When you’re born into a religion as strict as Islam, atheism doesn’t come easy. Of all the non-believers I’ve known who weren’t raised in one of the hardcore monotheistic Abrahamic three—Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism and Islam—their renunciation was sparked by something as elementary as smoking a joint while reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra. They weren’t bound by the numinous shackles we’ve been tethered to since birth. For us, religion wasn’t imposed as a bothersome pursuit, like afterschool piano lessons, but as an entity ever-present and essential as oxygen, without which we are doomed to suffocate in a senseless void for all eternity.
It’s a source of bemusement to all who know me that someone as debauched as I should be so obsessed with a religion that I fought tooth and nail to reject. The fascination isn’t one borne of hate. It is the will to make sense of one’s origin story, the way a child separated from a harsh father may wonder in his desperate moments of his own role in the divorce, forever debating whether to succumb to the old man’s pleas for a chance to explain himself.
Imagine being trapped in a cult by your own volition. Brainwashed, lied to, too frightened to leave. The bravest and the reckless eventually heed the clarion call to escape. Then what? Run, and never look back? Or learn from it? What power did it hold over me? Why did I let it? If it were to try and woo me back, at a time when I am vulnerable or mad enough to consider it, would I crawl back to it? This kind of self-checklist doesn’t only apply to organised religion. All lessons learned can be used affectively to battle against every hegemonic facet of our lives—controlling families, slave-driving jobs, toxic relationships, the throttle of addiction, a demon of a black dog. The Fallen Muslim isn’t so much a guidebook on how to be a good atheist as it is an account of how we can escape any situation where we feel trapped in the claws of a mightier force. The new path we follow won’t always be paved with gold, but we can certainly learn how to navigate around the potholes.
“You don’t get to be an atheist if you’re born into Islam. No one called Salman Rushdie an atheist while the fatwa hung over him—always ‘ex-Muslim’, or ‘born Muslim’…”
For the first fifteen years of my life, I was a pious little Muslim boy. I do not reject that identity any more than I’ll deny I once worshipped Duran Duran. Even though I no longer accept the reflex is a lonely child who’s waiting by the park, I don’t deign to tell those who continue to revere the band that they are wrong to. I can relate, connect with them should the conversation take us there. I still know all the words. The same can be applied to my relationship with Muslims. Though I am no longer in the Islam fan club, I get where they’re coming from.
The chip on my shoulder—that once led me to bark “I’m an atheist, goddamnit” to anyone calling me Muslim—has long been shrugged off. I am now resigned to the fact the world will ultimately see me as one, the way Vietnamese children adopted by white American parents accept they will never succeed in erasing Vietnam from their defining credentials. To the majority of strangers, we are what we look like.
“So what kind of Muslim are you exactly?” I’m often asked.
There are four kinds – militant, moderate, non-practicing, and the non-Muslim – you don’t get to be an atheist if you’re born into Islam. No one called Salman Rushdie an atheist while the fatwa hung over him—always ‘ex-Muslim’, or ‘born Muslim’.
I’ve been all of them. I’m here to tell you why I fell and what I learned as I tumbled all the way down…
As you pointed out, I come from a similar background, with Catholicism playing a huge part in my upbringing. I went from Catholic, to Athiest, to Agnostic (leaning slightly towards Catholicism if it was on a scale) , which is where I am now I reckon. Once I had kids I went back to church. Was that done because it's what I did, because I married a Catholic, from a sense of giving them the same identify as me, or from the sense of community that is far stronger in the north of Ireland, who knows. But I would say going to church does have a 'coming home' feel to it. What happens in your childhood stays with you forever.
Looking forward to THE WHOLE STORY!