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vampyrichamsterWandering through a few sites between the neverending essay, I meet more than a few opposing views on a given subject. It's interesting to study the differences. More often than not, it's taught me a few things about how I've learnt to perceive the same subjects. So today, I stumbled into a place called Faith Freedom International. Unless I am misreading this, the site appears to be an enclave of ex-Muslims, pretty angry ones at that, reading and dissecting their way to the improved knowledge base of all.
I would be lying if I said I wasn't disturbed by this idea, that somewhere out there, some very well-read, well-spoken scholarly types are producing very angry literature with the exact purpose of pulling people away from the Islamic faith. The problem being that in the first regard, doing so would make me a hypocrite. Some years ago, I would very likely have joined them.
How I left Islam is best summed up as: I woke up one morning, realized that I, not an omnipresent unperceivable (to me) God, controlled me, and thus, I had to take control of me as it was my responsibility as a human being to do so.
I left dead angry. I took it upon myself to provoke every Muslim in my path, family or not, believing very strongly that I had to make them think critically about their religion, that this was for their highest benefit, that they were wrong and I knew better. I suppose in the way of justification, my version of it was that if a Muslim (or any other theist for that matter) had a faith that was so strong, they would not have to worry about being swayed by me on the outset. I researched the Quran, the hadiths, the ears and pieces of people I could question. I tried to find new ways to start fights, if only to provoke thought. I spent years trying to perfect that. This is what I figured out:
No one gives a fuck. Really. No one cares. Theists will remain theists because they're theists, that's just what they do. It took me nearly seven years to get that into my head. Atheism, in particular, is a personal choice. More than the theistic beliefs, atheism demands of its believers a kind of autonomy of faith that the vast majority of people aren't willing to indulge. As an atheist, I stand my ground in that atheism is a level up from theism -- by cutting off one's self from the mollycoddling of a protectionist or decision-making god, one takes responsibility for the self in full. Some people are stronger with their god to fortify their will, that's for them to decide. If believing in god(s) is what allows them to achieve their highest potential as individuals, then it's not anyone's place to take it from them.
Nor is it anyone's place to inflict one's own belief upon another, simply because we can. That doesn't matter where you are a theist or an atheist. If I dislike theists wishing to convert me, I imagine theists do not appreciate an atheist wishing to convert them either. I further surmise that theists do not like other kinds of theists attempting to convert them in turn. The only people who even know what their highest potential could be are the individuals themselves. Each individual is accountable for his/her own potential, and his/her own responsibility to develop that potential. That's not anyone else's right to stick a finger in either. Or so I believe.
I shouldn't be so disturbed that anger is one form of expression leaving a religion takes. I honestly believe everyone does have a right to express themselves, more so in an intellectual setting. It's not like I haven't seen or understood that form of intellectual anger (the site portrays) either. I guess I'm disturbed because of the retrospective view. I'm not fond of anger as an emotional reaction. This is a personal opinion, and thus, not relevant to how other people should conduct themselves. I'm disturbed because I see so much anger in that site, and the people who ply it. The other aspect being the apparent evangelism, even if it is evangelism out of a religion into no particular alternative. Criticism and critical thinking for further study and discussion are high ideals. There should be more critical evaluation of religious faiths, and more questioning as to their relevance to modern challenges. Evangelism and anger tend to distort the focus of study before it has begun. Passion and logic are ill-fated friends.
Or perhaps, anger is a phase by which most voluntary converts find themselves. In that light, it is a necessary phase. In that light too, some do not actually bypass this stage. That's the path they chose for themselves.
Why these issues come up now has largely to do with the segment of my essay I'm researching. It's taken a bit longer than I expected. The reading material is a nightmare of sheer numbers. I've been more disgusted and repelled with Islam than I have in a long time as I worked through the text. The subject of women's advocacy was one of my interests way back when. I'm not unfamiliar with the crimes or the buried abuses. I'm still taken aback by the vast difference in interpretation, how much abuse happens at the slightest shift in language. There is a lot of fork-tongued language at work here, from every side, and trying to distill it into a work with the least obtrusive overriding point of view is hard. Plowing degenerating hadiths is hard. Filing extremist interpretations to get the polar views down is hard. Finding the right words to tell people what the beginning, middle and end would be is hard. Doing this is hard. Why am I still doing this? The prospect of learning something is more rewarding, I think.
I would be lying if I said I wasn't disturbed by this idea, that somewhere out there, some very well-read, well-spoken scholarly types are producing very angry literature with the exact purpose of pulling people away from the Islamic faith. The problem being that in the first regard, doing so would make me a hypocrite. Some years ago, I would very likely have joined them.
How I left Islam is best summed up as: I woke up one morning, realized that I, not an omnipresent unperceivable (to me) God, controlled me, and thus, I had to take control of me as it was my responsibility as a human being to do so.
I left dead angry. I took it upon myself to provoke every Muslim in my path, family or not, believing very strongly that I had to make them think critically about their religion, that this was for their highest benefit, that they were wrong and I knew better. I suppose in the way of justification, my version of it was that if a Muslim (or any other theist for that matter) had a faith that was so strong, they would not have to worry about being swayed by me on the outset. I researched the Quran, the hadiths, the ears and pieces of people I could question. I tried to find new ways to start fights, if only to provoke thought. I spent years trying to perfect that. This is what I figured out:
No one gives a fuck. Really. No one cares. Theists will remain theists because they're theists, that's just what they do. It took me nearly seven years to get that into my head. Atheism, in particular, is a personal choice. More than the theistic beliefs, atheism demands of its believers a kind of autonomy of faith that the vast majority of people aren't willing to indulge. As an atheist, I stand my ground in that atheism is a level up from theism -- by cutting off one's self from the mollycoddling of a protectionist or decision-making god, one takes responsibility for the self in full. Some people are stronger with their god to fortify their will, that's for them to decide. If believing in god(s) is what allows them to achieve their highest potential as individuals, then it's not anyone's place to take it from them.
Nor is it anyone's place to inflict one's own belief upon another, simply because we can. That doesn't matter where you are a theist or an atheist. If I dislike theists wishing to convert me, I imagine theists do not appreciate an atheist wishing to convert them either. I further surmise that theists do not like other kinds of theists attempting to convert them in turn. The only people who even know what their highest potential could be are the individuals themselves. Each individual is accountable for his/her own potential, and his/her own responsibility to develop that potential. That's not anyone else's right to stick a finger in either. Or so I believe.
I shouldn't be so disturbed that anger is one form of expression leaving a religion takes. I honestly believe everyone does have a right to express themselves, more so in an intellectual setting. It's not like I haven't seen or understood that form of intellectual anger (the site portrays) either. I guess I'm disturbed because of the retrospective view. I'm not fond of anger as an emotional reaction. This is a personal opinion, and thus, not relevant to how other people should conduct themselves. I'm disturbed because I see so much anger in that site, and the people who ply it. The other aspect being the apparent evangelism, even if it is evangelism out of a religion into no particular alternative. Criticism and critical thinking for further study and discussion are high ideals. There should be more critical evaluation of religious faiths, and more questioning as to their relevance to modern challenges. Evangelism and anger tend to distort the focus of study before it has begun. Passion and logic are ill-fated friends.
Or perhaps, anger is a phase by which most voluntary converts find themselves. In that light, it is a necessary phase. In that light too, some do not actually bypass this stage. That's the path they chose for themselves.
Why these issues come up now has largely to do with the segment of my essay I'm researching. It's taken a bit longer than I expected. The reading material is a nightmare of sheer numbers. I've been more disgusted and repelled with Islam than I have in a long time as I worked through the text. The subject of women's advocacy was one of my interests way back when. I'm not unfamiliar with the crimes or the buried abuses. I'm still taken aback by the vast difference in interpretation, how much abuse happens at the slightest shift in language. There is a lot of fork-tongued language at work here, from every side, and trying to distill it into a work with the least obtrusive overriding point of view is hard. Plowing degenerating hadiths is hard. Filing extremist interpretations to get the polar views down is hard. Finding the right words to tell people what the beginning, middle and end would be is hard. Doing this is hard. Why am I still doing this? The prospect of learning something is more rewarding, I think.
