INTERVEIW WITH A NEW PAKISTANI ATHEIST Sara Rehman* *Name changed I remember, I finally plucked the courage to come out of my religious closet and admit to being an agnostic on September, 17, 2011. It has been more than two years since. Questioning my faith was one of the toughest things I did in my life. I went into depression but didn’t seek any help. I lost all will to live because I thought I was all alone. I live in Rawalpindi Cantonment, near Islamabad. Home to Pakistan Army’s General Headquarters, the city is a quintessential military town. All we have here are military units, institutions and housing colonies. And, yes, my dad was in the military. I will be applying for law school this June. The day I realised I was an agnostic, I searched for the keywords “Pakistani atheists and agnostics” on the internet and found a Facebook group that went by that name. I sent a request to the group and it got accepted after five torturously long days. I met a lot of wonderful people in the group. After staying in the group for a few months and talking to different people online, I finally realised that I was an agnostic-atheist, which means I don’t know for sure whether a god(s) exists, but given the scarcity of evidence, I’m inclined to believe that there is probably no god. I had been raised an Ismaili, a minority group and sub-sect of Shia Islam. Ismailis tend to be the most liberal of Muslims. They allow women to lead prayers, they also have women in positions of religious importance like kamdar, which is the Ismaili equivalent of a moulvi. Polygamy is prohibited. Women’s rights, in general, are promoted and protected in the jamatkhanas, which is the Ismaili equivalent of a mosque. The only reason I didn’t leave Islam earlier was because women are given most of their rights in the Ismaili tradition, apart from the fact that women can’t be imams, or spiritual heads. That was something that made me doubt Ismailism. I also came to realise that the imam is not divinely appointed, something that our religion purports him to be. I was never a staunch, practicing Ismaili. I didn’t pray regularly, Ismailis are required to pray just twice a day. I didn’t fast and I didn’t go to the jamatkhana regularly. My mother was a Twelver Shia, (those who celebrate Muharram and believe in 12 divinely ordained imams). My dad, an Ismaili, always had a problem with my mother’s faith and would fight a lot with my mother about it despite the fact that she had converted to Ismailism when she married him. The divide between my parent’s faiths and their families got me thinking and questioning religion from a very young age. I liked the people from both sides but I saw how they turned against each other because of their religious differences and it made me skeptical about religion. Islam forbids the questioning of the existence of God. There can be no questions about it. It is the worst crime to question his existence. This idea didn’t quite cut the ice with me. I studied about other religions and Buddhism was a personal favourite but I realised that all religious beliefs lack an empirical basis. I used to have a lot of doubts when I was an Ismaili and a deist but I used to get really scared and banished those thoughts from my head because I felt I would go straight to hell for questioning god’s existence. I also used to feel depressed, guilty, afraid and alone. But everything changed when I found other Pakistani atheists on Facebook. The group had more than three hundred members from all over Pakistan when I joined it. Now it has more than a thousand. I was never a fan of social networking but since I felt so isolated I thought why not. In fact I got addicted and checked and commented on the group page every single day. Most members report similar experiences. My mother, sister, brothers, one of my maternal first cousin and four of my friends know I’m an atheist. My father is very strict. He has an inkling that I have doubts but I have never told him upfront, nor has he confronted me about it. Everyone, except my mother, took the news in their stride. My mother was very unhappy. At first, she didn’t think I was serious since I was her “good child” and dismissed it as a passing phase. Now, she often asks me whether my insanity has passed or not and questions me, rather angrily, if I still call myself an atheist. I don’t know how my extended family will react. Of course, they don’t love me as much as my close family to understand. I was spiritual for a very long time but it was immensely unsatisfying because I saw so much hatred and suffering around me. I myself was ostracised and discriminated against by most Muslims because I was an Ismaili. Mainstream Muslims believe that Ismailis are not true Muslims. I was unable to reconcile with the idea of an all-loving god with all the misery and injustice I saw around me. There was also a rational side to me that realised that there was no evidence of a divine creator who might be interested in the minutiae of people’s lives. With experience, I realised that it isn’t prayer that pulls a person through in times of distress. It is well thought-out decisions and ingenuity that helps. I realised that prayers don’t work. My father was diagnosed with bipolar disorder a decade ago. Prayers didn’t help with his manic episodes, medicines did. There are atheists, agnostics and skeptics all over Pakistan. We co-ordinate through Facebook. We have meetings in Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore and Multan. We usually meet in restaurants where we can have some privacy to discuss our opinions over a meal. Most people are too scared to come out of their religious closets. Some report being emotionally, verbally, psychological and even physically abused by their families. So, most people prefer to go through the motions of faith, because being discriminated against is not a pretty situation to be in. dnaindia/lifestyle/report-confessions-of-a-pakistani-atheist-1960368
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 14:23:48 +0000
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