Ex-Muslim, Ex-Living

It was a gradual change that came from roots planted in childhood doubts, but the first time I admitted to myself my new label might be "atheist", and not "Muslim", it felt as if I had stopped living.

As someone who was raised religious by a practising family, I've been subjected to exorcisms, forced to wear hijab, and shunned by local communities as each of my impious behaviours piled up. The trauma that came with being forced to live under a restrictive belief system that was designed to shape and control every small stroke of the painting of my life led to (what has since been) a life of loneliness, fear, and questions.

One night of my childhood, when my mother had finished telling me tales of prophets and demons and heaven and hell (her idea of a bedtime story), I dared to sin. I asked questions she didn't want asked. "But how?" "But why?" Religion is good at theorising the what, who, when, where of life, but when I dug into the logistics of these explanations, I came up with nothing but endless soil.

My mother was visibly agitated, and her response only served to make me feel the same way: because god said so, god made it so, and in god we trust. But why couldn't god have sent some acknowledgement of these questions that would've inevitably been asked by his people? Wouldn't he have foreseen it all, being "Al-Baseer" (the All-Seeing)? My frustrations growing up stemmed from the constant inability from anyone I asked to quench my thirst for knowledge.

And what made it worse was the clear indicators that questions were wrong. From my mother, to my father, to the local imam; I had to tread cautiously in case I challenged god or the fragile framework of the community these people had built off their holy book. The worst thing to do was accidentally slip out some blasphemy and then be compared to the devil.

While my teenage self began to grapple with issues of my equality, disability, and sexuality, and I educated myself more on the religion I claimed as my own, the divide between what I believed to be true and what I knew to be true steadily increased. There was no place for me in the local Muslim community, so I turned online in search for it and found the same hostility and close-mindedness.

What followed was years of ups and downs. These beliefs I had grown up with as fact; as true as the Queen being called Elizabeth, and as real as my own life, were suddenly … fantastical? I had asked myself how everyone was so sure they were right, and now I wondered what it would be if no one was right after all.

It took months to come out to someone else as an atheist after I had admitted it internally. I was terrified. But they were a fellow atheist who understood the risks of telling someone in that small majority-Muslim town, and that soothed a part of my heart.

The minute my family finds out, or religious friends catch a hint of, who I am, I am a dead person. At the very least I will be disowned, and at the most I will never rule out an honour killing.

With this new perspective on my life, the phrase "live every day like your last" has never been so relevant. I can control my coming out to the people who may endanger me, but there's nothing protecting me if the wrong person puts all the pieces of my puzzle together. The agreed upon punishment for apostasy in Islam is death: "there will appear some young foolish people who will say the best words but their faith will not go beyond their throats (i.e. they will have no faith) and will go out from (leave) their religion as an arrow goes out of the game. So, where-ever you find them, kill them." - Volume 9, Book 84, Number 64.

It is easier for me to live as if I were already dead. Nothing is taken for granted, nothing is planned too much into the future, I spend my days attempting to come to terms with my death and what may or may not happen after. Religion has planted itself firmly enough inside me that I still fear the afterlife, so my brain and heart routinely fight to be heard over the other.

My story is not unique at all. After many conversations with many other ex-Muslims, I have found we share the same experiences, thoughts, and fears so, if anything, what I have just written is the amalgamation of countless stories. However, our lives are shamefully underreported. We don't come out because it will never benefit us to do so, and the few that are in the public eye are the ones receiving death threats.

The right wing will use our stories as an excuse for their racism and xenophobia, while the left wing ignores us for fear of perceived Islamophobia. Where do we go? Just like the limbo of life and death we find ourselves in, we also flow between these groups in search for understanding, but walk away empty-handed and more desperate each time.