The title may be slightly misleading; I am still, just barely, a Muslim. I will, however, say that my experiences surrounding religion the past 3-ish years match the label well, so we’ll be running with it throughout the post. Also, I probably was Islamically considered an apostate at some point, so I don’t think it’s any inaccurate either. I’ll begin with my childhood, and then lead up to the present day. I’m still very uncertain about many things (as is everyone), so don’t take this as a shill post (or hate post) for the ideology.
My dad put me into a weekend madrassa when I was about 5 or 6. It was there I learnt to read Arabic and the basics of the faith. Indoctrination, at its simplest. I was told that was the way things were and to just accept it. I lived in London, in an area where the sunny side of the religion was the only side seen, so everything seemed to align fine. I was a believer of truth, in a world where most had gone astray. This is also where I met a close friend, we’ll call her Bread.
Bread was my best friend in the 7 years I spent there, and made many of my happiest moments possible. We’d go to eachother’s houses (and hide in my dad’s car when we couldn’t), meet eachother for evening prayers, play in the local park and spend time together at whatever opportunity we could get. It was during this time that memorising the Quran started to feel like a drag, and I’d begun trying to find ways to trick my teachers into making me do less of it. I never thought of it as a bad thing, though. Bread was at madrassa, and Bread was my best friend! How could I possibly not like the place?
We had yearly ceremonies where the best students from each class got a trophy for their efforts, and I was always one of the top 3. Quranic and academic prowess were the only things my parents liked me for, why would I dare to slack off on them? My teachers and classmates would praise me, and I got to spend more time with Bread - yay!
Point is, Bread and the praises kept me hooked in.
Then came August 2021. I was 11 at the time when my mother gave me the wonderful news of a family holiday. We’d go to Pakistan, and live in a big house with three floors, and meet our cousins and it was going to be the best time ever. The best. The following month was our flight, and we stayed in my grandfather’s house for the initial part of our stay
October… November… December…
… Wait a minute.
I’d ask my parents when we’d go back, only to receive a cryptic, vague mix of “We’ll see” or “InshaAllah”, and some other words strung to them. This wasn’t an ordinary holiday. Another month passed and we had our house. Another and I had begun school again. Another and my Dad started pushing us to memorise Quran again.
Where’s Bread?
Everything had flipped upside down, the wrong way around. Everybody spoke the funny samosa language, and I’m not the golden child anymore? The food here’s spicy as hell, and there’s no Asda, Tesco’s or Lidl from where we can buy actually good food.
No hate to South Asian cuisine. It’s fire (literally and metaphorically), just not for me.
School was also very different. I used to wear grey trousers, a white collared shirt, navy blazer and tie. Here, I had to wear these uncomfortable baggy trousers and a really long shirt with slits? And a scarf to cover my chest? Eh? My brother could wear the trousers and shirt fine, but if I asked to I was now suddenly denied? The girls at school would refuse to talk to me, and let out snickers even the language barrier couldn’t protect me from. They clearly didn’t like me, but why? I still got straight A’s, I was still the same person. Why was everything suddenly flipped? I couldn’t wear shirts and trousers at all now. My mum would press me to wear shalwar kameez, and cover my chest whenever we had guests (even family!) or went out.
The dupatta thing is honestly so fucking stupid. I used to spend so much time just fixing it so my chest wouldn’t be obvious (fuck gravity and the wind). It became so annoying that I just decided to wrap it around my head and use a pin to keep it in place.
I then dropped out of school for a year and a half, mostly to cry in my bedroom with the door shut. I’d beg my mother to sleep with me at night like I was 3 again. I was irritated and began sobbing at basically everything.
I turned to social media and the internet to fill the hole left by so
much appearing to be lost. I had often played Minecraft with Bread for
the first 9 months of our “holiday”, so I learnt to host a game server
locally with the help of r/admincraft. That had made Reddit a rather
appealing option, so I signed up for an account. I also played Genshin
Impact, and wanted to join its subreddit, too.
Reddit had a sub for
basically everything, so I thought I’d run a search for some
Islam-related ones. Maybe I could find advice on what to do about my
revulsion to memorising the Quran. Maybe that’s why I’m so sad. I’m not
reading Quran, so Mum and Dad don’t love me as much.
> “muslim”
>> r/Muslim
>> r/MuslimCorner
>> r/MuslimLounge
>> r/exmuslim
My eyes skimmed down the list until the last caught them. Peculiar name, doesn’t seem like the rest. What’s it about? A quick scroll through the top page and confusion flooded my brain.
... You can leave?
Really? I can just leave and not have to deal with any of this? Why wasn’t I told this before? Oh, my goodness, things were going to be so easy now –
My parents. Fuck, they wouldn’t let me off at all. Regardless, I joined the sub and kept looking through it a while. Reading through the posts and comments made me feel heard, like all the thoughts I could never express were finally being spoken. Anything new I came across became something I agreed with. I felt understood after 2 years of being isolated and pushed back. Everything made sense. The sudden gap between me and my elder brother, the pushiness to memorise the Quran, the headscarf, the “truth” all came to light.
I kept my feelings and opinions to myself. Things could only go downhill if I were to speak up about them. I was also still very conflicted, and unsure as to whether I wasn’t just being lied to again. I also kept r/islam in my sub list, and just observed the parallels for another year. It was in this year, 2023, that I began to come to terms with the current state of affairs. We weren’t going back, and that was that. There was nothing I could do about it. I also became less self-centered and started to see how the move affected the lives of my siblings and parents.
I began to pick up Urdu pretty quick, and became closer to my parents again. My grades wavered a bit, but returned to their original altitude soon enough. Maybe things aren’t that bad after all.
https://www.reddit.com/r/islam/comments/1ff88im/is_drawing_anything_living_haram/
Fuck. Are we really doing this again? No way my only hobby, drawing, is haram.
https://islamqa.info/en/answers/39806
Of course it is, why am I not suprised? Cue another year of doomscrolling r/exmuslim and crying. Anyways… 2024 comes around and I’m really just tired of everything. I have my iGCSEs around the corner and my parents have had it with my tantrums. I do some back and forths on r/islam and r/exmuslim from time to time, but whatever. It’s all so messed up and I couldn’t care less. I, unfortunately, pick up enough Urdu to understand almost all daily conversation, so Dad takes that as an oppurtunity to start shoving Islam down my throat again.
I ask my mum and one of my cousins a few questions about the religion, got pretty stupid answers. The main takeaways from my cousin were that I haven’t yet “embraced my femininity” and that “I’ll understand when I’m older”. I look back at all the things that initially bothered me about the religion with a straight face, and look through the supposed explanations myself.
https://www.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/on7aok/everything_wrong_with_islam_updatedincomplete/
I don’t know whether it’s the result of cognitive dissonance, but I think that most of it isn’t as bad as it seems? I think there’s nuance and context that can be provided to put the bigger picture together and make it seem not-so-bad? I may also just be continuing to believe in the faith to preserve my comfort and sanity. I do think the core message of the faith, to abandon wordly pleasures in favour of being righteous (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nafs) is a good direction. I also think the way the religion is practiced (or seems to be) nowadays is far from what the ideology actually is, so I plan to give the Quran and classical literature a good read and make my own assessment. Maybe I remain Muslim, maybe I don’t. I’ll take this slow and enjoy the ride, and hopefully not become one of the twisted “Muslims” I observe in my day-to-day during the process.
That’s kind of it. I’m taking things a bit slower now and will
hopefully be able to think more clearly make make betterly-informed
decisions as a result. I think I’ll go through, in no particular order:
- Yaqeen Institute’s curriculum
- LQToronto’s renowned Arabic course
- The Quran and some tafsir
- A bit of Sahih Bukhari and its commentary
- Classical literature
- Stuff from different perspectives: salaf,
progressive, western, exmuslim etc
Maybe this is excessive and a “having every bite even though the apple is rotten” situation, but I’ll see how things go, I guess. It’s only fair to give this religion a proper chance before moving on, considering how majorly and variably contorted it’s become.