From Chapter 1: Daisies Tell About Jesus

I remember the smell of the songbook paper, and pushing my little fingers through the tiny communion cup holders on the backs of the burnt orange itchy fabric-covered pews.

I remember selling ‘Bible Times’ pita bread by the pulpit on the church stage during my first church play and whispering the words to ‘Away in a Manger’ into a big colourful mic there one Christmas. I remember folding my hands every night on my knees by my bed and saying sorry for my sins, and the hardcover Bible story collection with the colourful illustrations we kept in the hall linen closet.

I remember how much I loved Jesus.

To me Jesus was a version of my dad. Maybe it’s the same for most Christian girls with kind and present fathers. God was a little scary, but I tried to dismiss that thought fast because he could read my mind.

At first my indoctrination was mostly harmless: Bedtime prayers, brown beard painting of Jesus surrounded by the kiddos, Children’s Church.

I don’t remember the first time I heard the Pastor shout about the love and wrath of God in one breath.

Understanding and accepting God’s anger was as critical as accepting his love. We were shameful and sinful people destined for an afterlife of torture. I was told that my belief and dedication to my relationship with Jesus saved me from this eternal damnation, and in turn, my mission was to urge others to have that faith too.

Being a Christian was normal for me, but not everyone believed in Jesus. That’s why Christians had to spread the Good News. You didn’t want anyone else to end up in the fiery pits of Hell either.

Some Christians might hand out Bibles or witness to their neighbors, but I wanted to go big or go to Hell I guess, because by eight I was preaching to my classmates on the playground and saying I was going to be a missionary in foreign countries.

I imagined myself in these African jungle scenarios, makeshift kitchens with big leaves on the floor, those little kids with bellies bloated from hunger pulling at my skirt while I cooked soup and talked about Jesus. Yes, really.

This to me would be a soul-saving sacrifice as well as the ultimate adventure.

I was born in 1983 into an average White evangelical family that made up a quarter of the country in the nineties, a Protestant family in a small rural community where we mixed with Catholics but had little exposure to religions outside of Christianity.

Protestants are the biggest Christian bloc in the U.S. They split with the Roman Catholic Church and follow the principles of the Reformation, led by German monk and university professor Martin Luther (1483–1546).

The Reformation held that one’s eternal soul could be saved only by personal faith in Jesus Christ and the grace of God, rather than via prayers to saints and confessions to priests. 

Consider terms like ‘born again’ (John 3:3) and narratives involving the prayer of salvation (Romans 10:9).

Some Protestants even came to rough it in colonial America, rather than feel like they were under the thumb of the Catholic Church. I’d gotten the notion that the nation was founded on my religion from the way that narrative had been spun for me.

I wasn’t just a mainstream Protestant but a fundamentalist and an evangelical.

A fundamentalist will insist that every word of the Bible is without error, while a mainline Protestant will concede that historical documents are susceptible to fallibility. Fundamentalists interpret scripture literally, complete with its outdated dogmas and Israelite ideology.

Evangelists busy themselves with the relentless recruitment of souls practised by salvation-based brands of Christian faith. Evangelize means ‘convert’.

From Chapter 4: The Evangelical Agenda

Regardless of any neurological factors fortifying my faith, once I grew old enough to reason, doubt, the most dangerous of all sins, crept in. Doubt could land you in Hell before you even opened your mouth or lifted a finger to sin against God or another person.

To a Pentecostal, nothing is to be respected and valued more than unwavering faith. Certainly not education or intelligence or even critical thinking.

You were supposed to ‘trust in God with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding’ (Proverbs 3:5).

Knowledge was dangerous. Look what happened when the first humans dared seek it.

The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on.

Musician Frank Zappa

I struggled painfully with my faith in youth, but I didn’t let my doubt show, other than scribbling it over and over in my journals.

God, please take away my doubt; please open my eyes! I doubted three times today Jesus; please forgive me! I’m so sorry for doubting!!!

Without faith, Hebrews 11:6 assured me, it was impossible to please God.

Faith was my biggest struggle, the incredible challenge of my life. My lack of it was my gravest, deepest, most mortal sin.

I sought to solidify my salvation with the solidarity of other believers, tried to redeem and revive my soul by striking sin from my life. But I needed a louder voice in my mind, clarifying I wasn’t making it all up. As time went on I needed a more intense, more pronounced reprieve from guilt and a more ecstatic euphoria to wash over me in prayer and worship.

Now a new kind of joy and a whole ecosystem of knowledge has grown from the seed of doubt that was planted in my heart where I could never quite get that mustard seed to grow.

I have ceased to scream at myself in my mind, desperately trying to silence the voice of reason. I have silenced instead the voice of God.

From Chapter 7: Books Besides Bibles

For as far back as I can remember, I have loved books: reading them, writing them, collecting them, quoting them, smelling their sweet paper, smearing their ink with my tears.

I carried books to the playground at recess in elementary [school] and I took my textbooks home to devour poetry, history, and social studies in high school.

From a young age I could appreciate a well-crafted sentence, and I rarely grew bored of a story or a subject if the content was written well.

A vast wealth of literature had been off limits while I wasted countless hours perusing an old religious book instead!

There was time to make up for.

There was no Google to do research about religion when I was living that lie. Aside from, of course, books about other religions maybe, and academic papers perhaps, there wasn’t a lot of accessible literature published that challenged mainstream evangelical ideology. Prominent atheist figures weren’t podcasting yet.

When I began my quest for truth I spent endless hours in books besides Bibles, astonished and appalled at the sheer volume of information about the world I’d been so willing to remain oblivious to.

I kept my mind open, giving the theology I’d been fed and its apologists ample time to refute the new information I was swimming in. Their once compelling, convincing voices couldn’t hold up to the facts and perspectives presented by these historians and biologists.

Definitely one of the greatest perks of breaking free from an oppressive and controlling religion is that no information is off limits.

No books are banned.

Suddenly no fiction was off limits either: Dante, Nabokov, vampires, horror, trashy romance reads with women bursting out of corsets on the covers.

I could read academic material that had been forbidden, finally reading Darwin’s On The Origin of Species and exploring evolutionary science at last at age 23.

Suddenly I could eagerly accept scientific truths about the nature and workings of reality.

I was late to that table, much as humankind had been, attributing everything to the supernatural before scientific knowledge offered real answers—like we attributed sickness or healing to a god but now origins of ailments are evident because germ theory exists now.

I was born long after science filled in the gaps where gods stood in as placeholders, but like millions of other believers I’d been coerced to cling to them when they should have been discarded.

Like Douglas Adams said, ‘God used to be the best explanation we’d got, and we’ve now got vastly better ones.’ Embracing intellectual honesty at last was exciting!

From Chapter 10: Mind Rape

My child never shed a tear about Hell. She never shut herself in a closet and begged not to be hurt. She never had to feel shame for her own desires or unworthy of love because she had doubts about things that just didn’t make sense. She never had to reconcile in her mind the atrocities committed by someone she was supposed to love even more than she loved me.

At bedtime I tucked her in and told her to have dreams about candy castles and puppies and she never heard the words ‘brimstone’ or ‘gnashing of teeth’.

I love the moments when I speak of my Pentecostal past and she doesn’t have a clue what I’m talking about.

‘Wait, what’s a pew, Mom?’

My heart soars in those moments. She will never be a sinner seeking sanctification. I feel she’s a more rounded individual than I am, more emotionally stable.

I had a lot of anger and anxiety to work through, character traits developed after a youth of servitude under an imaginary authoritarian entity.

I taught my daughter early, about multiple religions. When she was five and six we talked about what animals we would like to come back as, if the reincarnation religions were right.

Let children learn about different faiths, let them notice their incompatibility, and let them draw their own conclusions about the consequences of that incompatibility. As for whether they are “valid,” let them make up their own minds when they are old enough to do so.

Richard Dawkins

Watching my daughter choose for herself, selecting biocentrism as her philosophy long before either of us had a name for it, and rejecting all religion, provided a boost of comfort and confidence that was very healing for me.

Society tends to assume religion is either benign or good for people. It’s a Sunday morning cultural tradition most Christians don’t think too hard about so they don’t have to reconcile their cognitive dissonance.

But while my peers were in Catechism reciting rosaries I was being brainwashed with brimstone by the Assembly of God.

Certain brands of fundamentalist faith that pound the original sin/eternal damnation ideology boast the gravest grievance against religious indoctrination.

A parent or preacher doesn’t even necessarily have to pound Hell into a child’s mind repeatedly to get the intended reaction. One horrifying threat involving a lake of fire can have a profound effect on a developing mind.

Richard Dawkins:

Who will say with confidence that sexual abuse is more permanently damaging to children than threatening them with the eternal and unquenchable fires of hell?

I am persuaded that “child abuse” is no exaggeration when used to describe what teachers and priests are doing to children whom they encourage to believe in something like eternal hell.

It’s not moral to lie to children. It’s not moral to lie to ignorant, uneducated people and tell them that if they only would believe nonsense, they can be saved. It’s immoral.

I wish I could explain to all those kids in Sunday School that the sensational, scary stories they’re being taught are not real.

There’s no scary God up there, intent on punishing sinners.

No eternal suffering awaits anyone for anything they say or do.

And no, their ‘sins’ did not contribute to the suffering of a nice, loving man.

Related reading

Surviving Ramadan: An ex-Muslim’s journey in Pakistan’s religious landscape, by Azad

How I lost my religious belief: A personal story from Nigeria, by Suyum Audu

From religious orthodoxy to free thought, by Tehreem Azeem

‘The best way to combat bad speech is with good speech’ – interview with Maryam Namazie, by Emma Park

Breaking the silence: Pakistani ex-Muslims find a voice on social media, by Tehreem Azeem

White Christian Nationalism is rising in America. Separation of church and state is the antidote. By Rachel Laser

The post Silencing the voice of God: the journey of an evangelical apostate appeared first on The Freethinker.

This final instalment is published on the author’s birthday as a gift to the secularists who helped him free himself from Islam—leading, in essence, to his rebirth as a freethinker. The introduction to and first instalment of the series can be found here and other instalments in the series can be found here.

One day in November 2023, some Muslim friends of mine from the Far East asked that I lead the group in the Maghrib prayer (one of the five mandatory daily prayers in Islam). Far Eastern Muslims value Arab Muslims as being linked to the birthplace of Islam, plus one of my ancestors was a famous companion of the Prophet Muhammad. I tried to make excuses to get out of it, but they insisted, so I went ahead and led the prayer. Little did my friends know that by that time I was an ex-Muslim. After my defeats by secularists in numerous debates, I had turned my back on Islam. They were being led in prayer by an apostate who had devoted himself to refuting and defeating Islam!

When I returned home, I apologised to Satan (known as Iblis in Islam) for obeying Allah’s will, but he told me: ‘Do not worry, my friend, I will not punish you by putting you in hell forever, I am not Allah! It suffices to do your freethinker homework.’ I could not resist thanking the almighty Satan and I obeyed His command. That night, I did my homework, studying with secularists all the flaws in Islamic apologetics.

In his book, Allah tells Satan: ‘[Y]ou will certainly have no authority over My servants, except the deviant who follow you’. (Quran 15:42.) Allah seems to have control over some servants, but not over everyone. At least Satan does not make claims that He cannot fulfil…

Of course, I don’t mean that I believe in Satan/Iblis literally. But the disobedient Satan figure is a potent symbol for me, epitomising my own journey away from prostration to Allah towards freedom and independence.

Muslim scholars and apologists claim that during Ramadan, all the devils are chained. Yet I and other freethinkers have joyfully engaged in counter-apologetics during the last two Ramadans. We served Satan during the holiest Muslim month, so it would seem that Satan is not chained after all. Subhan Iblis! He is the greatest, indeed. And He never called us ‘servants’.

The Satan of Islamic theology is not just a personal symbol. He is a paradoxical figure who highlights the inconsistencies and contradictions inherent in religious belief. Satan was a key aspect of my journey away from faith. The story of Satan’s refusal to bow to Adam, as described in the Quran, raises profound questions about the nature of God’s commands and Satan’s role in the narrative. Satan, created from fire, refused to prostrate before Adam, who was made from clay, arguing that He was superior. This act of defiance resulted in His expulsion from Paradise.

Yet, one might ask: Why did Allah create something that could argue with him and cause trouble in the first place? Satan’s refusal can be seen as an act of courage. Ironically, it is also consistent with the divine command to worship none but Allah: if all creatures are to bow only to Allah, then Satan’s refusal to bow to Adam could be interpreted as an act of fidelity to this principle, albeit one that defies Allah’s direct command.

Moreover, the Quran verse cited above suggests a limit to Allah’s power: Satan is granted authority over some of humanity. This raises further questions about the nature of divine power and the existence of free will. If Allah is truly omnipotent, why grant Satan any power at all?

The paradoxical nature of Satan’s role, combined with the theological inconsistencies surrounding his creation and actions, challenges the coherence of Islam’s theistic belief system. The Quranic narrative reveals contradictions in the divine attributes of omnipotence and omnibenevolence and highlights the problematic nature of theological doctrines that fail to align with observable reality.

This was just one of the many Satanic verses I encountered which shook my faith in Allah. Satan, paradoxically, led me to nonbelief. As for the existence of Allah more generally, I recommend Edgar Morina’s book Disproving Islam, which provides many excellent scientific arguments against the existence of Allah.

My complete loss of faith was not an overnight event but a gradual process of disillusionment. It involved countless hours of introspection, reading, and engagement with ideas that I had previously dismissed. Even as I continued to defend Islam in debates with secularists, I began to feel empty inside. I was like a hot air balloon: I seemed big and confident, but I was easily popped. This made it look to my opponents as if I just suddenly crashed out of Islam, but the truth is more complex.

The final admission of my defeat was both liberating and deeply humbling. It was an acknowledgement of my intellectual defeat and a surrender to the reality I had long resisted. It was a decisive defeat of Jihad by Word. Nowadays, with digital tools allowing people to document and share information efficiently and systematically, Islam simply cannot keep up. There can be no more tricks. Everything is well documented. Though the defeat of Islam will take time to fully play out, secularists have essentially already won. They have returned the Muslim genie to the bottle and locked it there forever. How long it takes Muslims to realise their intellectual defeat is, however, another matter entirely.

Jalal’s ‘statement of defeat’ by secularists in debate can be found here.

Related reading

The need to rekindle irreverence for Islam in Muslim thought, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

The price of criticising Islam in northern Nigeria: imprisonment or death, by Emma Park

My journey from blindness to rationality: how English literature saved me, by Sonia Nigar

Rushdie’s victory, by Daniel James Sharp

Surviving Ramadan: An ex-Muslim’s journey in Pakistan’s religious landscape, by Azad

From religious orthodoxy to free thought, by Tehreem Azeem

Breaking the silence: Pakistani ex-Muslims find a voice on social media, by Tehreem Azeem

Britain’s liberal imam: Interview with Taj Hargey, by Emma Park

The Satanic Verses; free speech in the Freethinker, by Emma Park

How I lost my religious belief: A personal story from Nigeria, by Suyum Audu

Why I am no longer a Hindu, by Amrita Ghosh

The post Jihad by Word #4: The Satan paradox; or, Putting the Muslim genie back in the bottle appeared first on The Freethinker.

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which celebrates the first revelation from the angel Jibril (Gabriel) to Muhammad in 610 CE, ends in a few days, on 9 April. During Ramadan, every adult Muslim must fast from dawn to sunset. As one Muslim website explains, this means ‘avoid[ing] food and drink (including water), sexual activity, smoking, intoxication, and any impure thoughts.’ In Muslim-majority countries, Ramadan also means that Islam dominates everyone’s life even more than usual. In Pakistan, with its increasing religious intolerance and strict Islamic laws, it is very difficult for ex-Muslims like me to survive at the best of times—and Ramadan makes it even harder.

I have not publicly declared myself an ex-Muslim because doing so could easily cause my death. Living with my family in a small Pakistani city, I pretend I am a moderate Muslim. The commencement of the month of Ramadan means a complete change in lifestyle and daily routine. Working hours and conditions change. Most shops remain closed until the afternoon. All restaurants are closed until dusk. Most people, who are not very religious outside of the holy month, become more observant—Islamic garb becomes more visible and beards grow longer. Attitudes harden, too, and anyone who is seen as not religious is made to feel unwelcome in this atmosphere.

Though my family is relatively moderate and gives me some space to be free, it is still risky to tell them that I don’t participate in Ramadan. Therefore, in front of them, I pretend to fast while secretly eating and drinking whenever I get the chance. There are two important meals during Ramadan. One is Sehri or Suhoor; this is the meal that is eaten before dawn. You have to wake up very early to eat this meal—and if you miss it, you won’t have anything to eat or drink during the day until the second meal, Iftar, which is eaten at sunset to break the fast.

During Ramadan in Pakistan, it is very difficult to eat or drink during the daytime even if you are not fasting. Pakistan is a Muslim-majority country, and the majority of Muslims here are devoutly religious, at least during Ramadan, so most people are fasting. There are also laws forbidding public eating and drinking during the daytime during Ramadan. Perhaps most importantly, the Pakistani version of Islam is a very insecure one. You have to display your religiosity if you want social approval; by the same token, it is considered compulsory to criticise and humiliate those who are not acting religiously during this time. People who engage in activities forbidden by Pakistani Islamic laws—such as sex outside of marriage, drinking alcohol, selling drugs, etc.—tend to become very religious during this month, and they police the behaviour of others—all the better to protect themselves from scrutiny.

In 1981, the notorious Pakistani dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq issued the Ehtram-e-Ramazan Ordinance. The purpose of this ordinance was to protect the sanctity of the month of Ramadan. According to this ordinance, no person can eat or drink during Ramadan in any public place, including hotels and canteens. Anyone found eating or drinking can be sent to jail for three months. This law also forbids restaurant owners from selling or offering food to anyone during fasting hours. Cinemas and theatres are also bound by this law to be closed for the entire month. This law has caused much trouble for liberal/non-practising Muslims, non-Muslims and ex-Muslims. In 2013, a paan seller was jailed for five days for violating the ordinance but it took him six years to get out of jail.

I have a few other ex-Muslim friends in my city who face similar problems too. The only public place where edibles are available is the hospital canteen. So whenever possible, one of us gets (or, rather, smuggles) edibles from the canteen and we gather in a private space to secretly enjoy our tea, food, and water. This activity keeps us safe from prying eyes. But due to the nature of my work, I usually remain indoors. I live and work alone in the upper portion of my home. I rarely get any visitors so I have secretly kept some dates, a water bottle, and some other edibles which I can consume during fasting hours to maintain my body’s nutrients. I sometimes get bored of this fare but in this environment, I have little choice but to accept it. At least my family does not force me to recite the Quran or go to pray at the mosque. Overall, it’s a better deal for me than for many others.

Over the past few years, religious intolerance has grown in Pakistan. Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) is an Islamist extremist political party founded in 2015 that has become more and more prominent. This party openly calls for the murder of apostates and even for the execution of Muslims who commit acts deemed by the TLP as un-Islamic. Ex-Muslims and religious minorities like Ahmadi Muslims and Hindus are all living in a state of constant fear as the Islamists grow in numbers and influence. During Ramadan, even non-Muslims are forced to remain hungry and thirsty because they fear Muslim majoritarianism.

All of this impacts my life in multiple ways. Physically, my body needs a constant supply of food after short intervals to keep functioning, otherwise I feel giddy and drained. During Ramadan, therefore, it becomes very hard for me to function and I barely survive. This physical breakdown leads to mental health issues which impact my job, my relationships, and everything in between. During Ramadan, working hours also change, which affects me financially. For all these reasons and more, Ramadan is a nightmare month for me—and the thousands like me.

Pakistan is becoming increasingly mired in extremism, as the rise of the TLP shows. This marginalises even further the many people who disagree with the majority religious view. Such people are unable to declare their true opinions and are forced into participating in a religious observance they do not believe in. Instead of policing people’s religious beliefs (or lack thereof), the Pakistani state should use its resources to improve the welfare of the Pakistani people. Efforts are better expended on the development of the country than on interference in religious affairs, which should be private. Pakistanis need to create a country where people with diverse religious views can coexist without any fear of the majority. A good start would be repealing the 1981 ordinance and allowing Pakistanis to make their own choices as to which beliefs and practices they will subscribe to.  

More on freethought in Pakistan:

Breaking the silence: Pakistani ex-Muslims find a voice on social media, by Tehreem Azeem

Coerced faith: the battle against forced conversions in Pakistan’s Dalit community, by Shaukat Korai

From religious orthodoxy to free thought, by Tehreem Azeem

The post Surviving Ramadan: An ex-Muslim’s journey in Pakistan’s religious landscape appeared first on The Freethinker.

It is hard to tell the story of my transformation from a practising Muslim to a freethinker. It did not happen in a day or two. It took almost a decade.

I was born and raised in a moderately religious family in Pakistan. I was taught religion even before I could understand words. I was Muslim. I knew the greatest of all was Allah. I was supposed to worship Allah and do good deeds to make Him happy. When I turned seven, my parents told me that I had to pray five times a day daily. To begin with, I carried out some of my prayers and missed others, but within a few years, I was doing them regularly. I wore loose clothing. I fasted during Ramadan, and refrained from acts which are considered sins in Islam.

While doing this, I was studying journalism at a university in Lahore. I would go there in an abaya. I never stepped into the radio section of the department at that time because I thought it was wrong for men to listen to the voice of a woman from outside their family.

I had no plans to become a journalist. I was just studying it after one of my uncles suggested to my father that he put me in that field. Before my graduation I had decided to apply for a doctorate at a foreign university. I started applying for scholarships quietly. I was preparing the required documents, filling out long forms, and waiting for the results. I knew there would be a lot of resistance: in my family, as in most families in Pakistan, unmarried girls do not take decisions about their lives, especially ones like going abroad to study. I thought that once I had got the scholarship and admission letter, I would then speak to my family.

Before I could speak to them, however, they spoke to me. They had received a marriage proposal from our extended family. The man was a mufti, an Islamic cleric. My parents thought it would be the best proposal for me since I was religious: I used to pray regularly and cover myself before going out, and was not very social. I, on the other hand, had bigger dreams: to get a PhD and to teach at a university.

When my father informed me that my family had accepted a marriage proposal on my behalf, my world was shaken. I thought of the implications of being tied to the household of an Islamic religious scholar. It would undoubtedly mean a strict, orthodox life with rigid expectations as to how I dressed, spoke, and conducted myself in public.

As a 23-year-old, I wavered between the excitement of finally getting married and anxiety over what I would have to sacrifice. My dreams of graduate study abroad and a writing career seemed uncertain. I asked my family to ask them if they would agree to my getting a PhD and having a career after the marriage. If they said yes, I decided I would be happy to marry the mufti, otherwise I would decline his proposal. The answer was a clear no: they would not let me pursue my career after getting married. But this was because my family thought I would give up on my dream of graduate study and that it did not mean much to me.

According to a report of the Asian Development Bank, although women in Pakistan are increasingly pursuing higher education, only 25 per cent of those who do complete higher education end up working outside the home. They are married off as soon as they get their degrees, or sometimes even before that, but with the groom’s family promising that the bride will complete her education after the marriage. Many times, however, these promises are not fulfilled.

Despite their having rejected my conditions for marriage, and although I was reluctant, both families agreed to move forward with the engagement. It lasted for two years. In those two years, I was at least allowed to go to China to do a Master’s in International Journalism and Communication at a university there.

My time in China expanded my perspectives in the ways I had not expected. I went there to get a Master’s degree, but it proved a vital step along a path that I had never even thought to follow. As an international student far from home, I gained experiences that I had never had before. I attended lectures in which we would discuss values that were different from those in my home country. I had classmates from all over the world. We would gather in our spare time and talk about different subjects. Those conversations helped to open my mind a little. Over time, I realised that, in China, I was living a life free from the oppressive cultural and religious expectations of my homeland. I felt both safe and free.

Meanwhile, I was also talking to my fiancé. Our phone calls, in which he would dictate strict rules on my conduct and the people with whom I could associate, left me deflated. I confided in fellow Muslim women students who faced similar restrictions and, as it were, remote control from their families back in their home countries. We would talk about the cultures in which we grew up and then compare them with the culture we were experiencing in China. It was totally different. None of us wanted to go back to our Muslim majority countries.

This forced me to think seriously about why I and my fellow Muslim women students did not want to go back home. The answer was simple, but it took me a decade to work it out. The reason we did not want to go back home was the religion that was forced on us. We wanted to practise it in our own ways as independent women. We did not want guardians. We wanted our own identity.

It was the first time that I had started to think about the contradictions between the progressive values I yearned for and the religious dictates that I had followed unquestioningly when younger. I started to write blogs chronicling my evolving thoughts about women and their rights. Although I was mostly criticising the oppression of the traditional Pakistani culture which I had been raised in, I realised that the culture I was questioning was founded on a religious basis. The more I became concerned about patriarchy and autocracy, the more I began to doubt what I had previously accepted as infallible religious truth.

I then started to engage with progressive thinkers and academics. I found several YouTube channels where freethinkers were answering the questions I had been turning over in my mind for years. I started listening to their videos. I bought their recommended books. These also helped to clarify my thoughts.

The fact that I was writing publicly about how I was questioning the cultural structure in which women in Pakistan were held became a serious problem for my fiancé. Both families decided to call off the engagement. I am grateful to that relationship for making me what I am today. It helped me to turn towards the liberation of reason and made me an individual who believes in progressive values, including those which support a liberal secular society and democratic government, and which allow free speech and other freedoms to everyone without any discrimination.

The change did not happen in a day, but gradually. Instead of focusing on praying and fasting, I started instead to think about helping people in whatever way I could. I was a journalist; I started drawing attention to social issues in Pakistan, particularly those related to women, ethics and religious minority groups. As I and other journalists brought these issues to the attention of institutions which could resolve them, I would feel a sense of happiness and achievement.

As Simon Cottee discusses in his book The Apostates: When Muslims Leave Islam, while men question the teachings of Islam after not finding answers to their questions about the universe, women question it when they start to become uncomfortably aware of how they are being controlled and deprived of their rights. I felt the same, though for most of my life I considered myself a Muslim, a liberal one.

As I went further into questions of who I was and why I existed, I became less convinced of the existence of absolute truths about Islam, though more confident in my own moral compass. My idea of God grew broader than the way He was depicted in the orthodox scriptures. I felt closer to universal moral truths rather than narrow commands. This questioning process led me to realise the significance of the humanity that we all share.

I started to report on religious extremism and human rights violations, specifically those happening to women. It brought me the label of ‘bad woman’ in Pakistan. However, I realised that there were some people in my audience that appreciated my work. This appreciation gave me the courage to move forward with my journalistic career. This sense of support is the only thing that pushes the small minority of progressives in Pakistan to keep doing their work.

Now, back in Lahore, the azaan still echoes around me five times a day from multiple mosques at the same time. I think about the misuse of loudspeakers by these mosques. The local law permits them to use their loudspeakers for Friday sermons and call for prayers only. However, there are seven mosques in my neighbourhood. Some mosques use their loudspeakers for daily sermons and recitation. I cannot question this practice as a citizen of the country. I cannot even write about it in the local media as a journalist. I would put myself in danger if I did so.

In April 2017, the Indian singer Sonu Nigam described in a series of tweets how he was constantly ‘woken up by Azaan’ and questioned when this ‘forced religiousness’ would end in India. His tweets caused him lot of trouble. According to the Times of India, he has been placed on the hit list of the terrorist organization Lashkar-E-Taiba.

My transformation was neither planned nor easy. It is very difficult for most women in Pakistan and much of the Muslim world to freely question or leave religion as I have. Those who dissent often face threats or exclusion. The small communities of progressives and freethinkers that exist remain low-profile to protect themselves.

While this ongoing exploration at times feels lonely, it has connected me to liberal, freethinking communities abroad and at home. I feel more confident in myself, liberated, and connected with progressive values that are welcomed by people around the world. It gives me peace – more than I have ever received from the religion in which I was enlisted a few minutes after my birth.

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