I was born a Muslim and started practising in my early twenties. For about thirty years, I continued to be devout and active within the Muslim community, working to promote and propagate Muslim values.

I never really questioned my beliefs much, though I was always opposed to the more narrow-minded and hard-line versions of my faith. But 2001 was a turning point in my life, and I started questioning things I had taken for granted. Little by little, doubts began creeping in. At first I tried to suppress them and reacted to criticism of Islam with denial, anger and blame. I denied there was anything wrong, felt hyper-sensitive to any criticism and blamed the West for provoking and creating problems.

When I did eventually accept that Muslims had to take responsibility for the problems we faced, I still couldn’t accept that Islam itself was to blame: it was the way Islam was being interpreted that was the problem. I started arguing for a reinterpretation and reform of traditional views, but instead of easing my conscience, that only highlighted the futility and dishonesty of such views. Finally I tried to tell myself that although my rational mind found it difficult to believe certain things in Islam, there must be explanations beyond my capacity to understand and that “God knows best”. The safest and wisest option was to “hold fast to the rope of Allah”. I reckoned I had nothing to lose and everything to gain by remaining a believer and so I went through the motions of being a “good” Muslim, in the hope that my faith would return, but it only made me depressed and lose all motivation – one can pretend for only so long. The problem is that one cannot choose to believe. One either does or does not, and if there is a God, the last thing he would have wanted me to do was to “pretend” to believe in something that I didn’t.

Approaching my fifties, I knew I no longer believed in Islam any more. Accepting that I was no longer a Muslim was an extremely difficult thing to do. The feeling of fear and isolation is enormous and the sense of loss and freefall, with nothing to grab onto, is terrifying. I feared I would burn in Hell for rejecting Islam despite my rational mind telling me this was nonsense. The fear of Hell in Islam is enormous. It is described very graphically in the Qur’an as a place of eternal torture where skin will be burnt off then replaced by more skin to burn again. Boiling fluid will be poured through the skull and fruit in the shape of the heads of devils will shred the intestines. Even if one has a metaphorical understanding of the Qur’an, it is extremely hard to put a benign spin on such passages and the fear of eternal damnation is not something a Muslim can easily shake off – even if reason and logic tells him his fears are baseless.

I was also haunted by the thought I was betraying my community – particularly at a time of need, when Muslims were being stigmatised and branded as evil people – something that of course I knew was not true. The last thing I wanted was to be associated with bigots and xenophobes who hate Islam and Muslims. The fact that I no longer believed in Islam didn’t mean I had suddenly turned into a hater and I knew that the vast majority of Muslims were good, decent, hardworking and law-abiding individuals. But the most painful part of losing my faith was how it affected my own family and it played a part in the break-up of my marriage, although my ex-wife still does not know I have left Islam completely. Also, the conflict it is now causing my children is something that I am finding hard to deal with. They were brought up as devout Muslims and hearing me telling them they must believe this and that and say their prayers etc… Now they see that I do not do these things and contradict many of the things I taught them when they were little.

Until quite recently, I was still actively involved in Islamic community work. But now that I had lost my faith I knew I had to leave and move away from my old community. Partly so that I could find some space to be myself and not have to pretend anymore. But partly because I was worried that some in my old community would not react well to the news and might even become violent. I was worried for my children more than anything. I was well known to many in my community. I couldn’t walk down the street without bumping into this or that brother or sister or work colleague or acquaintance from the mosque. At work I found it impossible to keep up appearances any more and started keeping to myself to avoid having to talk to anyone. But making the decision to leave my old friends, colleagues and community was a very difficult one. It had been a huge part of my life, and I cared about them deeply. But as long as I remained within the Islamic community I knew I couldn’t move on. I had to take stock of who I was and where I was. I needed space. I wanted to change everything and make a fresh start, get away from religion and the person I had become. I eventually moved out to a completely different town.

I was glad I did. The greatest relief was that I did not have to live a double life of publicly expressing beliefs that I privately no longer held. I was finally free to be myself, though I wasn’t sure who that was. I kept very much to myself and the only people I did talk to regularly were my two brothers. I couldn’t tell my five sisters as I know that the two eldest, in particular, would be very upset. They still thought I was a practising Muslim, though they knew I had some “strange” ideas, but I had never said I wasn’t a Muslim. It wasn’t something that I had even said to myself. It’s not as if there is any identifiable moment when you stop being a Muslim. It’s an invisible process, and the conscious mind is the last to know, or, rather, accept. But one of my
brothers had let something slip to my eldest sister and I suddenly got a text message one day:

“How u doing ***** says startlingly that u r becoming an apostate! maybe u should try 2 get hold of American writer - jeffry lang's 'help i'm losing my religion'
love xx”

I didn’t know how to reply, and eventually sent:

“I have lost my faith in religion, but not in God.”

I was quite shocked when I saw the word “apostate” in her text message. I hadn’t thought of myself as an apostate, it seemed such an evil word. Apostates are enemies of God. They have sold their souls to the Devil. They are hated and attacked by Muslims everywhere. During one Islamic gathering where they were talking about Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali writer and well-known apostate, one young brother said:

“Allah says these people will receive humiliation in this life, and a worse humiliation and torment in the next life! But the best part is, we can rest assured that this walking piece of filth will burn in Hell for ever and ever! Usually the idea of hellfire is too much to want on anyone, but filthy apostates deserve nothing else! Allah's justice will prevail, in this life and especially in the next life where fools and dogs like this filthy woman will eternally regret what they did, and will wish they hadn't made such a grave mistake!”

Was I really an apostate? I didn’t like the label, nor do I like the label of ex-Muslim. I wanted to be just me. But that was easier said than done. I felt I was groping for an identity having lost the one I had for years. I wasn’t sure of what my life meant any more and how I should behave. The question of morality troubled me greatly. Muslims take for granted that there are moral absolutes, unchanging standards of good and evil, taught to us by God. They provide us with the framework by which to live our lives as good and decent human beings. Without absolute moral standards Muslims believe that Man will become corrupt and sinful, drowning in a sea of moral relativism where “anything goes”. Now that I rejected Islam I no longer believed that the morality it presented was divinely ordained. But that meant I had lost my yardstick for what was right and wrong and I felt a sense of moral confusion. In reality I was still the same person I had always been and behaved in the same way. But the thought that without strict moral boundaries I might be slowly corrupted, frightened me.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realised my fears were unfounded. First of all the assumption that since Muslims have divine absolute standards of what is right and wrong, they should be all in agreement was quite simply false. Muslims differ a great deal about many moral issues and some can’t even agree on major ones, such as whether slaughtering thousands of innocent people in the World Trade Centre is an immoral act or not. Secondly, although human beings, left to their own devices, may not agree on everything, there is a great deal of agreement on a vast number of issues and most people don’t need God to tell them that one shouldn’t murder, steal or commit adultery. I realised that we all have a moral compass within our own conscience. Whether it is there as a result of an evolutionary process or something supernatural, I don’t know. But I know that I am quite capable of making my own moral decisions without the need for any religion. In fact if there is a God, then it is surely part of the reason why we have been created as self-aware beings. We are surely responsible for thinking for ourselves and struggling with questions of good and evil, using the tools we have been given; it’s what makes us human.

My two older children now know where I stand about religion. When I speak to my children about what I think, I tell them they must find out for themselves what they believe and if they feel happy being Muslims then that is what they should be. I certainly do not feel the need to pass on my own beliefs concerning God and religion to them, something I felt it was my duty to do when I was a Muslim.

I do not believe in forcing my beliefs on anyone, but I do believe one should have the courage to honestly examine the beliefs that are central to one’s life and guide one’s actions. If one is truly satisfied with them, then they should be fully embraced with one’s heart and mind, but if they do not stand up to close scrutiny, then they should be discarded. Life is too short to allow it to be dictated by beliefs one does not truly accept.

For reasons that readers will understand, the writer is using the pen name “Abu Ali”