hiredgun

Abaya, my sister is having a somewhat similar experience, so I thought I might share it.

I'm from a pretty strict Muslim household. We came to the US as fairly casual Muslims, I think, but once here my parents were a little xenophobic and the mosque became the center of their entire social life, strengthening their religious ties as well. Another big turning point was when my younger sister became the most religious of all of us, all on her own, adopting the headscarf.

[Btw, the head-covering is an extremely controversial topic in Islam. I know people who will tell you unequivocally that a woman will go to hell for not wearing it, and others who say that's compeletely ridiculous.]

But now, several years later, she no longer feels quite as religious, and definitely no longer wants to wear the headscarf. In the meantime, my parents will absolutely have none of it. Even though my mother began wearing it only after my sister did, she has completely forbidden my sister to remove it. As of now she still wears it. It's a touchy subject in the family.

After the above experience, of course, my sister became even more disillusioned with religion. It's hard to willingly hold on to something when it no longer feels like a choice.

I guess the above story sort of illustrates what I increasingly perceive to be the role of religion, and subsequently why I simply can't relate to it anymore, despite once being devout in my childhood. It's a social bond to other human beings, when other bonds are lacking. It emerges most sharply in times of insecurity or economic hardship, to downplay the importance of misery in "this life". It's a buttress against mortality; I've watched my parents and surviving grandparents become more and more religious as they approach old age. And it is a cultural tool manipulated by political elites for their own ends; many Muslim demagogues are all too guilty of this.

I apologize if the preceding paragraph offended anyone; these are just my perceptions, ideas that I can't shake and that have crystallized over a period of years as I "lost" my religion while growing up. The only times I have looked back, I have been motivated by fear; fear of hellfire and damnation, fear of social condemnation among my family, fear of growing old and dying without being able to believe that something better awaits me. When I realize that only fear is holding me back, I'm able to let go even more completely from the remains of what was once faith.