The Wandering Apostate

Over the next few weeks, I will outline some for the reasons for leaving Islam. As I have said before I entered Islam with all the fervor of a new convert. However, I made a promise myself to try to educate myself in the tenets of Islam, the natural sciences and the philosophy of religion. The gradual awaking that I needed to leave Islam came over a number of years. They can be summarized and condensed into three broad categories. First, inherent contradictions within the texts themselves which, I will outline and examine in the near future. Second, the current manifestations of Islam as practiced around the world. Third, the unforgiving social consequences of a literal understanding of the text.

This blog will document my journey from a seeker to a believer, an automaton of orthodoxy to finally a questioning free thinking untethered individual embracing the chaos and uncertainty of life. It has been a painful journey involving cutting of ties with family and friends and a willingness to leap into the unknown. My childhood was defined by Catholicism and a deferment to the dictates of the Church: a conservative worldview infiltrating my daily thoughts and behaviors. God in the childhood home was a stern and unforgiving father ever ready to judge and condemn. My mother came from Ireland and was born in the 1920s. Growing up in a traditional society she seemed to have drowned in the expectations and disappointments of a family and society, ever ready disapprove and so left behind children, divorce and a bitter experience with ‘the nuns’ to start a new life in London. I was born in London in 1966 and grew up unaware of my mum’s past life of divorce and children left be...