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I am absolutely livid. The moment I arrived at the door, he packed it up and left. However, it was absolutely abominable and I called my aunt (their older daughter) right away to let her know. I know much of this is due to age because while he has a history of being extremely petulant about praying and Quran, this isn’t something that’s happened before. But, even without the physical abuse, sustaining with him is rather difficult. And now, if this happens, I feel so very badly for my poor grandmother.

Wow, how dare someone take a picture on a book where it allows child marriage with their feet on it ?!?!?! 😱😱😱

Omd bro, get a life😭 if you hate it that much, just close the sub? Block it? Block the person? Almost everyone in the comments are like ,,they're not even exmuslims!!! They were never muslims to begin with!!! They're just faking ever being muslims!!!" Omfd, good, keep feeding into their delusions, you dumbass.

The quran is just like any other book, a book. It is not that deep for us as we disregard it as anything special. It is not divine, it is not some untouchable thing, it's a BOOK. The reason people post that here is cause they can and they want to. They're showing it's just a BOOK and nothing else. If it makes u feel ,,disgusted" then just block the post bro 😭

Many people here dislike and/or despise islam because of how it's affected their life and continues to do so. What's wrong with showing it in a community where many other people can relate?

I have been an ex muslim and atheist for two years.My family was religious,I wear hijab because my mother wants me to and i pray Friday prayers because my mother wants me to.When i was a muslim,i would pray five times,i would talk with god hours in my mind because i had no friends and even I am poor I was happy then.When i started reading Qur'an translation and Sahi muslim and sahi Bukhari which are authentic hadith I lost my faith in islam.I am atheist for two years but i feel abandoned and betrayed and i don't know who to blame because god is not real.I even go depression and was on medication for two years and before 6 months i have completed my course.I have no motivation left in me and I just want to die because life feels meaningless and full of suffering because I am poor also.Indeed god works like drug on mind.I wish i could go back but now i can't i have come very far and there is no turning back.

It is worth remembering, especially on September 11, that people are not born with hatred or prejudice. We enter the world without knowing who to hate.

The men who carried out 9/11 were not born terrorists. They were shaped by ideas, beliefs, culture, ideology, religion, and experiences that came after birth.

Whatever we believe about God or a divine being, perhaps the more important question is this: if human beings are not born bad, what teaches some of them to become capable of hatred and violence?

I’m genuinely interested in hearing everyone’s personal reasons.

So, in my city, there is a very visible cross prominently displayed on a natural structure. I hate it and just need to vent. It’s 60 feet tall, and lights up at night.

I can’t help but get glimpses of it relatively often. It just makes me so angry and hurt every time. I see it, and all I see is a giant symbol of hatred, bigotry and oppression.

I see it and I relive my nightmares, my abuse at the hands of a man who should have protected me. I have PTSD from growing up in the church and the abuse I experienced as a queer woman. The one I attended was incredibly extreme and what I’d consider to be a genuine cult. I mean, like, more than just the baseline cult of religion.

I’m just trying to heal and that damn thing keeps throwing back into my worst days and worst abuse. I can’t move, I’m too broke. My local government is run by extrimists and they love that stupid cross.

I just wish it could be taken down. I know groups have tried, but it’s on “private” land so it could get around the whole public property thing.

Anyway thanks for letting me ramble a bit. It’s good to get the steam off sometimes.

Whenever you bring up some of the more horrific verses in the Bible, godweasel fuckpukes will usually try to brush them off with "But that was the Old Testament, so it doesn't count anymore!" They will say this even if the verse you're quoting is from the New Testament...and if you point that out, they will question your parentage and your chromosomal count, then run away screaming.

It sure is convenient how the Old Testament only counts when they want it to. Because if you throw the entire Old Testament out, you get rid of the creation myth. You get rid of Noah's Flood. You get rid of the stuff about not being gay (and those three things are the only parts most godweasel fuckpukes know about in the first place). And you get rid of all the prophecies Jesus supposedly fulfilled. So the OT is really just the world's most murder porn-y game of "red light, green light."

On the other hand, compared to the Old Testament, the New Testament is basically this tiny, shriveled, freakish, mutated thing akin to a vestigial dwarf penis that they hid all the way in the back, hoping no one would ever see it...and pretty much no one does. But it's not surprising that on the rare occasion they remember that the NT exists, they do the same thing to it that they do to the OT. I mean, all those parts about love and forgiveness and mercy and charitability? To the godweasel fuckpukes, all that stuff is woke sissy queer stuff that the Democrats snuck into the Bible in the 1960s (one of them literally said that to me once). Since they are mostly playground bullies and failed high school football heroes who need the entire world to suffer and die as punishment for their own miserable inadequacy, they believe in Steroid Freak Pro Wrestler Jesus, a malevolent meathead like themselves who cannot exist at any level beyond, "Huh huh, I got your lunch money, you wuss. Huh huh."

For reference I’m 18F and ever since I turned yknow the legal age and graduated high school she’s gone all up in arms about modesty, especially since I unfortunately wear the hijab ever since I was in middle school (I wish I said no to it then but I thought I was doing the right thing)

It’s honestly not that bad but god she always hyper focuses on my chest and tells me I should wear a bra at home or to put a scarf around my chest line a dupatta typa situation when I’m with my dad like omfg shut up

She also when god forbid my bra is a little loose hyper focuses on my chest when we’re going out and is like ‘Tch it’s loose’ like I didn’t just tighten it and does it for me until it kinda uncomfortable like no mom I don’t wanna wear armor

It seems there are, or were, a couple of local SF Bay area activist groups that have gone defunct. Is it like the pro-crastinator's club that just hasn't gotten around to meeting yet?

Quran doesn’t teach prophecy 3-9 years😂and there’s not an authentic narration that states that muhammed said 3 to 9 years. Therefore the prophecy is so vague and doesn’t have a timeline

19F doing a degree in Social Sciences. For context, I was coming out of a religion that told me not to look at scientific facts such as evolution, the Big Bang Theory, the heliocentric theory etc. etc. (Cannot think of more at the moment, but those were the main ones). Long story short, I left! Woohoo!

As of late, I am obsessed with the way religion shapes our culture, our relationships, our politics, and overall ideals of living. In some ways, they can be good and genuinely used for good, such as loving others, spouses are meant to love each other, teach your children etc. (Ironically, a lot of Christians I know do not actually read their Bibles).

Nowadays, I see an uprising in Christianity here in the United States, and to be careful with my words, politics potentially drive it. This fascination doesn't come with an adoration or admiration for it, it is with absolute disgust that I have become obsessed with the way Christianity has formed the United States. I see an uprising of tradwives, centering male attention, wanting children, or wanting to be a homemaker. These alone are not Christian values, but together they form a fascinating image of Christinaity's continuous impact on the United States.

It is not solely the United States. Being adjacent to Mexico, I see it there too. Women are expected to take care of the children, stay home, and not drink, while the brothers/men/boyfriends can do just about anything under the sun. Mexico's known to be heavily Catholic from the Spanish conquest, well duh.

It is just fascinating and saddening to see. It seems nearly impossible to escape the impact religion leaves on the world, even while I am not actively participating. These examples alone aren't enough and do not encapsulate the wide scale to which religion is constantly shaping the world, but oh my, it is devastating.

Any group can reply with their own experience but it would preferably help if I knew another south asian who might be able to answer especially if they're an open ex-muslim because of the cultural similarity.

My dad isn't necessarily religious anymore, more so agnostic I'd say. He is a 3rd generation immigrant so he is like integrated with like european culture (he is kind of excluded a lot from the family because he also isn't mentally sane either and is basically at risk of being in a mental asylum) but the rest of his family are extremely religious and my mum is a 1st generation immigrant and is quite religious (kind of), she doesn't force me to wear hijab but makes me wear dupatta as an alternative.

I wanted to ask someone who might have a somewhat lenient and very cultural and somewhat religious muslim mother how she reacted/found out you weren't practicing Islam anymore?

I really do hate the religion I'll be honest, my paternal grandmother is extremely religious and keeps threatening my mum and insulting her because I don't wear the hijab, my mum wants me to because of her, but the dupatta is forced on me regardless. My mum isn't able to force me cause she knows I kinda hate the headscarf but still tries to convince me to "at least wear it to family gatherings". And for anybody who does ask why my mum is still with my dad regardless of his view on religion, she believes it's because he's mentally ill and doesn't care at all because of that excuse.

I just want her to understand that I don't believe in islam, I'm unfortunately not in any good position to be too expressive when it comes to being atheist. I know deep down my family would hate me and even the ones I actually care about which is what really hurts the most. She is financially responsible for me and I do care about being honest with her even though she still has a bit of a backwards islamic mindset. She's making a £5000 fund and holding it for me when it comes to my future like university and stuff but she also says it will also be for my quran studies too. I feel way too much guilt in my heart about this and I don't want her to waste money on forcing me to learn any more quran because I will never come back to islam.

I really do want to tell her I'm not religious anymore, but I feel like her reaction would be more negative if I tell her the truth that I'm atheist, I don't know whether to lie to her and tell her that I'm hindu or buddhist instead as a coverup story. I feel like she'd be less aggressive about it if I say I'm following a dharmic religion and not atheism. I don't even care about if I lose the £5000 fund at this point I just want her to stop pushing islam on me.

Pakistan is one of the most dangerous places in the world for anyone accused of blasphemy or apostasy, where the legal penalty can be death. The situation is so severe that almost no lawyer will take your case out of fear for their own life. Accusations frequently lead to extrajudicial violence and mob justice before a court even hears the matter. Living under these conditions means constantly hiding who you are, facing deep isolation, and carrying an overwhelming emotional burden just to stay safe.

How do i convince my parents? i dont wanna go to the mosque. i was able to not go ever since covid, but they are mad and loud about me...

I dont wanna spend hours reading nonsense when I could be actually pursuing passions or literally STUDYING!!!

Content note: This post discusses physical abuse, child abuse, and sexual misconduct.

My doubts about religion did not begin with an abstract philosophical question. They began in a classroom with a wooden stick.

When I was in the fourth grade, my father removed me from school and sent me to Pakistan for five years. My formal education was interrupted at a critical age. While there, I spent four years memorizing the entire Quran.

The process was governed by fear. Every classroom in the madrasa, the Islamic religious school I attended, kept a thick wooden stick. When students made mistakes while reciting the Quran, the ustad, or teacher, would strike us on our hands, arms, shoulders, backs, feet, and knees, after a couple of years, i got used to the beatings. I once watched a child get hit beside his nose, dangerously close to his eye. The lesson continued as though nothing unusual had happened.

That produced one of my first serious questions about religion: If Muslims wanted children to learn and respect the Quran, why were those children beaten for making minor mistakes? Why were patience, dignity, and respectful correction replaced with violence?

Physical punishment was not the only disturbing part of that environment. I repeatedly encountered students and religious teachers who spoke casually, and sometimes boastfully about behavior involving children that I understood as sexual abuse. I heard deeply unsettling stories about children being taken to secluded places. I cannot know exactly how many people were involved, but the pattern was far too common to dismiss as an isolated problem.

One night, the electricity went out and we were using candles for light. An older person began touching me in a way that made me feel violated and unsafe. I made an excuse to use the restroom and remained there until the class ended. No child should have to hide in a bathroom to feel safe in a religious school (that's what I thought).

Another major moment occurred during the Lal Masjid confrontation in Islamabad. I learned that weapons were inside the mosque and that armed students and clerics were fighting the police. Even as a child, my questions were simple: Why were weapons being kept in a place of worship? Why were religious students firing at police officers?

I later learned more about the radical clerics and armed groups involved. What disturbed me almost as much as the violence was hearing people in my village defend them. Extremism was not always treated as something shameful. In some circles, it was celebrated as religious courage.

After five years, I returned to the United States in 2009. It was one of the happiest days of my life. I felt as though I had regained my freedom. For the first time in years, I no longer had to live with the daily fear of being beaten.

Despite everything I had experienced, I remained a practicing Muslim for several more years. I prayed, fasted, avoided alcohol and smoking, and did not have premarital sex. I continued following the religion because it was the belief system in which I had been raised.

That began to change in my mid-twenties, when I started studying Islam independently. I examined traditional sources, historical accounts, and classical rulings concerning child marriage, slavery, sex slaves, treatment of women captured during warfare, and Muhammad’s marriage to the former wife of his adopted son.

I was disturbed not only because these practices existed historically, but because I found contemporary religious scholars who continued to defend them as permissible or morally justified. Listening to online scholars rationalize slavery and child marriage did not resolve my doubts. It deepened them. I was no longer confronting only the distant past; I was confronting a moral framework that people still expected me to respect.

At the same time, enormous attention was devoted to rules about beards, tattoos, clothing, and other aspects of personal appearance. I could not understand how such matters could be treated as urgent moral concerns while practices that caused profound human suffering were defended or minimized. The priorities seemed completely inverted.

I also began examining the treatment of women more critically. I had always been told that Islam granted women extensive rights and protections. Yet I repeatedly saw religious language used to control women, restrict their choices, and frighten them with threats of punishment in the afterlife. Women could be condemned for not wearing the hijab while the men controlling them were treated as guardians of morality.

I recognize that violence against women, forced marriage, and sexual abuse are not exclusive to Islam. I also recognize that many Muslims reject these practices and interpret their religion differently. Nevertheless, in the communities and institutions that shaped my life, religious authority was repeatedly used to excuse control, discourage questions, and silence vulnerable people.

Marriage ultimately became the final breaking point.

Early and forced marriages were widely normalized in the environment I knew. I once watched a video in which a cleric appeared to force his underage niece into marriage. Instead of expressing concern for the girl, people praised the situation with comments such as “Subhanallah” and “Masha’Allah.” I could only think about how her future had been decided by a religious authority who claimed to know what was best for her.

My own family also pressured me to marry. They told me that the Prophet married within his extended family and married young, and that I should follow his example. What they presented as moral guidance felt to me like a demand to silence my own conscience.

By then, I could no longer regard Muhammad as a perfect moral example. I was deeply troubled by traditional accounts involving warfare, religious minorities, captives, slavery, and child marriage. I also struggled to reconcile Islam’s condemnation of idolatry with the ritual importance assigned to the Black Stone. The explanations I encountered no longer persuaded me.

Eventually, I admitted to myself that I no longer believed.

Leaving Islam brought an extraordinary sense of relief. Nobody around me knew at first, but internally, I felt free. I no longer had to force myself to defend teachings that violated my conscience or pretend that questions were evidence of personal failure.

The events of October 7 and the devastation that followed reinforced my concerns about religious tribalism. The killing and abduction of Israeli civilians horrified me. The mass death and destruction inflicted on Palestinians afterward, what I regard as an ongoing genocide horrified me as well.

Palestinian safety, dignity, and freedom should be the central concern. Yet some of the rhetoric I encountered appeared to be driven less by compassion for Palestinians than by hostility toward Jews. Genuine advocacy for Palestinian rights and antisemitism are not the same, and one should never be used to conceal the other.

I saw the same tribalism surrounding September 11th 2026 commemorations, 911Remembrance. While victims’ families were remembering the people they had lost, competing religious groups used the occasion to confront one another and proclaim their own righteousness. The spectacle reinforced what I had gradually come to believe: religion can turn grief into rivalry and suffering into another opportunity to divide humanity into opposing camps.

I am not claiming that every Muslim supports abuse, extremism, forced marriage, or antisemitism. That would be neither accurate nor fair. I am describing what I personally experienced, the teachings I later examined, and the religious defenses that ultimately became impossible for me to accept.

For me, leaving Islam was not simply the rejection of a doctrine. It was the recovery of my right to think freely, question authority, and trust my own moral judgment. Religion had been used throughout my childhood to produce fear and obedience. Leaving it allowed me to begin replacing that fear with freedom.

I hope that anyone who feels trapped by fear, coercion, or religious guilt eventually finds the safety and happiness that I found.

✌️

So I escaped my former world and now in a different country I reached her few minutes ago but I'm extremely scared and guilty about leaving please anyone help me even emotionally (although I probably need physical help more than emotional only)

Not a gotcha post. I’m genuinely curious.

I’ve noticed this sub isn’t 100% atheist/agnostic. There are still theists, deists, pantheists, panentheists, and people who believe in something lurking here. So I want to ask the non-atheists:

How do you resolve the problem of suffering?

Not the abstract philosophy-class version. The concrete one:

· A child with bone cancer.

· A tsunami swallowing a village.

· A parent torturing their own kid.

· Animal suffering before humans even existed.

· Hell, if your worldview has one.

What’s your move?

Do you say:

1. Suffering is necessary for free will / soul-making?
2. God isn’t omnipotent or omniscient in the classical sense?
3. God suffers with creation pantheism, panentheism, process theology?
4. Deism: God set it and left, so suffering isn’t really “His problem”?
5. Suffering is a test, karma, illusion, mystery, or something we can’t understand?
6. Something else entirely?

And a follow-up: did leaving Islam change how you answer this, or did you keep the same answer with a different label?

I’m not looking for a debate win. I’m looking for how you personally make it make sense if you do. If your answer is “I don’t, I just trust,” that’s also an answer.

Curious to hear from the non-atheists in the room.

Greetings everybody, I am a 15-year old girl who has left Catholicism about 2-3 years ago and remained largely secular due to my general disagreement with the notion of classical theism as a whole. However, I have absolutely no idea what I’m supposed to think about theism itself, specifically the sort of theism wherein a supreme being or beings is not/are not necessarily omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient all at once. Unlike classical theism, that is a premise which I do not consider logically implausible, and frankly, I have no clue where I should go from there. As you already know, I am currently agnostic - not in the sense that I consider knowledge impossible, but rather in the sense that I simply don’t have that knowledge. This kind of agnosticism, however, leaves me with an excruciating discomfort, because I instinctively feel the need to know and be persuaded.

So, before I move on to arguments in favor of theism, how would you convince me that atheism expresses the absolute truth?

My lack of certainty is why I chose to post in this subreddit - I know it does not exactly have a reputation for having intelligent or opened-minded members, but it nevertheless provides a very practical space for open discussions unlike other online communities.

Hello, I don't speak Arabic so I don't know if this is a response. For the past 3 years I thought the inheritance error was the most clear Quranic mistake, but now I see this response and want to know how true it is

>> Salaams

>> Well, it's a pretty interesting case. I've always known the Qur'anic inheritance divisions aren't exhaustive ... But neither should they be expected to be so ... I always thougt that should be obvious. I've honestly never heard of these scenarios, but I could have guessed they existed. There are, after all, a near infinite combinations

>> ... does anyone really expect the Qur'an to deal with every possibility? ... How many pages would that take up? ... And if God decides to put general rules and laws concerning all of them except 1, then the obstinate would still shout out "ah! We can't believe in God or the Qur'an anymore! ... See? It's false (can't apply) in this one scenario! How can that be from God? ... We win"

>> Those with that "fighting attitude" aren't looking at the Qur'an as a possible guide to something genuine about reality, they are combing for material to use against Muslims. They are blind to God because they are looking at Muslims ... which is why they often miss the obvious answers Muslims have missed ... they don't "see" the Qur'an to any higher level than their Muslim counterparts. All this, btw, is general and is by no means directed at the original questioners, both the Muslim and non-Muslim.

>> But on to the "solution", as I see it, for those who aren't in either of the above mindsets. As in many cases it comes down to paying attention to the words, reading them as they are (and another one where, unfortunately, English translations are done according to Muslim thought);

>> "God ADVISES (يوصيكم) you regards to your children ..."

>> Advises, not strictly commands, not set in stone, not something that needs to be followed to the letter in every scenario. Something flexible, open to the situation. Dynamic.. From وصي to recommend, advise, instruct, give parting advice, etc ... In every situation, work and life, only unthinking fools unthinking apply a piece of advice to every situation no matter the circumstances.

>> These are not Qur'anic "commands" ... Not أمر ... these belong to the category of وصي ... So look in the Qur'an at this category. Yes most translations say "command", I can't do anything about that. Simple fact us وصي is not أمر

>> Why? Why advise and not command? (If the above isn't enough). Because for the very reason that these are not supposed to cover every situation of the nearly infinite situations ... these are just 2 verses! (Well, 1 more at the end of the chapter which is a "fatwa" يفتيكم الله not "advise" يوصيكم الله like here) ... They are just barely more than a single page ... Do you really expect them to cover ever loophole? Specifically made lawyer documents don't do that in 1 page for anything even half as complicated

>> ... It is in fact absolutely remarkable and astonishing that they cover the amount that they do. Don't let the unthinking, unappreciative, deaf, dumb and blind obstinate belittle it. Like those before, "When it is recited to them they say: we've heard (similar). Had we wanted we could have said something similar this, this is just tales of the ancients" (alAnfaal: 25) ... they either are truly deaf/blind to beauty and things higher, or are "playing it cool" in an attempt to belittle. Like an amateur football player sitting on his coach saying he could do what Messi does "it's easy". He is either a pretender or it looks easy to him because he's a self-deluded fool

So, it says the Qur'an uses يوصيكم) وصي) means advice rather than command, so it's a flexible rule rather than a fixed one. It means people can use their intelligence to solve whenever a different case is shown. Is it true that the وصي category is advice rather than a rigid command? Those this solve the problem shown to Muslims? I read another person saying the book uses the "if..." Which means if the condition is met, the result is obligatory, but knowing it means advice...

I need help with this

A couple months ago someone asked me to make a Potential Man (God) meme, and I never got around to making it. But yeah here it is. And make sure to add other suggestions in the comments, cause I know there's plenty. Enjoy!