It all began in June 2007, with Hamas' coup d'etat in the Gaza Strip. I picked up a newspaper with a photo of a machine-gun and Quran-wielding militant atop a Fatah desk on the front page, and I knew that I wanted to read and know everything about them. So I picked up all the library books I could on the Palestinian struggle, then on Iraq, Afghanistan, the Iranian Revolution - I read it all. Islam was mentioned again and again, and I thought it was necessary to read the Quran, too, to understand the region's religious background and see if - and how accurately - the Quran was being used as an inspiration by militants. So I got a free copy, read the intro where it said to read it with clean hands and an open heart, and headed out to a nearby riverside to do so.
I read a sura that asked how a person could not believe in God when the proof was all around them, and at that moment I looked up as the sun was setting over the water, past the sand littered with empty beer cans, and something inside me just clicked. After more than a decade of staunch atheism, I cracked and thought there must be a creator because the universe really was beautiful.
Who needed tafsirs and obscure hadith tucked deeply inside 500-page volumes that were translated with Western sensibilities in mind? I didn't even know they existed. I went home and watched a youtube video of an azan from Mecca and cried. It felt like somebody was calling me back home.
So I researched and dug deeper, or at least as deep as a Westerner could while browsing websites carefully edited and catered to speak about "women's rights" and "freedom of religion." Then along came a man I met online who gave me the extra nudge I needed to say the shahada. I thought he was such a good man that what he believed could only also be pure good.
The doubt was always there. Not in God, but in the rationale of beating women or punishing criminals by stoning or lashing. For every absurdity there was a watered-down and false explanation: women could only be beat if the husband caught them cheating, Shariah would only be implemented in the far-distant future in which humans would live in a utopia where no such punishment was necessary. I met good people, felt the family spirit of iftars, found easy explanations online to funny problems, and life went on.
I saw the Kaaba and cried, because I felt such intense love and protection at that moment that I knew something had to be watching over us, and that something was kind and beautiful. I still believe in God, but it was just a coincidence that we met in Mecca.
Then I kissed a Muslim man, and we both felt sorry. Days later he said: "Well you know, the Quran mentions women first." I cried and thought how men so often twist a beautiful religion to serve their selfish needs. Or maybe deep inside I realised he was probably right, and that despite reassurances to the contrary the Adam and Eve story was the same in Islam? So many years struggling to leave Christianity, and had it come to this again? Was it all just the same crap?
I had stumbled upon "anti-Islam websites" before during Google searches, but I dismissed them as racist ramblings of Islamophobic Westerners and Zionists. Could I have bothered to check that the founder of this website was Iranian? How would I explain his apostasy then, could I have possibly told myself that he just "hated Muslims?"
A few weeks after that stupid kiss, I started talking with an Arab atheist online. He wasn't pro-Israeli, nor was he a European right-wing fanatic. How could I shrug off what he told me?
So I thought I'd forget the hadith and just go with the Quran, then I thought I'd just go with the nice parts of the Quran and be a Sufi mystic. Then I read about Sawda and I thought... enough. Maybe meditation, or Buddhism? Maybe later, I thought, because now I don't want "to be" anything but just human.
My faith died so quickly that I realised the seed of doubt had always been there, and I just needed somebody to water it at just the right moment for it to blossom into the flower of apostasy and freedom. After three or four years of feeling guilty for never waking up for fajr, of being too tired and hungry to understand the Bukhari hadiths I read during Ramadan, of ignoring those pesky issued that I had no energy to Google and find watered-down excuses for... it was finally over. I was back to myself, back to how I was born and always will be - human.
I am not angry or disappointed, perhaps because I wasn't a born Muslim and the faith was never forced upon me. I see it all as a journey now, and a reminder to myself that no matter how educated or how much of a feminist I am, I am not immune from making excuse upon excuse to justify something that I felt could be loved.
To the Imams in the West: we cannot read Arabic, and we are by your definition radical feminists, and perhaps we can be reassured and fooled for a few years. But not forever. We will arrive at the truth sooner or later. I've seen two Muslim convert friends leave before me, and now I follow in their footsteps.
To the Arabs: I still support the Palestinian struggle, and still respect you and still love living among your kind and hospitable people. Take it from me, a former Catholic: every religion has its dark sides that do nothing but hold humanity back from progress. I want nothing to do with mine, just like I want nothing to do with yours.