Hi guys, it feels weird to be writing this because I've completely forgot how I was going to structure it so apologies for my erratic writing.
I wanted to make an intro because I didn't know there was a section for that. So my background was that I was born into a culturally religious family (they practiced Islam in a way to be viewed as culturally appropriate) and had the typical childhood experience, go to madrasa (dugsi) read Quran, listen to stories, to the point I thought the Quran was a book of fairy tales innocently. I was made to wear the hijab at age 6 but overall as long as I believed and wore a hijab, I was okay. During my early teens I started to question my faith but because of family issues, I decided to abandon it. When I had to go live my aunt, that's when I started becoming religious.
My aunt is a VERY RELIGOUS woman. She can't even think of the idea of criticizing Islam, let alone do it. when living with her she was a rock to me in my life and the way she would empower me was by using Islam. Every time I would question my faith, she would show me a video or force me to watch peace TV in order to answer my questions about women in Islam etc. and foolishly I took them in which lead to me using Islam to boost myself, I started to become religious and take Islam seriously and watch videos of Muslim apologists making Islam all rosy and really believed in it. I felt that all the worlds problems was due to lack of Islam and that no one was practicing it properly. I used to feel pity at non Muslims and look down on non practicing ones. I even longed for a true Islamic state to solve my problems. Everything was fine until I started to be more honest with myself.
Truthfully I was dissatisfied with the concept of gender and their roles and how the main value of a woman is how they look after a household and bring up pious men. In all of my childhood, I was always put down by my parents as inferior due to being a female, I had always tried to be self sufficient and even when though a period of man hating (now I don't) and extreme low self esteem (which I feel to this day). I used to loathe being a woman because no matter what, I needed a man to complete me and that I would never be truly self sufficient. I got to a point last year where I started to question why I was doing these practices, why am I forcing myself to accept it when deep down I feel its wrong. It was then I started to look at Islam with a critical eye.
It wasn't sudden but gradual, all the reasons that were given to justify practices started to feel obsolete, the arguments were ultimately circular and complicated and I didn't understand how someone should be punished for all eternity for not believing in something that isn't obvious to all and in many ways flawed. The more I looked in the Quran the more I could see it was psychological slavery, kinda like a controlling partner entices you with sweet words but when trapped shows a much darker side. It felt invigorating to be able to free think but also scary.
Due to my former religiousness, I isolated myself from non Muslims, also due to my sheltered upbringing which my parents pride themselves on, I don't know how to integrate into secular society. Also my family have recently become religious and I idea of giving up faith is an unthinkable one. I know that when my cousin became non practicing, the relationship became more bitter and my aunt feels the incessant need to give him dawah, since I live with her, I would know life would become unbearable if I told her. Also my culture is greatly intertwined with Islam, even though I was born and grew up in the UK, I grew up with a strong sense of my Somali culture, and if any of you don't know, you cannot be considered Somali if your not Muslim to my community.
Right now im literally depressed, I cant say to myself that I believe in Islam, but if you see me, I still wear the hijab and jilbab due to the paranoia of being too seductive (coz I was once called a slut for wearing a t-shirt). I went to get therapy but the psychologist referred me to talk to an imam. My family did always say my habit of constantly questioning and criticizing was always going to lead to my downfall. I feel like im useless. HELP! Have any of you ever felt this way? How did you deal with it? Would love to make some friends who understand what im going through.
Once again, apologies for the erratic writing, I just genuinely can't articulate properly the questions on my mind (feel like an absolute drama queen). This is all I can get out of me.
Topic: left islam (kinda, idk) but I don't know what to do with myself