Hearing the voices of those who leave faith.

In the second blog taken from Leaving Faith Behind: The journeys and perspectives of people who have chosen to leave Islam, Fiyaz Mughal OBE says that we must be allowed the freedom to choose how we live out our faith and also the freedom to leave it ...

Islamist thinking which has seeped into parts of British Muslim communities by virtue of Muslim Brotherhood activists and networks in the United Kingdom, has shut down dissent and marginalised those who sought to develop platforms where people could debate Islam and what it meant to them. Yet, there was a brief window where second and third generation British Muslims had a chance to explore their identities on a wider scale rather than just being Asian or Muslims. That window came in the mid-1980s with several films that encapsulated the complex intersectionality of identities that were developing for young Asians and, more specifically, for young Muslim men.

Films written by Hanif Kureishi entitled My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987) explored hard and real-life issues of racism, isolation, sexuality, mixed-race relationships and racial violence in a Britain that was still trying to be at ease with itself and its minority communities. This frankness in film-making allowed mainly second generation British Asians of Pakistani heritage to explore the multiple identities they had and to explore life beyond the restrictive boundaries of being young boys who had to live up to ideals of ‘no sex before marriage’, ‘religiosity’ and being hard workers and achievers. The Hanif Kureishi generation started to see life through the prism of just being, rather than through the prism of identity politics, and many relished being in different kinds of relationships, living out a new part of who they were and crossing racial and faith boundaries through those relationships. It was a period of exploration and of imagination, of excitement and validation, of racism and racial solidarity as well as solidarity between minority groups. Those were heady days, times of pain, but times of hope.

Today, much of that spirit has been lost and I find young Muslims in their mid-twenties who lecture me, a 46-year-old man, about why I don’t have a beard. I am lectured about why I should pray five times a day, why the West hates Muslims, how Prevent (the Government’s community focussed counterterrorism agenda) is used to spy on Muslims and how social progressives within Islam are a threat to the faith.

Why wouldn’t things like this put off some who were born as Muslims? The enormous appetite of some media outlets to vilify Muslims as a whole, alongside Islamist online groups pouring out paranoia that the State is against Muslims and that your future is one of securitisation and harassment, have effects. The latter narrative is mainly made by Islamist groups who, as I have said before, have done a disservice to the many young Muslims who consume their corrosive, victim-driven narrative. The former can and should be challenged, and it is within the realm and capability of British Muslims to object vocally and vociferously when such headlines are aimed at selling papers and dividing communities.

What I am arguing is that Islamism has been a major turn off for many who were born Muslims, who feel they are British, and who cannot associate with groups who suggest that the lot of Muslims in the UK is one of being dispossessed and fed a diet of paranoia and hopelessness. In turning away from Islamist messages, some have wholeheartedly rejected Islam, showing how toxic these narratives and groups have become.

The voices of people who have left faith increasingly need to be heard since they speak of experiences and beliefs that are neither morally different nor heretical. They are based on their value judgements and their sense of meaning.

My decision to co-edit and author my new book Leaving Faith Behind comes from the firm belief that those who do not believe in faith or who reject it, are not morally inferior to those who go to church every week or those who pray five times a day. Morality does not come in the form of belief in God, even though faith has created a moral framework for billions of people. It lies in the way people lead their lives, how they care for others and how they treat them.

We don’t have to believe in God to be moral people. This should go without saying; however, many people still believe the two go hand in hand and that one cannot exist without the other. That is not the case.

Some have therefore chosen to attack the concept of faith and the belief in an unseen, all-powerful deity. Many, who have left faith, feel anchored and secure believing that this life is what they have, and they have chosen to live it to the full. There are increasing numbers of ex-Muslims who reject Islam and any form of faith since they see terrorism voiced in the name of Islam and have experienced negative life events, driven, in their eyes, by the influence of religion on their parents, friends or relatives.

Whatever the truth, the fact is that some of those who have chosen to leave faith have done so because the dogma and doctrinal issues of the faith that they were born into clashed head-on with their sense of identity, rationality, common sense and in some cases, their dignity. For others, it became restrictive, forceful, constraining and dangerous to them. What was supposed to provide a sense of identity, belief, security and solace, became a prison that locked them mentally into a place of pain, fear and anxiety. This loss of personal control, for some, led to mental and physical crises, some of which they still suffer to this day as they seek to re-establish control over their lives.

What we are seeing is that for some, their sense of identities and beliefs are fluid and becoming increasingly more fluid in the world in which we live. Choices are made and rejected, in a way that would have been unthinkable just three or four decades ago. Part of the reason that people have the chance to make those choices is that they can do so without significant fear to their lives and with legal protections. Allied to this have been changing social attitudes and the liberalisation of society’s norms.

Even within the faith into which I was born, Islam, the chances of an ex-Muslim being killed for leaving the faith are very low in the United Kingdom, but that is not to say that they will not be subjected to rejection from their immediate family, to psychological pressures or abuse. Some of this sort of treatment I have also seen within families born into Christian traditions where one member of the family converts to Islam. There are psychological pressures, cycles of emotional abuse and the shunning of individuals as punishment for their decision to convert to Islam. So, I know that such issues are not unique to Islam.

In countries like Pakistan and Egypt, abusing, leaving or changing faith can have violent and deadly consequences. Blasphemy laws in Pakistan have led to the violent deaths and imprisonment of people deemed to have insulted Muhammad or Islam. In Pakistan, even the mere accusation of insulting the faith can lead to mob justice and violent murder. Faith has been weaponised by successive Governments to mobilise the population and to play to a sense of macho-nationalism. The strategy has been to focus the people’s attention on external threats through religio-nationalism, whilst corruption, nepotism and obfuscation have become synonymous with Government.

This deflection has meant that anyone who goes against the grain of religion is seen as a threat to the state itself, because faith and the state have become entirely intertwined. No wonder so many people rarely dissent in such circumstances. The results have been devastating, with strong support for extremist groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where literalism and absolutism within Islam have become the norm.

The possibility for people to change, whether they change faith or reject faith completely and take on a new identity, is part of the human spirit and something that makes us unique. However, that change can only take place in an environment where people are free to make those decisions without a threat to their lives. It is also one of the reasons why I pushed to make my new book happen. Changing identity is part and parcel of life and we should not fear it, but embrace it, just as much as we embrace the freedom to choose other aspects of how we live our lives.

 

This is an edited extract written by Fiyaz Mughal OBE, founder and director of Faith Matters, from Leaving Faith Behind: The journeys and perspectives of people who have chosen to leave Islam edited by Fiyaz and Aliyah Saleem, co-founder of Faith to Faithless.