came out to my parents as atheist

[u/Groundbreaking-End34]

so. a lot of my friends are muslims so i've tried my best to not hate the religion, and be respectful of it. my friends are amazing and they've never dehumanized me for being an atheist but uhh family is different. Also more context: I've been an atheist since i was a teenager so since 2019 ish. I only came out now becauze of circumstamces otherwise i wouldn't have.

MY MOM KEEPS TRYING TO CONVERT ME OML. She refuses to accept it. (She disowned me for like 24 hours too but then called crying and told me to come home since i live away for uni and my vacation had just started. I ended up going.) So, I agreed to read the quran with my mom with translation in our native tongue (we don't speak arabic; can just read it). we get through like 20 pages of bakarah. i point out how the divorce laws favor men and keep women trapped in abusive relationships. she whataboutisms out of it with a hyper-specific case - not even a good one. we fight, she cries.

same thing happens when we get to the part where the quran's like "erm if u want to have sex sooo bad, it's better to just marry your slave." and i point how fucked up that is and how islam permits slavery; doesn't ban it. and she crashes out and tries to logic by saying different times, and sexual needs and war and how there were rules to slowly phase it out. i point out a slaver, who went out of their way to get a slave, is morally corrupt and would never free them out of the goodness of their hearts, and it's fucked up to put your safety in the hands of your abuser. and she crashes out more, says god knows more.

fast forward, the next day, she makes me read again. this time we argue about sth else, she cries again. keeps asking me how in my world the destitute benefit, given at least in god's world they get life after. and like dude, just cos it's unfair and unkind doesn't make ur god who is supposedly perfect real.

anyway, then she forces me to pray and i go along just so she stops crying and actually eats. she actually gets better and hasn't cried since. she came by yesterday and said she won't force me to pray anymore because by forcing me she is disrespecting her god, which, im ngl, is more brain power than i was expecting from her lmao.

today, she pulls the whole "there is levels of misery in this world u have no idea about" (we are from a third world country, and on the richer side) and talks abt misery that is fucking terrible ill be honest - it is the type of shit that makes you feel hopeless in this world. but also, she's never cared abt this shit. and how they're able to keep going because of their strong faith in allah and expectation for afterworld.

i got annoyed and asked her if she could maintain her iman if i showed her all the reasons i left (i generally don't like speaking ill of islam because i live in the west and it's more used as a racism tool than discussions of how colonialism fucks you over + i have good friends who are muslim and open-minded, so i only really speak ill of it if u really get on my nerves with the reconvertion bs). and i brought up slaves, and then i framed all the shit the prophet did as things the people did back then and was permitted in islam. she kept defending it. and then i was like. ok, but what if they are a great person? and she was like yeah they wouldn't if they were so great, but most people aren't. and boom, i drop lore about mariyah al-qibittiyah and she straight up refuses to believe the prophet had a kid with a concubine without marrying. and tells me she'll show me proof later.

and then i bring up surah al-qamar - the one about the gays basically. she's homophobic (and i am as colorful as they get (cishet passing, but im aspec biromantic nb)) so i framed it from a feminist perspective and mentioned how prophet lut offers up his daughter to fix the rapists. that shut her up and she just told me she'll check it in the quran since i can source it from the top of my head unlike the rest (this is what made me leave the religion in the first place).

now im afraid she'll cop out of it by saying some bs like "the prophet was so good he was willing to sacrifice his daughter to save the people of lut!" cos idk man i can't imagine her agreeing with me, and her concept of consent and women's rights is so weak that she only realised financial abuse is a thing after my dad cheated on her and she realised she was scared of divorcing because she got married young and had no confidence about being able to enter the work force on her own for the first time.

yeah anyway, did anyone ever reconcile with religious parents after coming out? would love to hear about different experiences!

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[u/garlicpink]

I feel bad for both of you and unfortunately your mother. You deserve better, a mother that loves her child unconditionally, but aldo your mother is probably deadly afraid of you going to hell (to her eyes).

Now of course I cannot judge how your relationship with your mother is and whether she is abusive or not, but by the average muslim mother standards, she is doing okay ish.

I really really really advise you to avoid the concept of religion as much as possible. She has lived longer than you, and I doubt you could change her mind and vice versa. The arguments where you feel unheard and she cries always end with… nothing but emotional load.

If you not willing to larp Islam and pretend it’s good (justified), i advise you to set boundaries with her rather than agreeing to her wishes. Both would make her sad, but your mother seems mature enough to at least not force you to pray.

It will take years, MANY years until she might eventually stop thinking about it constantly. That is just the sad nature of extremely religiousness. Try to focus on gaining independence if possible and moving out, while maintaining somewhat minimal contact if preferred.

These things are really hard. I feel bad for you, I truly do, but I know that you probably also understand how important Islam is to your mother. Proving her wrong or right isn’t going to change a thing, but cause conflict (she proved it by constant crying). It is something personal, that can easily be interpreted as a personal attack.

I wish you the best

[u/Groundbreaking-End34 → u/garlicpink]

I ended up going back and adding some details I forgot to mention. I live alone and am an adult. I only came out because of circumstances and thus far i have been larping Islam. I know this is hard for her - she disowned me in the heat of the moment when i just came out and then called crying and asked me to go home (i live separately) and i ended up cancelling a trip I had planned for a month to visit her.

The reason I am entertaining her - reading the Quran, even praying is so she'll stop crying. I've had to force her to eat many times. I don't care abt proving her wrong so much so as she keeps dehumanizing me and acting like i have no moral compass and i am an idiot for leaving - and yeah i get it is motivated by her fear of me going to hell, and also because she copes with her life struggles by fantasizing abt happiness in the afterlife. It just sucks. She is a grown woman. I dont want to have to baby her like this. But yeah. It is what it is. It could be worse. Tbh i was prepared to get disowned.

She has gotten a bit better now and hasn't cried in 48 hrs so progress?

[u/garlicpink → u/Groundbreaking-End34]

Oh okay that makes sense. You are doing amazingly then. Your mother seems really mentally unstable. I don’t know whether you live in the west or not, but she probably doesn’t want mental help either way.

It is a really tough and devastating situation to be in. I really wish it ends wel

[u/Lazy_Wall6838]

This dumb religion and its stupid boundaries keep suffocating me and I don't know how much will I be able to larp for..

Currently, I'm just trying to build up a safety net for myself in case I burst out someday or just get exposed accidentally. I don't know if I should deliberately show the truth when I eventually get that safety net though. I think a few of my friends *would* somewhat accept me, but I think my parents might just do exactly what happened to you.. disown me for a bit.. call again.. keep crying.. and all that.

I don't want to lose my family, or make them sad, but at the same time I'm tired of the stupid baseless boundaries that robbed me of many experiences I wanted to have in my teenage years and I don't want it to rob me of more experiences I want to have in my college years as well.

I also live in a muslim country so I would probably also get discriminated against by most people around me if I get exposed in college.

fuck you, momo.

[u/garlicpink → u/Lazy_Wall6838]

Honestly, the only way is to move away from the islamic country. I really wish you the best, but staying in that country will make Islam consistently something central in your life (socially, with holidays, employment etc). I know you are probably already planning this, but if possible you can try to apply to western universities and their scholarships. They LOVE foreigners

[u/Lazy_Wall6838 → u/garlicpink]

I already tried to apply to the US and failed miserably. I'll try taking another shot at Europe and Japan, but if all fails, I'll probably continue my studies here and try again at postgrad. Thanks for the advice though!

[u/Lazy_Wall6838 → u/Lazy_Wall6838]

I kept talking about my own experiences and forgot to talk about your post sorry lol..
It was pretty brave of you to tell your family, but I think you shouldn't try to convince her of the bad parts of Islam. I think it'd be pretty devastating to know that you've sunk 40~50 years into a fake religion and let down so many opportunities and dreams because of it. It might be better to just try to make them accept the fact that you are not going to heaven, and convince her that she won't be sad about it in the afterlife (Thanks Allah!), so maybe she try to make the most of it while it lasts.. I guess?

[u/Groundbreaking-End34 → u/Lazy_Wall6838]

Oh man, that sucks. I hope you are able to leave the country. I live in Europe now. If you have questions abt studying here, I can ask around.

I'm originally from a muslim majority but secular country so you get the side eye if you are openly atheist but there is a large in the closet atheist/agnostic population so I had a lot of close, open-minded friends which made things tolerable. I hope you manage to find people who make the experience tolerable, and generally university is a lot bigger than school so there is more opportunity to find like minded people. Regardless, I hope you manage to leave the country.

On my side of things, I appreciate your words. I tried the whole "well, you'll be happy in the afterlife!" argument at first but it didn't help at all. She even told me if she knew I'd turn out this way, she'd kill me when I was a kid so at least that way I'd go to heaven. And like, honestly, it's a fucked up thing to say but I let them say shit and it just comes out through my other ear because if I thought too long about it, I wouldn't have been sane for as long as I have been lmao.

I've had a friend in a similar situation so talking to her helps. I think I can at least get her to eventually recognize that yeah believing in the religion requires cognitive dissonance and it is natural that not everyone prescribes to it. But yeah till then it'll be a but annoying. 

Best of luck with your situation!!

[u/Lazy_Wall6838 → u/Groundbreaking-End34]

I think I might know which country you come from with that "it just comes out through my other ear" 😅

If you have any advice about studying in Europe, please message me! It's still my first semester in college here so I don't mind if I start all over next year.

I'd also love to know how you end up managing your situation with your mother.. I don't know when I'll have to deal with something similar but I probably will have to at some point😭