Mathurine, an ex-Muslim, has some advice for ex-Mulsims:
- Embrace Your Anger — “You were lied to. You were betrayed. You were fooled. You have the right to be angry.”
- Get Over Your Regret — “Kick yourself in the ass a few times. Mourn everything you lost. But pick yourself up and get on with it. You already wasted time — don’t waste more drowning yourself in your sorrows.”
- Hold Steady — “Create a support network, and try to stay away from intense debates with Muslims.”
- Be Cautious About Religion — “Even if you still believe in some sort of god or gods, you should probably take it easy with religion, at least for a while. Otherwise, you may be setting yourself up for a pattern of devotion, disillusionment, and disbelief.”
- Life Your Life in Color — “Life without Islam can be a marvelous, beautiful thing. I urge you to take the opportunity to do things you couldn’t or wouldn’t do before when and how you can.”
If you’re interested in Islam and how to help those who are recovering from its clutches, be sure to read the whole thing.
Be Cautious About Religion — “Even if you still believe in some sort of god or gods, you should probably take it easy with religion, at least for a while. Otherwise, you may be setting yourself up for a pattern of devotion, disillusionment, and disbelief.â€
excellent advice.
I liken losing religion to the breakup of a relationship or going through detox and rehab. it’s never a good idea to jump right into things immediately afterwards. You’re not ready for it yet, and you are very likely to take your bad habits/maladaptive behaviors right into something else. then you just end up repeating the whole painful event again and again and again.
The problem with point #5, which I have experienced with Christianity, is that living grandly after faith is nearly impossible, because everyone we know is still religious.
When I first stopped going to church, I thought, great, now we can go camping every weekend in the Summer!
Reality check: No, he must go to church every week, so I am stuck at home alone on beautiful sunny Sundays.
Hi Lorena & everyone. Thanks for reading the post. I was actually thinking about this tonight at dinner, at some little pizza cafe where, unlike the years of my past, I didn’t have to obsessively ask and hound about the food ingredients. Pork and alcohol are used so often in cooking that most people don’t even realise that the ingredient is present. I no longer have to worry about this or be embarrassed – as I often was – by saying things like “Well can you check? Are you sure?” [Honestly, I felt like a jerk]. I don’t fear a god who will punish me by ignoring my prayers for 40 days because I ingested pork or alcohol.
For those of us who were moderately or conservatively religious Muslims, the difference between the normal Canadian or American lifestyle and our lifestyle is so big that just doing the normal things that you do can be a major difference – like black and white to colour. Example: watching TV and movies, listening to music, cutting your grocery trip in half because you don’t have to read every single label on every single product. Eating Starburst candies and Skittles was like “Whoo hoo!” Wearing pants with shirts instead of dresses [because, for those of us who wore pants, which some religious Muslim women won't do, regular shirts in the mall are too short to be appropriate]. 3/4 or short sleeves. Oh – not having to worry about car and house payments and your bank account carrying interest. You can switch from an interest free account to one that pays you interest. You don’t worry that you will eternally burn in hell for having a mortgage or car note. You can buy a house rather than renting!
Muslims are odd in that you may be religious and married to a completely non religious person, or you may have been the religious one in a family of religiously lax Muslims – or you were a convert to Islam. The only issue I didn’t feel like I could tackle here was marriage – the ending of a marriage. Some people’s de-conversion from Islam leads to divorce, some people go open with their disbelief upon divorcing [ie, women & men who hide their disbelief until the child is old enough].
So how colourful your life will be depends on what sort of family / personal situation you are in. But even these small things are so big. For the most part, unmarried converts have it the easiest and even married converts [or ex-converts really] have their own birth family and they are living in their culture which backs up radically different cultural norms than those demanded of you in the Muslim community.
This is excellent advice, and not just for ex-Muslims – I was a fundamentalist Pentacostal Christian, and I can completely understand where these people are coming from.
I still have problems getting into debates with Christians – not because I “know” they’re right, but because I know that they’ll never change their minds and I may as well argue with a brick wall. On some level, I’m terrified that their unflinching resolve will drag me – kicking and screaming, most likely – back into the fold. Remembering what things were like “in the fold”, I am absolutely terrified.
“There’s a creator deity in the sky who has refused to communicate with his creation since revealing a book open to wide and differing interpretations that, if you don’t follow the right one to the letter, could end you an eternity in a lake of fire.”
Again, fundamentalist Christianity to the letter. My parents are thoroughly convinced that their unique interpretation of the Scriptures is the only correct one (though my mother, bless her heart, does not believe that everyone who does not follow it is going to Hell).
To come to the point, it is very good advice for anyone leaving a fundamental religion. Many thanks to the people who took the time to provide advice and put the whole thing together.
Same site, same author, different article: On Befriending the Ex-Muslim. Good stuff.
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Excellent advice.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali presents a similar checklist as a chapter entitled ‘Ten Tips for Muslim Women Who Want to Leave’ in her book ‘The Caged Virgin’.
Her list goes something like this: be sure you want to leave; have faith in yourself that you will be strong enough to do it; establish a network of friends that you can rely on; arrange a place to live; ensure your safety from angry relatives and the like; secure an independet income; enquire about educational opportunities; prepare yourself mentally; then leave.
A frightening prospect for anyone, I think, to change your life so completely.
I sometimes view my fundamental Christian upbringing as like growing up in the spiritual police state. Of course Spiritual Big Brother was always ready to strike if I was bad, but if bad things happened to me, he sat on the sidelines. I remember my preacher told us that we should pray for forgiveness for sins we may have committed but were not aware that those actions were sins. There are some 660 laws in the bible and no one can remember them all.
I would suggest another symbolic act, get a copy of your past holy book destroy it. I remember taking an old bible and throwing it in the fireplace. I was a bit scared when I did this, but it was a great sense of peace as the bible burned and nothing happened. This is not book burning as an act of censorship, but instead destroying an icon of oppression, much like people do when their country is liberated from a totalitarian government
How have you dealth with the anger of your parents once they found about you leaving islam? Has anyone ran into this issue?
Let me explain this a little:
I am from US and all is fine, but where my parents are from, they think the child should not take any action about religion wihout their knowledge …
So has anyone ever dealt with the family ? I just dont know how to go about this? is cutting ties the right thing?
This thing is 24/7 on my mind and keeps bugging me that why my parents dont respect my religious choice. I am in healthcare field and I think they believe the science devil has gotten inside me :P
anyone?