Theological Musings part 4 – THIRD KUFR ANNIVERSARY!

Well, almost.

It’s been nearly 3 years to the week since I committed irtidād (apostasy from Islam). This year has been highly introspective, even more than usual.

One of the most important things I’ve realised is just how deeply Islam screwed up my life and my opinion of myself, in so many little ways it’s mind-boggling and a bit annoying. These are some ideas I’m still getting used to:

• It’s good to let people compliment me on my talent/ achievements/ looks,
• I am worth being loved,
• It’s ok to look at and talk to people I don’t know yet – even good-looking women,

Like her

And her

And her

Dunno about them, ’cause they’re Somali, and Somalis are usually muslims, so…

• It’s ok to eat my fill of food*.

* Looking back properly, this issue started in Ramaḍān 2005. The lack of food was exhilarating and liberating! It was so new I categorised my whole life into pre- & post-Ramaḍān 2005. I’d never been consistently happy before then, and I always subconsciously sought to replicate it through eating less. This became inadvertently more pronounced after informing mum of my irtidād. 

Also, I’ve finally worked out another major reason I’m prone to pessimism and even where my suicidal tendencies came from. Not just because of living in England and being estranged from my Caribbean cultural heritage (I didn’t start learning Patois ’til I was 16 or 17!), I’m chronically sleep deprived! Have been most of my life! That is undoubtedly Islam’s fault: waking up for fajr (the pre-sunrise prayer). This was every day, apart from the very rare times me & family were all too tired to wake up.

Update: after reading Ronald Wright’s A Short History of Progress and Positive News, I’m now certain that civilisation itself was a major part of it too!

This is what I’m meant to be doing!

Other Islamically-induced beliefs/ behaviours I picked up include:

• People who take drugs (especially alcohol) are inferior, and it’s especially annoying when they try to make me take them. This has happened to me at least thrice in my youth,
• Music is totally useless. Not just because of the religion, I also felt (feel) this because I’ve always hated other people deciding what I should and shouldn’t be good at as a ‘black’ person. I gave up hating music wholesale when I was 16 (sitll a Muslim at the time, just trying to be less hardline) but still take very little interest in it. To this day I can’t name even a single Prince song!

KMT. 

• Men are inherently rapists. The belief in the different kinds of fornication – eyes, hands, feet, heart and sexual organs – and the reasoning behind hijab of both men & women stopped me from even wanting to date ’til I was 22. Now I’m single again I feel uncomfortable at approaching women,
• The shariy’ah is the way forward for muslimiyn everywhere, and by proxy the whole world. Obviously I don’t believe this anymore, but surprisingly many/most muslimiyn don’t either! According to Sadakat Kadri’s Heaven on Earth, muslimiyn don’t even agree on what shariy’ah is!

I’m now convinced more than ever that I shouldn’t be a father. Though I like children, I wouldn’t be up to the task of raising them. I’m still not totally fulfilled spiritually or materially, and I mentioned before my opinion that raising ‘black’ children in ‘white’-majority countries is at best risky and at worst actively abusive. If I’m going to be a father – even a step/foster one – it’d have to be when I’m 100% happy in myself, 100% happy with the mother, rich enough to afford it, and living in a ‘black’-majority country that values children’s freedom.

(So to those guys who advised me to just “breed up” any woman, what good has it done you?)

No offence baby. 

Other than all that, I’m good. Irtidād is still the best thing I’ve ever done.

 

On top of that, I’ve updated my understanding of spiritual topics again:

• Since gods and goddesses are so similar to humans, it’s obvious that they were either real humans in the past (with exaggerated powers) or anthropomorphised ideals of people’s cultural values. Basically we are gods and goddesses, at least potentially. We have the power to decide and realise our own destinies every single second,
• However, what I call the divinity or the meta-force is the collective of unseen forces, physical laws and the rest that created and maintains the universe. I believe it’s intelligent, or at least responsive, otherwise even the law of attraction wouldn’t hold. But it’s not subject to our laws, desires or beliefs; it works and exists independently of us. Nobody has ever or will ever communicate directly with it; people who claim to speak to God/angels/spirits/demons are just talking to themselves. More specifically, parts of their own minds they usually don’t acknowledge,
• Physical activity, regular and intense, is vital to mental health. Exercise tells us where our limits are and forces us to surpass them, thus giving us an example of self-expansion in our lives.