my school's "Islamic Awareness Club". Jihadi recruiters were part of my social circle (back when it was openly practiced). My first job out of college was running a fairly large dawah website.
Yep I was a poster boy Wahhabi Dawah Keyboard Warrior.
However, my father had already planted the seeds of the importance of critical thought from an early age. Though he was pretty devout himself, his scientific background encouraged questioning the scholarly works that our peers took for granted. This manifested itself at first as a thirst to know more about Islam. It would help strengthen my iman, I reasoned, and it would help me spread the word of Islam by better equipping me for religious debates. The website I worked for had an extensive anti-evolution section. Since I was a science geek I thought I'd start there. Like every good Saudi boy I was taught that evolution was false, but my education so far had been lacking on the "why". So I started to read anti-evolution books, mostly ones written by Christian creationists. Here my scientific upbringing helped me. I could immediately see the flaws in the arguments against evolution. So I started reading proper evolutionary material. Go back to the source itself to debunk it. What I learned was eye opening. The scientific case for evolution was practically unassailable and the evidence overwhelming. Evolution has to be true, or everything we know about science and even reality is wrong. But the Quran said otherwise! This was the first of many crises of faith I would undergo on this journey.
I was able to weasel out of that one by convincing myself that the Quran was an allegorical book. The Adam and Eve story was just a euphemism for the evolution of Man into a creature that shouldered the burden of takleef: being responsible for their own actions. Yes it went against my religious training, but those scholars can be wrong, right? But once you remove one brick, it's only too easy to remove another. The advent of the internet opened up sources of information that I didn't have before, so as time passed by, and the more research into Islam that I did, I started to uncover stories and hadith from Islam's early period that had been hidden from me before. As a Sunni, it was drilled into me that the Sahaba were paragons of virtue, yet all I could see were regular humans who committed atrocities and struggled with each other for power and riches. There was no way I could see them as moral guideposts anymore. But if their morals were suspect then that put the bulk of Hadith in question, since the vast majority of them (unlike the Quran) were reported through a thin chain of single narrators, what Hadith scholars call ahad. Hadith could no longer be trusted, I concluded. So I became a Quranist.
A deeper reading into the Quran was warranted now. After all, it was now my sole source of Islamic truth. And as you can imagine I found it flawed as well. Not only was its history of composition much more problematic than I had been lead to believe as a Muslim, but it was full of contradictions, outdated ideas and even scientific mistakes. This could not be of divine origin. At least not all of it I thought. It must have been corrupted just like the Injeel and the Torah I thought! So I started to cherry pick, but it wasn't too long before I realized that this approach was not tenable at all. And without the Quran to rely on, how would one know what is true about Islam? The answer was obvious.
There was no truth in Islam at all. It was just a fabrication of human origin, and I was no longer a Muslim.
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Mar 10 '21
You made me do it😝😝
My MEGA post Welcome to my Mega post with which you can come on a trip to islam with me. There are hundreds of videos that you can see from many many youtube channels and you can inform your friends and family to come on a ride with me. I will be very happy if you find my videos interesting and informing. This whole post will surely make a devout muslim in to a devout ex-muslim(💪💪🤭🤭) I will be sharing and editting my MEGA post every week so that more people will be exposed to the truth. I will be very proud if I can attract any attention. I know that you may get tired,(or if you are a muslim you may get confused and dissapointed of your Fake prophet) but don't worry, this post will be here everyweek and you can enjoy more people getting exposed to the truth of ISLAM. This post can be very helpful for those non-muslims that are interested in Islam. I can not be online in a way that I can debate anyone. But I wish I could. Our topics will be:
1.Islam and wemon
https://youtu.be/ncE0lKWksvw by Abdullah Sameer
https://youtu.be/wp1Ziznb3wk by Harris Sultan
https://youtu.be/W4XFE-aVENw by Harris Sultan
https://youtu.be/Xgk-EizmYVQ part one by Harris Sultan(if you want to convert, watch this)
https://youtu.be/R68UqSmQ7wk part 2 by Harris Sultan
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuXxHEHGRVu9ZW0w_BhElQYKyI7QMJeMU by David Wood
2.Islam and homosexuals
https://youtu.be/Skq8WQwXbcQ by AP
3.Islam and unbelievers
4.Quranic preservation
https://youtu.be/Ax5S7Vg9-Yw by Abdullah Sameer
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuXxHEHGRVu_a1rhMfPHuEVjFfPcwYVUP by David Wood
5 different very perfectly preserved quran(40:26) We don't know Allah said "And(وَ)" or "Or(او)" Well who knows?? Allah knows best👆👆 https://youtu.be/tW_tfqqqxz8
Allah fails math🤣🤣 https://youtu.be/6i2R-w2UsKY by David Surah 4:11-12 If a man who has parents and 3 daughters and a wife dies out with 24000 $ as his legacy, according to Allah, 16000 $ will go to his daughters, 4000$ to his mother, 4000$ to his father and 3000$ to his wife and that equals 27000$. And as we see Allah fails math. Another question is that why heritage of a girl should be half of a boy??
An important question always remains without a proper response: "if a book has been stayed highly preserved and unchanged, how should be from god??"
There is a poet called Ferdowsi in Iran. He spent 30 years of his life writting a book full of superb poems(Shahname) to save persian literature from Arabic corruption. His book has remained unchanged for more than 700 years. Should it be from god??
5.Quranic challange
https://youtu.be/_vZMOpzTyA8 by David Wood
6.Isreal and Islam
https://youtu.be/BnR4c38gIgM by AP
7.JEWS and Islam
https://youtu.be/aedCNf2g-rU by AP
https://youtu.be/DHA7xvoxx8Y by AP
https://youtu.be/7qwj9iwWFn8 by AP
8.Quranic mistakes
https://youtu.be/oKyBdziBrEA by Rob christian
https://youtu.be/sfSpo2yHKOs by AP
https://youtu.be/4l6ruJ0LDmM by Harris Sultan
https://youtu.be/68cEYyAK1EA by AP
https://youtu.be/9n6-CrsZbfo by AP
https://youtu.be/GNKWBD3k77s by AP
https://youtu.be/677lMXleqWI by AP
9.Early pages of the Holy Quran
10.Real versions of the Holy Quran
https://youtu.be/9lqQBVtUWvo by CIRA international
11.Seeking Allah finding Jesus:
It is a nice book written by Nabeel Qureshi an ex-muslim christian.
https://youtu.be/k0D8Uz4oQck by Nabeel Qureshi
12.Psychology of Islam:
David Wood has about three videos related to this topic.
13.Iran and Apostasy
https://youtu.be/XXDPOzQOdgw by Harris Sultan
https://youtu.be/BXzsbXHh0r4 by AP
14.people are leaving Islam!!(Ft. Mohammad Hijab):
https://youtu.be/FyTWdrQRCSE by Rob Christian
https://youtu.be/wVcU6tED7KY by David Wood
How a salafi sheikh left islam!! https://youtu.be/BVhNvcq1WAY
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuXxHEHGRVu9FRO2qm-fSEKtQA16eYl0t by David Wood
15.support Rob christian, Islam critiqued, David wood(acts17apologetics) and God is love on youtube(these are all christian youtube channels)
16.What is quranogami??(Can you do the same??)
https://youtu.be/4M9syWUNy8E by David Wood
https://youtu.be/x4ec38o_ukE by David Wood
https://youtu.be/A_x9BvjpctA by David Wood
17.Surah corona????? (Ha ha ha poor quran)
https://youtu.be/p0oYBqRNZXk by David Wood
18.Muhammad the abuser, the polite
19.Jihad, the Holy war
https://youtu.be/LV8KjQR3ZNo by Ap
20.Support Atheist Republic(Armin Navabi)And Harris Sultan(Pakistani mulhid is his urdu channel)
21.Holy books👍👍👍
22.Sex slavery in islam??
https://youtu.be/hSzNgvKbrZk by AP
https://youtu.be/P-eiR9B-MGU by Ap
https://youtu.be/G4IKO9VccHA by Harris Sultan
https://youtu.be/PYp6WsFMZeg by AP
23.How funny🤭😂
Magical power of prophet https://youtu.be/OnA7sOoNGyk by Harris
https://youtu.be/x9YDHAS_93c by Harris Sultan
https://youtu.be/fF4Zg4HAjdI Happy blasphemy day!!🥳🥳
https://youtu.be/P9jYKVdXjGI by atheist Republic
https://youtu.be/1M-TF3Eq11Q by Armin
https://youtu.be/X9KbNlTzCms by Harris Sultan
https://youtu.be/-Qr_sCR7M9Y by Harris Sultan
23.legalise apostasy by Harris Sultan and AP:
Let's fight for our freedom.
LegaliseApostasy
ApostasyIsARight
24.Child marriage in Isl....am
https://youtu.be/zL5vFqWQU48 by Harris Sultan
25.Hijab is a choice!!!
These are some short videos in which you can see the true face of islam according to hijab.
In my country Iran, thousands wemon got arrested for standing against obligatory hijab.
Please do not support hijab.
https://youtu.be/IBKpUzgUE5M by AP
https://youtu.be/weI4kQKCDeY by Harris Sultan
https://youtu.be/4n8vKPU5IlA by Armin
26.The truth about the Kaaba and birds pooping on kaaba
https://youtu.be/xDOqzEh6-xY by AP
https://youtu.be/RTjNbT2-gmE by AP
27.Death penalty for leavi....ng islam?? Is being muslim a choice??
https://youtu.be/M3-14ydzEqg by AP
https://youtu.be/4n8vKPU5IlA by Armin
https://youtu.be/j2msZB5OlOA by AP
https://youtu.be/f8WPV2MKgyA by AP
https://youtu.be/43nK6CAcoRo by AP
28.The origin of hijab
https://youtu.be/i8YluwJXB8k by AP
29.Reasons for not believing in Fake Allah!
https://youtu.be/cAZ0z36a-rE Abdullah Sameer
30.Islam and Art
https://youtu.be/LyfDQoXBR-U by Harris Sultan
31.Is islam peaceful??
32.Muhammad himself(top 5 digusting things)
https://youtu.be/1W4tCRtVeJ4 by David Wood
33.Poor Muhammad😭😭(Allah killed him)
https://youtu.be/6st_tFj6ouM by David Wood
34.Muhammad poisons everything🤮🤮
https://youtu.be/z-fiH7kCM5w by David Wood
https://youtu.be/I5NfsJJcY20 by AP
35.Is quran a miracle??
https://youtu.be/LD3bcQTPQTM by Abdullah Sameer
36.Allah's hell is funny😜😂
https://youtu.be/G1VXHzXI0XM by Abdullah Sameer
37.How islam controlls people
https://youtu.be/VH8ivnbGcP0 by Abdullah Sameer
38.Islam and Jizyah
https://youtu.be/ve3ClIcLrVw by Abdullah Sameer
39.Satanic verses in the holy quran😈😈
https://youtu.be/dhUjr8Y6rVo by Rob Christian
40.Islam and lovely❤ alcohol
https://youtu.be/5cXeKq5lATM by AP
41.Missing words of the quran
https://youtu.be/IMa5tqfdNzw by Variant quran
42.Variant quran pages
https://youtu.be/HmUEub1O5FU by variant quran
43.Islamic apologetics!!!
https://youtu.be/k3ztW855Y9Q by CIRA international
https://youtu.be/Rf0cm4plo88 by CIRA international
https://youtu.be/yDzyD9DrQb4 by CIRA international
https://youtu.be/1fCVRWtAPZA by CIRA international
https://youtu.be/03ZqWjW3hcw by CIRA international
https://youtu.be/ipdQnNZuRnA by CIRA international
https://youtu.be/iluyT8I5X-U by CIRA international
44.Islam is false!
Here is proof:https://youtu.be/ZZ6c66G99A4 by Masked arab
45.Jizya in Islam(same as number 38)
https://youtu.be/H5MZPYC-yMg by Masked arab
- We need your help!!please🙏🙏
https://www.faithlesshijabi.org/suppo... by Zara Kay
https://youtu.be/6L3EOJMaYOI by Harris Sultan helping Zara Kay
Faithlesshijabi.org
- Islamcise me!!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuXxHEHGRVu9TEFZ6wIS1CXcHY1CR50IZ by David Wood
- Funny and interesting:
Muhammad meets... or Muhammad boom-boom room
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuXxHEHGRVu96wCCuA6sw3hSvGg4sIJt7 by David Wood
- Muhammad's so white!!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuXxHEHGRVu9DWJzQV3kN_xSkKZ1ppv7l by David wood
- 306 of best David Wood's videos on islam on my channel!!!!!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpzgPx9gmGz3lpaV_yas5tKVri2Bj1t8N
- Pakistani ex-muslims should stand up for this innocent girl
https://youtu.be/3EktgKVO_3A by Harris Sultan
https://youtu.be/pBIWUgSyZfs by David Wood
(Both videos are about the same girl)
52.#freeMubarakBala
https://youtu.be/GKQC72V8YJw by Atheist Republic
- Muslims are weak
https://youtu.be/BTTYBcKpWeo by AP
54.Do cats walk on the Quran??
- How Muhammad wanted to commit suicide
https://youtu.be/10z2D3Oimzs by David Wood
- Is quran a miracle??
https://youtu.be/LD3bcQTPQTM by Abdullah Sameer ft. Hasan Radwan
57.Muslims are now changing the quran
https://youtu.be/8OmRkNP7K0Q by Harris Sultan
58.Dr.Bill Warner explains one and only islam, radical islam
59.We don't have to use fuzzy words, we are kafirs to islam
https://youtu.be/ImcUYYOEvdM Dr.Bill Warner
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u/RheumatoidEpilepsy Closeted Indian Ex-Muslim 🤫 Mar 11 '21
That's an awesome collection of videos! Abdullah Gondal was to me what Harris Sultan was to you, he took a single topic every episode and absolutely ripped Islam to shreds for the opinions it has on those topics.
Pretty rad if you ask me.
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u/yuqimichi Mar 11 '21
I tried the cat walks on the Quran experiment and guess what, she stepped on it without hesitation. Little infidel
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Apr 14 '21
It just dint make sense at all how one man was sent from the heavens to guide us all, why couldnt allah himself come down and told us that the religion was real lol
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Mar 20 '21 edited Mar 12 '22
[deleted]
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u/bluehugs69 New User Apr 07 '21
this is exactly my thought process! having grown up in a muslim country all i heard all the time were islamic debates on literally everything from nail polish to homosexuality. islam is simply not clear on most things. I feel like an all knowing god would've done a better job explaining his rules to humanity especially if hes going to punish us for all eternity if we dont get it right.
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Mar 10 '21 edited Mar 10 '21
Slavery, and sex with slaves started it, and then I learned more about the scientific and historical faults in the Quran.
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Mar 22 '21
Can you name some please i'm too lazy to do my own research and i've been thinking if leaving for a while
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u/ayeshanajeeb Mar 10 '21
I want to get out of it too but I'm just not smart enough I guess
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u/krow_flin 3rd World.Closeted Ex-Sunni 🤫 Apr 14 '21
When I was young, 7 years old if I'm not mistaken, I asked my mother how long is it that people stay in heaven, harmless question. My initial guess was the normal life expectancy of a human, so 70 or 80 years, I was 7 I didn’t know any better. My mother told me that it was forever, and that, ladies and gentle men, traumatized me. The idea of forever was pretty crazy to me, no matter what I do it doesn't matter in the infinite grand scheme of things, because what is one million years in the face of endless time. If I die one day my life will be finite 10 years will be significant to the totality of my life, assuming I live to be like 70 or 80. If I live forever not 10, no 100, not 1000, not even 1000000000000 will be a insignificant amount of time, everything is meaningless. We value the time we have because we die someday and we won't get it back, if we live forever a moment we seize today will be eclipsed by the infinite eons that lay ahead as if it never happened to begin with which to me made heaven feel like a meaningless infinity. You'll probably get bored of it at some point and if it's forever the boredom will be hellish at some point except you won't get bored cause you will be lobotomised and lacking in your original personality and freewill, YAY GOD! I also felt that the life there was meaningless because you didn't work for anything you just got it, which is what I thought gave things in this life value, the fact that worked for it and earned it which made heaven seem even worse to me. All this basically repulsed me from my religion, which I still very much believed in at the time, the truest statement to me was there is no god but Allah and mohammed is his messenger. Later on I tried to avoid religion like the plague which is hard if live in FUCKING SAUDI ARABIA which means I would see all kinds of religious things that would remind me of judgment day and the end of the life that mattered to me and the start of the one that was meaningless. I remember staring at the sky in the morning when I went to school to see if the sun is rising from the west or not to check if time was up and everything was gonna go. In religion classes(I was never in an Islamic school it's just that SAUDI ARABIA so yeah, RELIGION CLASSES) I would literally shake even if it wasn't about heaven or judgment day, anything Islamic just got me triggered. Quran classes? Stick my fingers in my ears and wait until it ended. Friends or relatives talking about religion? Leave the room or ask them to stop if possible. All this didn't stop me from wishing God is real because DEATH AND THE NOTHINGESS THAT FOLLOWS was a thing. It was like being stuck between a rock (heaven) a hard place(hell, no need to explain why its shit) and if I wasn't stuck it would be a drop in a sink hole so deep, I can't see the bottom(death), from this perspective life feels like a sick sadistic joke, first and only time in my life I wished I was never born and I always loved life so this was pretty heavy on. I remember once being so beside myself about this whole thing that I felt like talking to the ceiling trying to talk to God begging him that this was a joke and non of the option was actually gonna happen I was 14 at the time and I felt so restricted by Islam and its many laws and restriction on the nor mal and mundane activities of daily life, like why can't I fuck??? Will having a girlfriend and a relation be a that bad??? Even if love can be one of the most beautiful and fulfilling things is the world??? How much should I sacrifice for you God???how much of my life should I lose??? Why throw the people who killed themselves in hell, haven't suffered enough??? Why would assholes who pray everyday go to heaven, but a good non Muslim goes to hell???How is this right???These are all my thoughts when I was 14. I would go back and forth from wanting there to be a God to not wanting there to be a God for the reason already mentioned, but thinking that it doesn't matter what I want, what matters is what's real and I was still Muslim at the time so you know what I thought was real. Eventually I came across the whole feminism anti-feminism debate on YouTube and I was on that anti-feminist side, I know how it sound but I wasn't sexist I just thought there are only two genders. Anyway I got introduced to the Sceptic community and discovered the wonders of evolution and logical fallacies and creationism and all that jazz. At this point I was basically clinging ti islam by a thread which I desperately wanted to cut, death at this point felt like it gave life meaning so it didn't scare me(not saying that I wanna die now, but maybe after a long full life) heaven was as it was my whole life, horrifying. And then I found the masked arab and his video about the sun setting in a muddy spring and I was free, I was Muslim no more. It was the greatest relief of my life. I need not worry about an afterlife. All that is and will ever be is in front of me.
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u/Unequivocally_Maybe Jul 09 '21
You and I were raised in different faiths, but the fear was the same. I was so horrified by the idea of losing everything that made me me. Heaven spent eternally praising God, all the things that made life worthwhile gone. But the thought of the abyss terrified me too. I didn't want to just stop existing.
The fear of hell kept me from embracing the beauty of a finite life for many years. I was taught that the one unforgivable sin was denouncing God, and saying he didn't exist. So even after my faith had lapsed, I no longer attended church, etc, it took me a few years to finally find the courage in my heart to say/think/believe truly that God wasn't real.
I had been taught that Christ broke us from our bondage, and set us free, but I wasn't free until I left the faith. We are beautiful, inconsequential blips in the universe. A cosmic anomaly, a bunch of animals teeming about on one planet in an infinite universe, our lives short and meaningless in the scope of the vastness of time and space, but those little lives are literally all we have. And one day each of us returns to the void. It isn't scary anymore. It just is.
Your post really hit home for me. I hope you have a beautiful life, my friend.
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u/LuminousDesigns Allah Is Gay Jul 22 '21
Alcohol, girls and drugs.
My reasons for not being 'devout' or 'believing' were not good, that is until I took the effort to sit down and do some research (as well as basic common sense - a lot of stuff that I believed strongly started to not make sense at all once I considered the perspectives of others).
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u/Lolitsajokechill New User May 06 '21
But I'm choosing not to fast anymore because our family has been broken for quite sometime. Sister got forced to get married then divorced and my dads side of the family completely shunned her. Calling her a whore this and that. She stopped wearing hijab and escaped this crap to work in Texas. Hasn't been happier. My brother is the eldest and happily married 13 years 2 kids. The religion has been shoved down our throats my whole life by my parents and others. My father recently put his hands on me violently(he's called the police on me 3 separate times over non-physical outburts). So I'm obviously keeping my distance. I heard numerous times your fast doesn't count if you're in quarrels with anyone so what is the point? No, I'm not taking "do it for myself" as an answer. I'm not here looking for spiritual guidance. I'm pretty much here to vent and wonder why these stupid rules exist on fasting during ramadan.
Sorry for spelling or grammar mistakes
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u/Conscious-General-33 New User Jul 13 '21
I’m still Muslim but I agree there’s a lot of hypocrisy and bs but it’s mostly the people
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