Before all of this happened, I didn’t do much in my life. I found something that actually means something to me. I can’t say that it’s negatively influenced me in any way. It has made me realize that yes, I’m an atheist, and no, I’m not going to hide that, and no, I don’t have to sit back whenever Christians or people of any faith are breaking the law.
I want religious people to realize that their religion is not the only one in the world and that they should not be chastising anyone else for their minority religious views or trying to force their religion on others. I want people to open their eyes and realize that they need to be accepting of people who don’t agree with their religious beliefs. People claim that this is a Christian nation, when in fact we have a secular government. Some try to argue that because God is mentioned in the Pledge of Allegiance, the United States is a Christian nation. In fact, “One nation, under God” wasn’t added to the Pledge of Allegiance until the 1950s, when the U.S. government felt that it was fighting “Godless Communism.” No one religion deserves a higher place in our public institutions than any other.
I have no regrets about what I’ve done, and I feel that it has helped me grow as a person. I’ve found something that I’d like to stay involved in throughout my life. I want to inspire students like Jessica has inspired me, to come out and fight against First Amendment infringements in public schools. I hope to help the movement grow, to reach out to people, and let them know that they are not alone. I’ve found a way to give my life meaning without God.
XV.
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Moiz Malik Khan: An Atheist Ex-Muslim in America
“I do not believe in a personal God, and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.
“If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
If one wanted a youthful perspective on the relationship between Islam and the West, striking up a conversation with Moiz Malik Khan would be a good starting point. Born in Pakistan, Moiz moved with his family to the United States when he was two years old. Moiz, a devout Muslim growing up, first fasted during Ramadan at age eight, consistently prayed five time a day, and, with his relatives, went to Koranic study classes throughout his teenage years. A YouTube video of Richard Dawkins began an investigation into his faith that would eventually lead him away from Islam.
There is no word for “atheist” in Arabic, only one for “nonbeliever,” one who knows that God exists but will not admit so openly. Moiz became exposed to the idea of atheism through his study of philosophy and history, as well as through the scientific theories that challenged the fundamental tenets of his religion. As he lost his faith, he began to tell his family. He found, surprisingly, that many of his Muslim relatives were receptive to his ideas. While he recognizes that secularizing the Muslim world will take time, he’s optimistic that modern technology can play a crucial role in speeding up that process.
I was born in Pakistan, which is quite a religious country. On all of the national ID cards in Pakistan, the religion of each citizen is listed. In fact, people are not allowed to buy alcohol in Pakistan if their ID lists them as a Muslim. When I was two years old, my family moved from my native country to the United States because the rest of my family was also moving to America for economic reasons.
My mom is much more religious than my dad, which is the case in most of the marriages in my family. My dad is a poet in the Urdu language. He, like many people in the arts, is less dogmatic about religion than those outside of it. That fact has always led to strife within my family. For example, when I was younger, my mom really wanted me to learn the Koran in Arabic. My dad believed that it was more important for me to be learning English. My mother ended up winning that one.
I was quite religious when I was young. Throughout my childhood, I attended Koranic classes. It’s like Sunday school but a little more frequent in the sense that it’s held more or less every day. I would always go right after school. My mom would pay religious leaders from the local mosque to teach my cousins and me.
I really enjoyed that education, and I became devout. One of the most important elements of being a Muslim is fasting during the month of Ramadan. It’s not necessarily encouraged for younger kids to participate, primarily for health reasons, because during Ramadan, Muslims, from sunrise to sunset, go without any water, drink, or food. Beginning at age eight, I tried to fast too. Around the age of puberty, Muslims are supposed to begin praying five times a day; I started doing that as well. I was heavily engrossed in the culture and never questioned the tenets of the faith.
I was in sixth grade and living in New York City on September 11, 2001. I remember that day. As a Muslim, I didn’t understand the intellectual rationale for the terrorists’ actions. I questioned whether or not Muslims would commit murder. I considered that it might have been a conspiracy; a good portion of my family still believes that it was. My family is filled with very peaceful people, and they had a difficult time believing that Muslims would act violently. My father believed that 9/11 was a conspiracy because Islam had been growing at such a fast rate in the West, a fact that Western Judeo-Christian culture didn’t like. After that day, all of the sudden, being a Muslim meant something different than it had previously. Muslims became a cultural group in America that became somewhat discriminated against.
I was still quite religious at that time. I was devoted to praying five times a day, to going to the mosque as frequently as I could, to constantly reading the Koran. At one point, I could recite the entire Koran without reading it or looking at it, even though, because it was in Arabic, I didn’t know what the words meant. In fact, that’s generally how the Koran is taught. As time passed, I eventually read it in English. When I did, and began voicing my doubts, my parents dismissed my skepticism because they felt that the version of the Koran that I was reading was most likely an inaccurate translation.
Reading the Koran had a profound influence on me. It goes without saying that it, like many other books, promotes violence in some way. There are verses, for example, that really do instruct Muslims to kill nonbelievers; it is clear what the penalty for apostasy is. My family would never follow such commandments, though.
It wasn’t until high school that I came across the idea of atheism. I started reading about Albert Einstein. I had been told that he was a very religious man, which, I found, is not true. I wanted to learn more about the religious thoughts of people like Einstein, particularly because I was interested in science and philosophy. During that time, I came across an online video of Richard Dawkins. To a seemingly religious person, he asked, “What if you’re wrong?” Initially, Dawkins’s challenge made me even more religious. Periodically, though, when I was doing normal daily things like taking a shower, I would wonder about that question and think, “There is actually a good chance that I might be wrong about Islam.”
I started reading more and more about atheism. I began to realize that its arguments were much more intellectually satisfying than those of my religion. Becoming an atheist was a very gradual thing for me; it took about six or eight months. I kept reading Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris. I read Plato. Those writings truly influenced my intellectual thinking. As they pointed out, religion begins with an assumption that God exists. Once you buy into that assumption, then you can rationalize nearly anything after that. Rarely do people question that original assumption. They encouraged me to do just that. By the time I fully identified as nonreligious, a nonbeliever, an atheist, by the time I recognized that that’s actually who I am, I had had a long time to come to terms with that fact.