#AnApostatesExperience: Why I Declared My Apostasy

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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
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“Positive Thinking” Was #WhyIStayed: How Self-Help & Religion Enabled My Abuse

The genesis for this piece was Twitter. The hashtag is heartbreaking but worth a read.

An unholy marriage of Islam’s teachings on gratitude and the late 90’s/early aughts obsession with “positive thinking” made my childhood and adolescence utterly miserable.

I was born a very obedient, literal child. There’s something about a sincere, thoughtful little fat girl that bring the worst out in bullies. My adult male relatives bullied me in the name of “toughening me up” & “teasing” me. Male and female relatives of all ages taught me through their behavior and words that because I was not pretty, I was utterly contemptible, worthy of either no or negative attention.

Continue reading ““Positive Thinking” Was #WhyIStayed: How Self-Help & Religion Enabled My Abuse”

“Positive Thinking” Was #WhyIStayed: How Self-Help & Religion Enabled My Abuse

#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