Writings From Elsewhere: An Apostate of Towelie

A while back, I wrote a piece on Medium about my early experiences as an out ex-Muslim online called An Apostate of Towelie: Being the Only Woman in the Ex-Muslim Chatroom. An edited version of it appeared in Atheist Alliance of America’s magazine, Secular Nation.

I have built a fledgling (perhaps fetal, if I’m being generous) writing career around it. I promote and am a part of organizations about it. I openly talk about it and identify with it. I am an ex-Muslim atheist, loud and proud, unashamed and out, and have been since 2006. And yet, despite my shamelessness, I mentally buried a significant part of my early history with being an apostate of Islam. The very first time I joined a group for apostates of Islam, I defected after just two group chat sessions.

Indeed, the memory might have stayed buried indefinitely were it not for a particular troll who found my writing at Skepchick.

Read more at Medium.

Main image via

Writings From Elsewhere: An Apostate of Towelie
{advertisement}

More Voices? Yes Please!: Diversifying the Ex-Muslim Experience

A photo of a woman with her head and face veiled reading "Saudi Arabia outlaws tempting eyes", followed by an image of Pakistani singer Taher Shah captioned "Well Fuck You Too"
The guy at the bottom is Taher Shah, who has made his love of eyes very well-known.

Although it’s not the most racially diverse secular group (for obvious reasons), one of the reasons why I am so happy and proud to be part of EXMNA is its internal diversity of experiences and viewpoints. Our secret discussion group is full of thoughtful people who enjoy conversing on matters ranging from a bizarre Saudi eye ban that would presumably make Taher Shah very angry to Tajikistan’s religious laws to Junaid Jamshed’s misogyny (and beard).

Two members of the org recently did an interview on Dr. Darrel Ray’s Secular Sexuality podcast [Content Notice for Abuse] that’s very much worth a listen. Their experiences are quite disparate from mine in that both of them face a lot of physical danger from their families.

Embeds of both the podcast and my Skepticon talk below the jump.

Continue reading “More Voices? Yes Please!: Diversifying the Ex-Muslim Experience”

More Voices? Yes Please!: Diversifying the Ex-Muslim Experience

Representing One Ex-Muslim Is Better Than Representing None

In conversations regarding the lack of representation of ex-Muslim voices, I’ve come across a lot of people willing to guess at and speak for ex-Muslims. When I ask that they let the actual ex-Muslim in the conversation (i.e. me) speak, I’m told that I don’t represent all ex-Muslims.

Well, yes. But frankly, at least I’m not a never-Muslim speaking completely out of my arse.

Continue reading “Representing One Ex-Muslim Is Better Than Representing None”

Representing One Ex-Muslim Is Better Than Representing None

#AnApostatesExperience: Why Do They Always Forget to Ask Ex-Muslims?

Something that we at EXMNA have been hard at work trying to rectify is our relative invisibility. People on all sides of the issue of apostasy in Islam have a tendency to forget that we exist. Numerous podcasts, articles, features, books, and so on mention us, sometimes even use us as props in arguments, without any of us actually being consulted on the matter. That it often stems from ignorance of our existence rather than malice makes it no less insulting and dehumanizing.

How bad is it? When I try to bring awareness of the issue, I’m told that ex-Muslims face too many dangers to be out, so there is no way to contact “them.” I’ve had anti-feminists tell me that if I really cared about women’s rights, I’d know and care about the plight of “those” ex-Muslim women. I’d laugh if it weren’t such a painful reminder that my mere existence isn’t worth consideration in so many people’s minds.

Thankfully, there are some who remember us. Yet those who do know we exist sometimes still rely on second- and third-hand voices to speak for us, even on matters that are explicitly by, for, and about us.

This erasure must be stopped.

Continue reading “#AnApostatesExperience: Why Do They Always Forget to Ask Ex-Muslims?”

#AnApostatesExperience: Why Do They Always Forget to Ask Ex-Muslims?

#AnApostatesExperience: An Informed Critics’ Reading of Reza Aslan

Here is part of what Vlad Chituc over at NonProphet Status had to say about #AnApostatesExperience:

To quote fellow Patheos blogger Dan Arel, #AnApostatesExperience was meant to show “what real threatening and venomous attacks look like,” as if that erased the threats that Aslan received. It’s hard for me to see how this is any different than “Dear Muslima,” except this time it’s a Muslim as the target. [Aslan] never suggested that his experiences are worse than the experiences of any ex-Muslims, so what do they have to do with the threats he’s received? The struggle of ex-Muslims is an important issue to highlight, but not as a way of one-upping the victims of threats and harassment.

To answer the title, i.e. “Why is it so hard for critics to read Reza Aslan charitably?”: It’s because Aslan is far too charitable when it comes to the oppression that Muslims perpetuate within their own communities. Further, I find the characterization of #AnApostatesExperience in the post to be not only uncharitable, but also poorly-informed as to the real issues with Reza Aslan and with ex-Muslims.

Continue reading “#AnApostatesExperience: An Informed Critics’ Reading of Reza Aslan”

#AnApostatesExperience: An Informed Critics’ Reading of Reza Aslan

#AnApostatesExperience: Why I Declared My Apostasy

Content notice for body image.

The other day, we at EXMNA made #AnApostatesExperience happen in response to Reza Aslan — who utterly missed the point.

He wasn’t the only Muslim responding. I got one Muslim who told me that I would’ve been better off taking off my headscarf rather than full-on coming out to my family as an atheist. This person is hardly alone. More than one Muslim has asked me why I didn’t tell my parents that I wanted to de-veil and stop practicing Islam rather than to declare to them that I had deconverted.

Given that I went from being a devout Muslim to being an atheist without detection but am a terrible liar, pussyfooting around my atheism would have been a pointless strategy. Continue reading “#AnApostatesExperience: Why I Declared My Apostasy”

#AnApostatesExperience: Why I Declared My Apostasy

#AnApostatesExperience: A Plea to Reconsider Your Love for Reza Aslan

Remember when Sam Harris said a misogynistic thing and doubled-down on it by talking about how he has a wife, a mother, and a female editor whose contributions to his work he highly values? Most white liberal atheists saw that for what it was and mocked him. It’s the “I have a black friend” argument.

Reza Aslan did a version of that yesterday regarding #AnApostatesExperience, the hashtag we at EXMNA started.

Continue reading “#AnApostatesExperience: A Plea to Reconsider Your Love for Reza Aslan”

#AnApostatesExperience: A Plea to Reconsider Your Love for Reza Aslan

#TwitterTheocracy: How Anti-Blasphemy Laws Are Tools of Oppression

Recently, the case of Meriam Ibrahim made international headlines. The story was that she, a pregnant Christian woman married to a Christian, was being accused of apostasy and sentenced to death for it. Some but not all of the articles about it mentioned the most troubling fact about the case: she is not even a apostate in that she was a Muslim and then defected from Islam. Instead, her absentee father was a Muslim and, by Sudanese law, this automatically makes her a Muslim, despite being raised a Christian by her Christian mother.

A case of a born and raised Christian being accused of apostasy from Islam and sentenced to death for it shows that anti-apostasy laws are a brutal tool that can be used to enforce tyranny on anyone, whether they are an apostate, a theist of another religion, or a non-apostate atheist.

Continue reading “#TwitterTheocracy: How Anti-Blasphemy Laws Are Tools of Oppression”

#TwitterTheocracy: How Anti-Blasphemy Laws Are Tools of Oppression