On the verge

[Mahmud]

Hi people!
My name is Mahmud. I’m a Moroccan from Holland and currently working in a news agency in Russian Federation.
I like your site, guys. I decided to leave Islam and I’m on the verge. I have some doubts.

Why I want to leave Islam
1) I didn’t know that the Quran is so violent
2) I know that the majority of terrorists are Muslims
3) I love ‘western values’
4) Dutch women have much more rights (yeah, they have similar rights in Holland but my father for example sometimes beats my mum when she disobeys).
5) I want to choose a bride myself
6) I want to be in a relationship that is based on equality. When you are slaving yourself at work and your wife is stuck in the kitchen, it’s simply impossible
7) I think Islam doesn’t agree with western democracy
8 I don’t think infidels will go to Hell. I know many unbelievers that are MUCH better than Muslims
Why I am still uncertain
1) I don’t want to betray my family
2) I’m afraid of Hell
3) I’m afraid to be killed
4) I’m proud to be a Moroccan

So there are fewer reasons for not leaving Islam but they are very important to me
I’m tired of being on the verge so I decided to leave or not leave Islam in a week. If I go to mosque next Friday, I will remain Muslim. If I don’t go to mosque, I will not be a Muslim.
Non-Muslims can convince me to leave Islam, and Muslims can convince to remain a Muslim. I’m pretty open-minded. But dear Muslims, don’t try to brainwash me as I’m a real Muslim who has read Quran in Arabic. Also let’s speak not only about theory but also about practical Islam. Right?

Suggestion if I have to become a Christian, Buddhist, Hindu etc are also welcome. I don’t think I will be able to remain an atheist.

Thanks

[paz]

Hi, and welcome! I think you must be true to yourself, it's YOUR life! It looks like that means leaving Islam.

There is no need for you to rush to tell your friends and family, just as there is no need to rush to find what preligious path is next for you.

You may want ot disassciate in your mind first, note that when you are in the mosque on with your family discussing Islam, how you feel about it and whether you believe it anymore.

Then you can stop practicing, distance yourself, do some things you never would as a Muslim, etc.

Maybe you need to move somewhere where no one knows you as a Muslim, to get a fresh start. You might never tell your family, depending on what they are like. Make a decision about that over time.

I think as far as new religion goes, first get your mindset off of Islam and then take your time with the decision about any new religion. There is no reason you need to rush.

These are only suggestions, and now that you've found this forum, there will be people here online to help you through this! Many people here have been through it and understand completely.

{{{HUGS}}}
_________________
˙˙˙˙ǝɯıʇ ʇsɹıɟ ǝɥʇ ʎʞuıʞ slǝǝɟ ʎluo ʇı 'ʎɹɹoʍ ʇ,uop

[path]

[yeezevee]

[farside]

The Windmills of Holland

[Shake Down]

_________________
If you obeyed most of those on earth, they would misguide you from God's Way. They follow nothing but conjecture. They are only guessing. (Surat al-An'am: 116)

It will all be OK in the end. If it's not OK, then it must not be the end.

[eduardo]

Mahmud-
About hell -- there are many different concepts of it -- including that it doesn't exist. Various schools of Christianity have various concepts of hell. Some Christians argue there is no permanent hell, only purgatory at most.

The brilliant Christian writer C.S. Lewis said that God did not create hell nor trap beings within it. God, claimed Lewis, merely set boundaries to Hell so it wouldn't spread everywhere.

Lewis wrote a brilliant and highly entertaining novelette (The Great Divorce) about the afterlife. In the novel, we find ourselves in the afterlife, and everyone there is free to go to heaven, or stay in a rather dingy city with a number of peculiar qualities. There is a bus stop there, where a bus that goes to heaven stops. Many people decide to take the bus ride 'up' to heaven, but when they get there, some of the people decide they don't like certain things about the place.

For one thing, the souls of people, when the bus lets them off in heaven, are like whispy thin ghosts or smoke, and heaven is at first painful to them, because it turns out to be not ghostly at all, but more solid and bright and radiant and real than anything was on earth. To walk on the grass in heaven hurts the whispy spectres who have arrived from the bus. But they learn that overtime, if they stay through the pain, they will turn from ghosts into solid beings, and the pain will be replaced with glory.

Still, some of them conclude mistakenly (and self-deceivingly) that heaven is a bad place, and so return to the dingy city. Down there, people are all rather hostile and petty and squabbling all the time, and all the buildings are growing farther and farther apart because people can't tolerate each other, and so the whole city is gradually dissipating out into cosmic space and becoming thinner and thinner.

At one point, one of the main characters travels far out toward the dissipating city's edge, light years out from its center, because he wants to see Napoleon, whose house is getting farther and farther from center, like everything in the dingy city. He sees from a great distance (sight is different in the afterlife) that Napoleon is pacing back and forth in the house, going again and again over his exploits while he was alive as a great world famous general and emperor. And he hears Napoleon talking to himself and trying to understand where he made certain mistakes that had in the end defeated him as a general. He has been pacing back and forth in his afterlife house apparently since he died, over a hundred years previous, and all that time obsessed about his downfall on earth.

Looking about, the main character of the novel can see many stars receding from the city center, and these are some of the earlier great human figures of history who have decided, so far, not to go to heaven. In Lewis' novel, there seems to be a kind of time limit on how long people can delay going to heaven. Eventually the dingy city will be too dispersed and dissipated for those at the outer periphery of distant stars ever to return to the busstop nearer city center and take the bus up to heaven. So that's a bit of C.S. Lewis' imagination about hell and heaven.

Here's one of the most interesting ideas of hell I've heard. I got it from Rudolf Steiner: After we die, our spirit still has cravings for all the things we enjoyed on earth, but we no longer have the physical organs or means to satisfy those cravings. So for a time, we go through withdrawal, just like drug addicts who no longer can have their drug. The withdrawal feels like hell while we are gradually learning to let go of the attachment to the various addictions we had. If we were not overly attached to physical sensations, the withdrawal lasts a shorter 'time,' because we don't crave as much. Eventually, purged, we 'ascend' to realms of higher beings. There, we plan with these higher beings the life lessons we need to grow and mature as a human being the next time we are born on earth. This is a Christian version of reincarnation, because unlike most Buddhist versions, this version does not envision the ideal goal as escaping further incarnation, nor does it conceive reincarnation as an endless wheel one must get off. This 'Christian' version conceives repeated earth lives as means of growing in maturity, freedom, love, knowledge, etc.

Anyway, that turned into a digression from the main point, which was to present some alternative and not so terrifying ideas of 'hell.'