My Weird Story— Confessions of an Ex-Fake Muslim
OP - October 31, 2014, 07:40 AM
Hello all. I know this forum is mostly for ex-Muslims, but I am a white guy who has never believed in Islam, so why would I want to post here? My apologies for the length of this intro, I could not figure out what to cut.
My true story is pretty long and complex, but it suffices to give a few background details and the meat of the story. I was an atheist during my high school years but very interested in religion, I spent a lot of time debating Christians on internet forums like this. When I went to the uni (instead of joining the US Army, as I had wanted to do but was talked out of by my parents) I decided to study Arabic. Although a confirmed atheist in high school my increasing contacts with spiritual and religious people at college changed my mind, and I took the plunge and officially entered the Catholic Church. I became very pious, I never made love to a girl, not even my girlfriend, in college, fasted from meat on Fridays, went to church on Fridays and Sundays, prayed religiously, and fasted during Lent.
I got a scholarship in my 3rd year to study Arabic in the Sultanate of Oman. To my surprise when I got there I found that at least half the people living in the capital, Muscat, were not Arab at all. Although initially a little chagrined I made close friends with many Indians and Pakistanis and became very interested in their culture.
The following year back in the States I applied for the same scholarship to study Urdu in India and I got it. This is where my story really begins. Though I had had no formal classes in Hindi/Urdu, I picked it up quickly. I tried to spend more time with Indian friends than fellow American students, a strategy I picked up in Oman.
One day I was with an Indian friend I had made whilst visiting the Taj Mahall and we ran into a park to get out of the monsoon rain. Thereafter he started showing his new white friend off to all the people in the park, a good opportunity for me to practice speaking which I took, when he introduced me to a girl. Her last name was Khan and she was a Muslim. She told me that she was an English teacher and wanted to practice English with me in return for help with Hindi/Urdu and gave me her number. Over the next few weeks a spent a lot of time with her. She had a Hindu friend named Ritesh who buzzed around her like a fly, I thought at first he was her boyfriend. Eventually though as she spent more and more time with me, I realized she had feelings for me. I was in the middle of a deep culture shock (not to mention a terrible fever) from the very weird ways I was getting treated by Indian people (who seemed to have a creepy obsession with the color of my skin) and feeling really alone a dejected. Eventually on the advice of another Indian friend I “proposed” to her and told her that I loved her. She said she felt the same. But of course, I would have to convert to Islam. I knew this was coming, and after a lot of back and forth I told her it was not possible, I was a Christian who believed in the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ and I did not believe Muhammad to be a prophet. I would never change, and we should just stop talking then and there. I remember distinctly telling this to her in the same park we met, getting up, and walking off to get a rickshaw. Halfway home she begged me to stop, met me at the local church, and prayed with me for a solution. She told me she loved me so much and could not live without me. I felt like I could not break her heart. I left India but promised to find a way to be with her and stay in touch.
About 4 months later I asked her mother if I could marry her. I felt this was crazy fast but she convinced me there was no other way. After months of trying to get me to convert to Islam (a difficult task for her, since I knew as much if not more about Islam than her and she knew next to nothing of Catholicism save for some of the crude Islamic stereotypes of Christianity) she gave up and asked me to lie to her parents about converting to Islam. I fought hard against the idea, but when it seemed like the only alternative was leaving her and breaking her heart I gave in. I had wanted to go to grad school for Arabic, but as I found out immigration to the US even for spouses and fiances of US citizens is a cruel and expensive process. I started working shitty jobs and trying to find a way, anyway, for us to be together. It became my whole life. I took all the money I had made plus my gifts from graduating college and used it to be a plane ticket back for our engagement, which would be copiously photographed for US immigration proof.
That was when Ritesh, the creepy Hindu guy from before, dropped a bombshell on me. He told me that he was screwing her, and had been doing so for several years. Since I had come back he had talked to me all the time, trying to keep tabs on me and Samar, in an extraordinarily creepy way. Now it all made sense. I confronted my fiancée, and she claimed it was true but that she had been raped and subsequently blackmailed into doing it more. When I asked why she had not told me this was going on after we met, she said she was afraid I would leave her if she was not a virgin. Every bone in my body wanted to leave her then, but I did not; I felt too much pity for her.
Instead, against the advice of all my friends and family, I traveled to India and for 30 days faced the Islamic interrogation of her parents as I pretended to be a Muslim. Since I knew Arabic already memorizing the Quranic aayaat was not hard for me, I could say them better than most of her family, although the sickening bowing to Mecca of sujuud stirred in me deep revulsion of all things Islamic. Although I had always tried to take a humanistic and tolerant view of Islam I began to hate it in my heart. Her father took me to meet 'ulamaa, with whom I conversed freely in Arabic, I remember one who interrogated me switched back to Urdu mid-stream because I spoke better Arabic than he did. They were all satisfied with my knowledge of Islam, and I knew all the right things to say. I fooled her parents, good and decent people, right and proper. At the same time my faith in God began to wane; I half expected to be struck down for denying the Lord Jesus Christ where I stood, but when this did not happen I began to doubt.
I went back to the US and prepared for our wedding. We would need a lot of money for the wedding and I had to make over 125% of the US poverty level for 2 people to sponsor her visa, so restaurants wouldn't cut it anymore. I first went to work for the Obama campaign and then got into my father’s line of work, telecom, which I had never been interested in. I found a good job near DC and moved to work it. I saved up everything I could for the tickets, gifts, and expenses for the wedding. In 2013 I went back and once again feigned practice of Islam. Our wedding was particularly unhappy, due to a lot of reasons we spent the first night in the same building as her family lived, I remember how much grief her moms family gave us for this. Since the Islamic nikaah was a sham we wanted something more solid and tried to get a court marriage from the Indian government. The local official, probably a Hindu nationalist, took a disliking to us and made it extremely difficult, even with bribes; I ended up staying 2 months instead of one to get the damn thing done. Then I returned.
Some of you may know, it’s no easy matter to get a foreign spouse into the US; it takes over a year, and it’s gotten worse since Obama’s recent pro-illegal immigrant policies have taken effect. Separated once again, and completely unsure of when we would get our interview, I sank into a deep depression. Any hint of my doubting or at all regretting any part of our relationship was met with hysterical antics from my wife, so I avoided the subject with her until it got so bad I told her I was thinking about divorce (though I told her in the same email that I wanted to work on my issues and avoid that at all costs). Her response was hysterical, she told me she wanted to kill herself and went to the hospital due to a panic attack. I apologized and begged forgiveness. I got over it.
Eventually after I saved up some more money she moved out of her place of residence in Northern India to Mumbai, where the US consulate is known to hand out less “Administrative Processing” than the one in Delhi. Despite repeated promises to get a job so she could help pay her rent, etc. it was Ramadan and since she had not fasted for the last 2 years she told me she wanted to start now (?).
That’s when she started getting more religious. I had bought her a Google Chrome book as a present for our wedding, and she started reading the Quran and learning new aayaat and prayers online during Ramadan. During her virtual 'umrah she somehow discovered (as though this were a fucking surprise) that Muslim women who had sex with or married kaafir men were committing a sin, and even, horror of horrors, were the equivalent of whores and prostitutes. She informed me of this one month after she had moved to Mumbai, near the end of Ramadan this year. I was heartbroken, but I figured she was just having a little depression like I was. I talked her out of it.
Over the next month, though, she grew more and more distant from me. She stopped wanting to talk on Skype and Google Chat. She eventually started telling me she wanted to live alone and did not want to be married to me (again). After weeks of this I told her to give me a final answer, and I gave her a week to think it over during which I would leave her alone. At the end of it she told me she no longer loved me. I cried and begged and pleaded with her, but she was like stone, she said I was an infidel and it would be better for both of us to end it now. Heart broken, I accepted. Three days later, she called me up, drunk on 10 sleeping pills she had taken in a weak suicide bid, and begged me to come back. I refused. Two weeks later she sent me an ultimatum, saying that if I did not come back she would definitely kill herself and it would be my fault. For those of you who speak Urdu, to quote her email to me “agar main zinda bachi to meri barbaad zindgi ke liye main zimmedaar rahungi aur agar main mar gayi to meri maut ke liye tum zimmedaar rahoge. tumne mujhse sabkuch chheen liya kyunki tumhi mera sab kuch ho.” (“If I remain alive then I will be responsible for my ruined life and if I die then you will be (stay) responsible for my death. You have torn everything away from me because you are my everything.”). I broke down and went back to her for 1 day, before coming to my senses and changing all of my online aliases and my phone numbers. I am in the middle of getting a divorce decree now.
So that’s my book, sorry for the length. I was never really a Muslim but the Islamic faith has had a profound (negative) impact on my life. I actually now want to get out of IT and try to go back to academia, I am highly interested in Islamic origins, and my undergrad background of not only Arabic but also Hebrew, Syriac, and Ge’ez will help me in this regards I believe. I am not sure if I am still a Christian; I want to believe in Christ, I love the message of the Gospels, I am traditionally minded, but I feel that I may be becoming an atheist, which I suppose would put me in good company here. Hope to have many fruitful discussions with you guys here. Cheers.
إطلب العلم ولو في الصين
Es sitzt keine Krone so fest und so hoch,
Der mutige Springer erreicht sie doch.
I don't give a fuck about your war, or your President.
Topic: My Weird Story— Confessions of an Ex-Fake Muslim