Jew-Turned-Muslim-Turned-Atheist
OP - November 01, 2014, 06:27 AM
Heyo! I'm a bit different from most of the ex-Muslims around in that I was actually a convert to Islam. From Judaism. So, let me start my story there.
I grew up in a Jewish family with Christian family members. Jews in general don't study the Bible outside of the Torah, so they have little knowledge of the judges, kings, and prophets of Judaism. Since I had Christian family, I did learn about those people, mostly so I could explain to my Christian family why they were wrong and Judaism was right. This made me a hot commodity in the Jewish marriage market, and I was highly respected for my learning and anti-Christian views. At one point I was probably the most famous Orthodox Jewish woman on YouTube, even being a featured channel with offers to become a partner.
But there was something gnawing at me: The virulent racism of Jews. While I thought the hatred of Christians was totally justified, after all they have mass-slaughtered Jews throughout their history, there really wasn't any historical problem between Jews and Muslims in spite of what you see today. Also, despite the protestations of apologists that Judaism is a religion, not a race, I knew, and everyone else knew, that wasn't true. You need look no further than the Jewish law and the Talmud to see this: there are two famous passages that state very clearly that non-Jews are donkeys, and then there are other less-publicized passages that say that the reason children of non-Jewish women are not Jewish, even if their father is, is because ALL non-Jewish women are prostitutes and highly promiscuous, so there's no way you can be sure the child is yours and have no legal responsibility towards it. Even women converting to Judaism are assumed to be promiscuous, and it is standard practice for your converting rabbi to grill you on your sexual history and strictly forbid you from forming any relationships with Jewish men until after you convert (which takes about 3-10 years). Moses' nephew was highly praised by God in the Torah for running a non-Jewish woman through with a spear for having the audacity to have a relationship with a Jewish man. I've seen women trying to convert to Judaism be coerced into having sex with a Jewish man, who tells her if she doesn't do what he says he will tell the converting Rabbi that she tried to seduce him and she will be barred from conversion. Because of this acceptance of the fact that she's a whore by virtue of not having been born into the right kind of family, her complaints that he raped her would never be accepted, because he's too pious to ever do that because he was born into the right kind of family.
So I decided I didn't want to be associated with that, but I was still religious. I had long held, with a quiet but thriving community of other practicing Jews, that there is no real theological objection to the claims of prophethood by Mohammad. We believed he probably was a prophet, but that what he said was not binding on Jews, because we were under a different set of laws given by God. Non-Jews are bound only by seven laws (the Noahide laws), not by the 613 of the Torah. Mohammad, we believed, was a true prophet because he brought people back to the practice of these seven laws. Additionally, I had discovered that there were many ancient Jewish historians who said that the Torah we have now was written by Ezra, and not Moses. So I became a Muslim.
As most of you probably know, there aren't many converts from Judaism to Islam, and the ones that there are get loads of attention. So I've been in the public spotlight basically since I came public. My blog about my conversion has exploded in popularity over the last year, now averaging 1,000 hits per month (total views since 2010 = 31,000+).
Over the last few years, my religiosity has declined. There are several reasons why: growing disenfranchisement with religion in general, having my bipolar disorder (one of the symptoms of which is hyper-religiosity) better managed with medication, a growing understanding that the mystic experiences I have had were caused by anomalies in my brain and not by supernatural entities (proven by their sharp decline in frequency after I started taking anti-psychotics to control my paranoia), better education about the history of religion and its role in our evolution and about science in general, etc. I also completed a degree in social work, which required a great deal of learning about psychological development and disorders and also religiosity.
But there are some reasons I don't want to come out as no longer religious publicly. One is the very obvious fear for my safety. Another that I had previously but have since lost is the fear of losing my social network; all my friends have cut off contact with me for various other reasons, largely related to my plethora of psychological disorders. They seem like that whack-a-mole game, as soon as you start treating one effectively something else starts becoming problematic. Another reason is that I'm currently living off of various religious charities, mostly Muslim charities, while waiting to receive disability (I was awarded disability this week after two years of struggling to get it). So, I've got real reasons for not wanting to be openly non-religious, but I also want to meet people who are willing to accept me without faith.
That's more words than I was expecting it to be. I'd be surprised if anyone actually read all of them. Anyway, that's an introduction to me.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I have a sonic screwdriver, a tricorder, and a Type 2 phaser.
Topic: Jew-Turned-Muslim-Turned-Atheist