There are things that still take my breath away (not in a good way)
OP - November 16, 2017, 07:40 PM
I became an atheist at the age of 15. Truth be told, I was just bored! At 15, I couldn't be bothered to pray, read the same book over and over again, fast or cover. It was just boring!
At 19, after an arranged engagement, I gave it another go. I knew, if i wanted to avoid being beaten from my soon to be husband from Pakistan, I would need to be sufficiently religious. I read the Quran, not just in Arabic, I read it in a language I could understand. Well, partially understand, as it was written in old English, rather than the modern version we speak today. I always found it ridiculous, that we would blindly follow something that we didn't understand. I was always told that Islam was the religion of peace, tolerance and equality.
That's what I found. One of the main reason's I thought I would give it another go was because of this engagement and I wanted to know what my rights and obligations would be as a wife in Islam......turns out there are many obligations and not so many rights.
There are many that offended me in Islam. The two main things that stood out time and again were that my husband could beat me, sorry, lightly beat me and that I could not refuse him sex. So that would mean I was his
play thing. If it wasn't enough that my husband could sexually assault me whenever he felt the need, he could also have multiple wives.
I have been an atheist now for 16 years. A couple of years ago, I went a little further with this and realized that i am not only an atheist, but also an anti-theist. I hate religion. After suffering the loss of my brother and the imposition of a Muslim funeral by the community that we had grown up in, I realized that I truly hate religion.
My family knew that my brother was an atheist and he wanted to be cremate, yet he was buried in the Islamic way. They read naats and verses of the Quran at his funeral, whilst I shouted hysterically for them to stop, because he was an atheist and this would have been the last thing that he would have wanted.
Although I have been an atheist for over half of my life and an anti-theist for the last few years, there are still some things that take my breath away.
1. When Islamic books are put on the floor - its just a book, I know that. Whenever i have needed to use it for research, I still put it on the floor, but it always makes me feel nauseated.
2. Pigs - Some of them are so cute, but I still hold my breath as I walk past them. I still think they are really ugly, even if they are super cute and i hear myself telling myself off in my head, its not their fault that Islam hates them.
3. Pictures of Mohammed - I absolutely support anyone wanting to draw pictures of Mohammed, encourage it even and the right to feel offended by it, but I still have this terrifying feeling that the world is going to end because someone drew a picture of an ancient pedophile.
Writing this, I can sense the absurdity of it, but the years of indoctrination and brainwashing do have a lifelong impact. It becomes a never ending internal battle to counter years of brainwashing.
Topic: There are things that still take my breath away (not in a good way)