I first told my brothers and sisters because I thought that they might be able to best relate to my new beliefs. They hadn’t been as religious as me growing up, and over time, I was able to argue them out of their own lingering religious beliefs. Next, I told my cousins. In time, they became nonreligious. Interestingly, despite their departure from Islam, most of them still list their religion as “Muslim” on Facebook, even though they’re now atheists.
My parents gradually realized that I had become an atheist because of the large collection of atheistic literature that I began to compile in our home. They didn’t bring up the topic with me because they wanted to avoid conflict. I’ve still never talked with my mom at length about the subject. Whenever we go to one of my cousins’ houses, she tells me to fake it, even if I don’t believe.
I’m fascinated by the way I was able to de-convert my relatives from my generation. They’ve become atheists largely because I kept poking them, pointing out when I thought that they weren’t making good religious arguments. In fact, all of the family members I’m close with in age are now nonreligious, which is unique because atheists from a Pakistani background are rare.
It’s a different story with my family members who are older. People who have spent 60 years of their lives dedicated to Islam know that they would be ostracized if they publicly stated that they no longer believed in God. That would be an admission that they — and their entire family — had lived most of their life falsely. That’s not something most people would want or be willing to believe. I understand their resistance to change. I still haven’t come out completely to all of my family because if I did, I’d likely be ostracized, too. People probably wouldn’t call me as much. People likely wouldn’t invite me to their homes.
Overall, for me, the most important argument against religion and against Islam is the theory of evolution. I find the scientific method to be a tremendous methodology for attempting to explain the natural order of things. In my experience, I’ve found that religion can cripple people’s ability to recognize scientific fact. I have an uncle who has his Ph.D. from Yale, yet he doesn’t believe in evolution. He says that if the Koran says that pigs were turned into men, then that’s the way that humans were created. He’s a very educated man, but he views evolution as humanity’s way of trying to disprove religion, which he believes is something that science shouldn’t do. On a day to day basis, though, he’s a practicing biomedical engineer.
I do think that I understand certain psychological elements of religion. There’s a certain “ask and you shall receive” element to it. If someone implores their mind to feel a certain way, their mind might actually produce that effect. My religious experiences worked that way in some sense. When I would pray, I was relaxed and realized that there are bigger, more important things in life than momentary problems. Religious exercises can have the same effect that any other meditation does. I’ve seen old Egyptian paintings of people praying in very similar ways to the way in which Muslims pray now. It doesn’t really matter what you’re chanting, for example, it just matters that you’re chanting something in a repetitive way, that you’re directing your focus to clear your mind.
Sam Harris mentions in his books that it is possible to detach the benefits of meditation from spiritual mumbo jumbo. When people have incredibly powerful spiritual experiences, I don’t think that they’re lying about how profound those moments are. I just don’t think that there’s a God behind them. Instead, I think they’re caused by a certain state of consciousness, a fact that science is beginning to reveal. In fact, the Dalai Lama, for example, says, “If science proves Buddhism wrong about its tenets, we’ll go with the science.” I appreciate that, but that also makes me wonder, “What’s the point of faith?” Once you start thinking of your brain as a physical object with a chemical basis, you realize that if you alter the chemicals in your brain, you can feel differently. I think that’s pretty obvious, but it’s also an interesting idea. My dad, for example, has become less and less religious because of some of the points that I’ve made to him, but he still prays even though I’m not sure that he still believes in God. He has spent most of his life praying five times a day, and I think he would still enjoy it even if he determined that there was no supreme being behind its benefits.
After becoming nonreligious, one difference that I noticed between the Christian way of life in America and the Islamic way of life in America is that the idea of being an atheist is often discussed in American Christianity, whereas that idea never comes to the attention of those being raised in the Islamic faith. When I was younger, the only options that I knew were Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism. I understood that they were different faiths, but I was convinced that everyone believed in some form of religion, some form of God.
There are parallels to this on the global scale, too. In the Islamic world, people never really come across the idea that God may simply not exist. I have a cousin who recently came to the United States from Pakistan; he hadn’t ever heard of the concept of atheism until I introduced it to him. I think that one of the major difficulties in secularizing the Islamic world is that most Muslims don’t know that this idea is even a possibility. There’s no word for atheist in Arabic. The closest word connoting that idea is a word for nonbeliever, but a nonbeliever describes someone who knows that God exists but knowingly rejects God. A prerequisite for becoming an atheist is knowing about the existence of that word.
It’s crucial that there be safety for Muslims who become nonreligious. Most skeptical Muslims are very much afraid to come out. I am lucky that my family has passively accepted who I am.
Despite my family’s relative acceptance, though, when I go back to Pakistan, I certainly don’t tell anyone about my beliefs. I wouldn’t be allowed to be around some of my cousins anymore if they knew what I believe. In fact, in Pakistan, there is a legitimate chance that something violent would happen to someone who came out as an atheist.
Despite its religious conservatism, I do believe that the Middle East will secularize, although I think that it will happen very slowly. I have seen, for example, only one or two Pakistani atheist groups on Facebook, while I have seen many more Facebook groups that are attempting to remove the atheist pages. In fact, I’ve gotten many invites from my own family members asking me to support a cause to remove an atheist group from that website. This will be a very slow and long process.
For me, being an atheist is more liberating than anything. I’m liberated from praying five times a day. At one point, when I was really religious, I would attend religious services on Friday nights from 9:00 PM to 3:00 AM. Much of my life has been given back to me. It has also been mentally liberating because I no longer have a constant fear of going to hell.
Now, instead of the Koran, my ethical influences come from Plato, from Aristotle. If anything, I think my atheism has improved my ethics in the sense that I realize that there is only one life to live, and I don’t want to treat people poorly. I think I’m a nicer person now, and I am more aware of human suffering. Because of that, I donate more to charities. My eyes have been opened, which has increased my empathy.