by Dan Riley
My maternal grandmother still has no idea that I’m an atheist. In fact, nobody on my mother’s side knows. Even though my grandmother came to my graduation, I was able to hide the issue well enough that she gave me Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life Journal, and The Daily Bible.
I live in South Carolina, so I was not particularly surprised that there would be some backlash, but I didn’t know that it would elevate to the extent that it did. I didn’t expect the criticism to be as negative as it was. My best friend’s girlfriend’s grandmother actually appeared on a newscast using a “majority rules” argument, saying that she was starting a petition to get the prayer officially added back to the program the following year.
Most people in this part of the country have never had anyone challenge their religious beliefs. They’ve been surrounded by Christians their entire lives. It’s a huge culture shock for them to know that somebody doesn’t believe in God. I understand where they’re coming from, but I don’t condone their intolerance. I think that anybody can and should realize that what I did was not an attack on Christianity. I was upholding the law.
Despite the negativity, I did receive some support. A close friend argued publicly in favor of removing the prayer from the ceremony so much that, at the beginning, people actually thought that she was the one who filed the complaint. A few times, when I was walking through the halls at school, I’d have people come up to me and say, “I support what you’re doing. I’m an atheist, too, and I don’t think a prayer should be read.” I even had a few people come up to me and say, “I’m a Christian, and I agree with what you’re doing. I don’t think prayer should be a part of graduation.”
Most of my support came from the internet. I started a group on Facebook called “Support the End of School-Sponsored Prayer at LDHS graduation.” It ended up attracting 160 members. Some people who found me on Facebook messaged me saying, “I graduated from LDHS years ago, and I thought the prayer didn’t belong there either, so thank you for finally standing up and saying something.”
If it wasn’t for the internet, I can’t say that I would have done what I did. I think that the internet is helping to fuel the secular movement because atheists like myself in predominantly Christian communities are able to find other people like them online, on places like Reddit and Facebook.
The internet has already connected me with the movement and its participants. Recently, I attended the Center for Inquiry’s Student Leadership Conference, where Jessica Ahlquist, Damon Fowler, and I were all on a panel discussing high school activism. We told our stories and got a standing ovation. Being surrounded by so many like-minded people, and not having to hide anything from them, made for an awesome experience. It really motivated me to keep on working.
I think that the secular movement is becoming huge. People are coming out as secular and as atheists in all areas of the country and the world. This year, there were only a few high school activists like me who were making headlines to ensure the separation of church and state. Next year, I imagine that there will be even more. I hope we can have a major impact on society.
Before all of this happened, I didn’t do much in my life. I found something that actually means something to me. I can’t say that it’s negatively influenced me in any way. It has made me realize that yes, I’m an atheist, and no, I’m not going to hide that, and no, I don’t have to sit back whenever Christians or people of any faith are breaking the law.
I want religious people to realize that their religion is not the only one in the world and that they should not be chastising anyone else for their minority religious views or trying to force their religion on others. I want people to open their eyes and realize that they need to be accepting of people who don’t agree with their religious beliefs. People claim that this is a Christian nation, when in fact we have a secular government. Some try to argue that because God is mentioned in the Pledge of Allegiance, the United States is a Christian nation. In fact, “One nation, under God” wasn’t added to the Pledge of Allegiance until the 1950s, when the U.S. government felt that it was fighting “Godless Communism.” No one religion deserves a higher place in our public institutions than any other.
I have no regrets about what I’ve done, and I feel that it has helped me grow as a person. I’ve found something that I’d like to stay involved in throughout my life. I want to inspire students like Jessica has inspired me, to come out and fight against First Amendment infringements in public schools. I hope to help the movement grow, to reach out to people, and let them know that they are not alone. I’ve found a way to give my life meaning without God.
XV.
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Moiz Malik Khan: An Atheist Ex-Muslim in America
“I do not believe in a personal God, and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.
“If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
— Albert Einstein
If one wanted a youthful perspective on the relationship between Islam and the West, striking up a conversation with Moiz Malik Khan would be a good starting point. Born in Pakistan, Moiz moved with his family to the United States when he was two years old. Moiz, a devout Muslim growing up, first fasted during Ramadan at age eight, consistently prayed five time a day, and, with his relatives, went to Koranic study classes throughout his teenage years. A YouTube video of Richard Dawkins began an investigation into his faith that would eventually lead him away from Islam.
There is no word for “atheist” in Arabic, only one for “nonbeliever,” one who knows that God exists but will not admit so openly. Moiz became exposed to the idea of atheism through his study of philosophy and history, as well as through the scientific theories that challenged the fundamental tenets of his religion. As he lost his faith, he began to tell his family. He found, surprisingly, that many of his Muslim relatives were receptive to his ideas. While he recognizes that secularizing the Muslim world will take time, he’s optimistic that modern technology can play a crucial role in speeding up that process.
I was born in Pakistan, which is quite a religious country. On all of the national ID cards in Pakistan, the religion of each citizen is listed. In fact, people are not allowed to buy alcohol in Pakistan if their ID lists them as a Muslim. When I was two years old, my family moved from my native country to the United States because the rest of my family was also moving to America for economic reasons.
My mom is much more religious than my dad, which is the case in most of the marriages in my family. My dad is a poet in the Urdu language. He, like many people in the arts, is less dogmatic about religion than those outside of it. That fact has always led to strife within my family. For example, when I was younger, my mom really wanted me to learn the Koran in Arabic. My dad believed that it was more important for me to be learning English. My mother ended up winning that one.
I was quite religious when I was young. Throughout my childhood, I attended Koranic classes. It’s like Sunday school but a little more frequent in the sense that it’s held more or less every day. I would always go right after school. My mom would pay religious leaders from the local mosque to teach my cousins and me.
I really enjoyed that education, and I became devout. One of the most important elements of being a Muslim is fasting during the month of Ramadan. It’s not necessarily encouraged for younger kids to participate, primarily for health reasons, because during Ramadan, Muslims, from sunrise to sunset, go without any water, drink, or food. Beginning at age eight, I tried to fast too. Around the age of puberty, Muslims are supposed to begin praying five times a day; I started doing that as well. I was heavily engrossed in the culture and never questioned the tenets of the faith.
I was in sixth grade and living in New York City on September 11, 2001. I remember that day. As a Muslim, I didn’t understand the intellectual rationale for the terrori
sts’ actions. I questioned whether or not Muslims would commit murder. I considered that it might have been a conspiracy; a good portion of my family still believes that it was. My family is filled with very peaceful people, and they had a difficult time believing that Muslims would act violently. My father believed that 9/11 was a conspiracy because Islam had been growing at such a fast rate in the West, a fact that Western Judeo-Christian culture didn’t like. After that day, all of the sudden, being a Muslim meant something different than it had previously. Muslims became a cultural group in America that became somewhat discriminated against.
I was still quite religious at that time. I was devoted to praying five times a day, to going to the mosque as frequently as I could, to constantly reading the Koran. At one point, I could recite the entire Koran without reading it or looking at it, even though, because it was in Arabic, I didn’t know what the words meant. In fact, that’s generally how the Koran is taught. As time passed, I eventually read it in English. When I did, and began voicing my doubts, my parents dismissed my skepticism because they felt that the version of the Koran that I was reading was most likely an inaccurate translation.
Reading the Koran had a profound influence on me. It goes without saying that it, like many other books, promotes violence in some way. There are verses, for example, that really do instruct Muslims to kill nonbelievers; it is clear what the penalty for apostasy is. My family would never follow such commandments, though.
It wasn’t until high school that I came across the idea of atheism. I started reading about Albert Einstein. I had been told that he was a very religious man, which, I found, is not true. I wanted to learn more about the religious thoughts of people like Einstein, particularly because I was interested in science and philosophy. During that time, I came across an online video of Richard Dawkins. To a seemingly religious person, he asked, “What if you’re wrong?” Initially, Dawkins’s challenge made me even more religious. Periodically, though, when I was doing normal daily things like taking a shower, I would wonder about that question and think, “There is actually a good chance that I might be wrong about Islam.”
I started reading more and more about atheism. I began to realize that its arguments were much more intellectually satisfying than those of my religion. Becoming an atheist was a very gradual thing for me; it took about six or eight months. I kept reading Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris. I read Plato. Those writings truly influenced my intellectual thinking. As they pointed out, religion begins with an assumption that God exists. Once you buy into that assumption, then you can rationalize nearly anything after that. Rarely do people question that original assumption. They encouraged me to do just that. By the time I fully identified as nonreligious, a nonbeliever, an atheist, by the time I recognized that that’s actually who I am, I had had a long time to come to terms with that fact.
I first told my brothers and sisters because I thought that they might be able to best relate to my new beliefs. They hadn’t been as religious as me growing up, and over time, I was able to argue them out of their own lingering religious beliefs. Next, I told my cousins. In time, they became nonreligious. Interestingly, despite their departure from Islam, most of them still list their religion as “Muslim” on Facebook, even though they’re now atheists.
My parents gradually realized that I had become an atheist because of the large collection of atheistic literature that I began to compile in our home. They didn’t bring up the topic with me because they wanted to avoid conflict. I’ve still never talked with my mom at length about the subject. Whenever we go to one of my cousins’ houses, she tells me to fake it, even if I don’t believe.
I’m fascinated by the way I was able to de-convert my relatives from my generation. They’ve become atheists largely because I kept poking them, pointing out when I thought that they weren’t making good religious arguments. In fact, all of the family members I’m close with in age are now nonreligious, which is unique because atheists from a Pakistani background are rare.
It’s a different story with my family members who are older. People who have spent 60 years of their lives dedicated to Islam know that they would be ostracized if they publicly stated that they no longer believed in God. That would be an admission that they — and their entire family — had lived most of their life falsely. That’s not something most people would want or be willing to believe. I understand their resistance to change. I still haven’t come out completely to all of my family because if I did, I’d likely be ostracized, too. People probably wouldn’t call me as much. People likely wouldn’t invite me to their homes.
Overall, for me, the most important argument against religion and against Islam is the theory of evolution. I find the scientific method to be a tremendous methodology for attempting to explain the natural order of things. In my experience, I’ve found that religion can cripple people’s ability to recognize scientific fact. I have an uncle who has his Ph.D. from Yale, yet he doesn’t believe in evolution. He says that if the Koran says that pigs were turned into men, then that’s the way that humans were created. He’s a very educated man, but he views evolution as humanity’s way of trying to disprove religion, which he believes is something that science shouldn’t do. On a day to day basis, though, he’s a practicing biomedical engineer.
I do think that I understand certain psychological elements of religion. There’s a certain “ask and you shall receive” element to it. If someone implores their mind to feel a certain way, their mind might actually produce that effect. My religious experiences worked that way in some sense. When I would pray, I was relaxed and realized that there are bigger, more important things in life than momentary problems. Religious exercises can have the same effect that any other meditation does. I’ve seen old Egyptian paintings of people praying in very similar ways to the way in which Muslims pray now. It doesn’t really matter what you’re chanting, for example, it just matters that you’re chanting something in a repetitive way, that you’re directing your focus to clear your mind.
Sam Harris mentions in his books that it is possible to detach the benefits of meditation from spiritual mumbo jumbo. When people have incredibly powerful spiritual experiences, I don’t think that they’re lying about how profound those moments are. I just don’t think that there’s a God behind them. Instead, I think they’re caused by a certain state of consciousness, a fact that science is beginning to reveal. In fact, the Dalai Lama, for example, says, “If science proves Buddhism wrong about its tenets, we’ll go with the science.” I appreciate that, but that also makes me wonder, “What’s the point of faith?” Once you start thinking of your brain as a physical object with a chemical basis, you realize that if you alter the chemicals in your brain, you can feel differently. I think that’s pretty obvious, but it’s also an interesting idea. My dad, for example, has become less and less religious because of some of the points that I’ve made to him, but he still prays even though I’m not sure that he still believes in God. He has spent most of his life praying five times a day, and I think he would still enjoy it even if he determined that there was no supreme being behind its benefits.
After becoming nonreligious, one difference that I noticed between the Christian way of life in America and the Islamic way of life in America is that the idea of being an atheist is often discussed in American Christianity, whereas that idea never comes to the attention of those being raised in the Islamic faith. When I was younger, the only options that I knew were Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism. I understood that they were different faiths, but I was convinced that everyone believed in some form of religion, some form of God.
There are parallels to this on the global scale, too. In the Islamic world, people never really come across the idea that God may simply not exist. I have a cousin who recently came to the United States from Pakistan; he hadn’t ever heard of the concept of atheism until I introduced it to him. I think that one of the major difficulties in secularizing the Islamic world is
that most Muslims don’t know that this idea is even a possibility. There’s no word for atheist in Arabic. The closest word connoting that idea is a word for nonbeliever, but a nonbeliever describes someone who knows that God exists but knowingly rejects God. A prerequisite for becoming an atheist is knowing about the existence of that word.
It’s crucial that there be safety for Muslims who become nonreligious. Most skeptical Muslims are very much afraid to come out. I am lucky that my family has passively accepted who I am.
Despite my family’s relative acceptance, though, when I go back to Pakistan, I certainly don’t tell anyone about my beliefs. I wouldn’t be allowed to be around some of my cousins anymore if they knew what I believe. In fact, in Pakistan, there is a legitimate chance that something violent would happen to someone who came out as an atheist.
Despite its religious conservatism, I do believe that the Middle East will secularize, although I think that it will happen very slowly. I have seen, for example, only one or two Pakistani atheist groups on Facebook, while I have seen many more Facebook groups that are attempting to remove the atheist pages. In fact, I’ve gotten many invites from my own family members asking me to support a cause to remove an atheist group from that website. This will be a very slow and long process.
For me, being an atheist is more liberating than anything. I’m liberated from praying five times a day. At one point, when I was really religious, I would attend religious services on Friday nights from 9:00 PM to 3:00 AM. Much of my life has been given back to me. It has also been mentally liberating because I no longer have a constant fear of going to hell.
Now, instead of the Koran, my ethical influences come from Plato, from Aristotle. If anything, I think my atheism has improved my ethics in the sense that I realize that there is only one life to live, and I don’t want to treat people poorly. I think I’m a nicer person now, and I am more aware of human suffering. Because of that, I donate more to charities. My eyes have been opened, which has increased my empathy.