#leavingislam

There are two parallel roads Muslims usually take when the horrendous topic of ex-muslims comes up

“You don’t like islam? Fine whatever, that’s your life, but why do you have to make such a big deal out of it?”

and

“How can you even call yourself an ex-muslim. There’s no such thing as an ex-muslim, you were never muslim to begin with”

Well let me break it down for you

I choose to call myself an ex-Muslim because leaving a system of living that is culturally, morally, and socially drenched with Islam is fucking difficult.

I choose to call myself an ex-muslim because -for many people- I don’t seem to exist. My reasoning for leaving and experiences are apparently invalid, and that my very personhood is negotiated as soon as it becomes apparent that I don’t share the beliefs of mainstream muslims.

I need to call myself an ex-muslim to make it clear that someone who is born into islam can leave islam, that someone born into a muslim family doesn’t have to conform to so called family values.

This is why "there is no God but Allah" really means "there are lots of gods but Allah is the special one"

I am trying to convince my friend that I ONLY like chocolate cake with my afternoon tea. Not a Victoria sponge. Not ginger bread. Not cheesecake. I don't like shortbread. I don't like Welsh cakes. I dislike battenberg and I don't dare acknowledge spotted dick.

There is no cake fit for afternoon tea other than chocolate cake. Afternoon tea is so important, in fact, that to consider anything else is to commit an atrocity against chocolate cake.

There is no cake but chocolate cake.

"But" my friend raised an eyebrow "other cakes are enjoyed very much. Some people enjoy cheesecake. Some people enjoy croissants instead. There's definitely at least one person out there confidently ordering spotted dick for afternoon tea"

"NO" I screech "HOW DARE YOU THERE IS NO CAKE BUT CHOCOLATE CAKE. I'M GOING TO GO AROUND AND SMASH UP ALL THE OTHER TYPES OF CAKE AND GONNA BURN THE RECIPES AND CAMPAIGN TO MAKE IT ILLEGAL TO SELL OTHER CAKES AND WHOEVER ASSOCIATES CAKE WITH AFTERNOON TEA OTHER THAN CHOCOLATE CAKE...."

My friend looked concerned with my obsessive and jealous craze, they could see the fire in my eyes.

Cake I thought There is only one cake. Whoever associates cake with afternoon tea other than chocolate cake...

Year 2000

We didn’t start school until 7 – 8 months after arriving in the UK. At this time we had moved out of my aunt’s house and into a council flat. My experience of school in UAE and Pakistan had been mostly positive, although the UAE’s education system isn’t the best by any means. I distinctly remember my first day at school in the Emirates or more specifically the Arabic class. The teacher expected me as a new student to be able to read and write something he demanded from the text book. Bearing in mind that I had zero knowledge of how to read Arabic didn’t get in the way of him relentlessly hitting my palms with a plastic stick each time I failed to respond. Growing up I had read the Quran but the Arabic was vastly different as the text didn’t have any of the markings above the alphabets which makes it easier to pronounce words. With that in mind, I was looking forward to attending school in England.

The school was a call “Frizinghall” in Bradford. The students were mostly of a Pakistani background but there were still a few white kids from around the area. The first thing that was abundantly clear was that a lot of the boys in my class or indeed the school, immediately started to mock my accent. I didn’t think there was anything majorly wrong with how I spoke but I suppose this was confirmation that I had a bit of an accent. I should say however at this point that I suffered from horrendous bullying from year 7 all the way up to year 10. It has in many ways shaped a lot about my personality now. I will try however to keep this blog mostly about things which led to me leaving Islam.

It was my 2nd or 3rd week at school. It was THEN where I witnessed something that made my stomach churn. The teacher had asked a girl in my class to hand out some worksheets to the rest of the group while he wrote on the board. She made her way around the class putting down the sheets in front of the kids. I noticed that a few Asian boys she gave the sheet to didn’t take the sheet from her hands but let her put it on the table, after which they would blow on the sheet. I didn’t get it at first but soon realised that they were blowing it as though it was dirty or repulsive, simply because the girl who gave it to them was white.

I felt sick, I had never seen anything like it. The boy sat next to me did the same thing and I asked him why, to which he replied “It’s because “gore” are dirty”. “How do you know she’s dirty?” I asked to which he simply replied “Because they don’t clean themselves properly like us”. I didn’t really attach any religious reasons to it at the time. I just felt that it was plain rude and awful. Retrospectively thinking about it, the logic behind this was probably based on the fallacy of how Muslims take pride in washing themselves with water when they go to the toilet. The religion may command it but it’s arrogant and insulting to even pretend that all Muslims are cleaner than someone who isn’t. All this wasn’t in my mind at that time though, I was more concerned about how the girl must have felt while this was going on.

After the lesson we had a break and I couldn’t help but approach her and ask if she was ok. I don’t know why I did that. I was quite reclusive thanks to the name calling and accent remarks which were thrown at me randomly. “What are you on about?” she said. I told her that I think its shit that the boys did that to you when you gave them the worksheet. “They do it all the time… I don’t give a fuck really” and walked off.

Year 2000

We’ve been in the UK for several weeks now. Needless to say the novelty of it had worn off. During the day my cousins would go to school and me and my brothers would sneak in a few games on the PlayStation knowing full well that our hosts didn’t like it. They had a reasonably big family, my aunt, uncle and 6 kids. Now that we had moved in, a total of 11 people in a terraced house, made things claustrophobic. Most of the time, there wasn’t much to do. My father insisted that we took this time (while we were unable to go to school due to our asylum application) and read school books left by our cousins and from the library. However the PlayStation was a much more appealing prospect.

Year 2000

Sitting next to my brother I am now bored of this flight. It’s only an hour or so long, but it’s our second one since we left the UAE. The initial flight into London was via PIA, who for whatever reason always serve the same appalling rice and curry as their in-flight “meal”. This flight is with British Midlands and the flight attendant asks us if we would like a sandwich. I pick out the one which looks the most exotic to me. At 11 years old, and only having ever lived in Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, I didn’t quite know what “Ham and cheese” really meant. All I knew was that it was enough to prompt my dad to get up and take the sandwich out of my hands and give it back to the attendant. I settled for egg and cress which was still considerably better than the stale rice and wallpaper paste from the Pakistan International Airways flight.

I remember asking my dad why he took it away, and his response was simply that it was “Haram” (forbidden). I looked over at the other passengers eating their exotic sandwiches and thinking to myself about how bad it was. How can they eat haram food? I had this irrational repulsion all of a sudden. It was my first exposure to food that can be classified as forbidden. People only ate food… food which was by default halal (permissible) everywhere I had lived before. Confused I returned back to thinking why does it take so long to get from Dubai to London and then from London to Manchester.