I want to join CEMB to meet and support others like me who left Islam.
I\'m a 22 year old Bengali girl born and raised London. I started questioning Islam when I was about 14 years old.
I\'ve always wondered why people continue to believe in and be scared of this non-existent entity. Why they continue to restrict themselves from life\'s pleasures like listening to music or going out with the opposite/same sex or falling in love. Why they continue to follow these rules and regulation written in a language that they won\'t bother understanding or questioning.

I\'m very sure if they did understand the Quran, almost all of them will become agnostic or even atheist. I became an atheist because of the treatment of women. Being a women myself, I found it so offensive that men consider women\'s mind and bodies shameful, inferior, that are just objects for pleasure. Women are human beings too. We have a body and a skeleton inside of us just like these men do but no, they only choose to differentiate us by what is between our legs and on our chests.

Growing up I\'ve never prayed or wore the hijab but in my early teens I did start reading the Quran because my parents hired an Islamic teacher. And let me tell you, it was so tedious. It was a complete waste of time and energy. All the teacher did was count his money and scare me and my siblings with the idea of hell fire. He told us that if we want to go to heaven and avoid hell fire, we have to be obedient, wear hijab all the time, pray 5 times a day, not make friends with non-muslims, not watch western TV shows or cartoons and not to listen to music. By the time he told us all this it was too late. I hated wearing the hijab, I don\'t want to pray, I already had non-muslim friends (some who are even boys), I love watching TV shows and cartoons and I especially love listening to and making music.
And the most stupid thing was I actually started believing I\'d go to hell. I was so scared of death that it started affecting my health and making me depressed. It made me feel like life wasn\'t worth living and I couldn\'t commit suicide because \"that\'s a sin too\". I started doubting religion more and more the older I got, and eventually accepted that it\'s alright to leave religion. That religion is a man-made concept to control the masses, to scam people of their lives and money. There were other muslims like me who turned atheist or agnostic.

So by the time I was 20 I became an atheist. I told my siblings about this because they are open-minded and I know they will accept my decision and not tell anyone. I tried to convince them to leave Islam but they are uncertain but I hope in the future that will change. Also during this time I applied for university and got in but one day my uncle (mum\'s brother) decided to come for a visit and bring up marrying me off to a guy from Bangladesh. I told him that I don\'t want to get married and I start uni in a month. He said I should because I\'m young and muslim guys preferences are \"young girls\" and if my future husband allows it, I can study at uni. I said no to the marriage and luckily he just left it. The idea of being arranged/forced married to someone I don\'t know scares me. I feel like my freedom to enjoy life will be taken away. For all I know, these guys that they\'re trying to arrange me with could be close-minded and won\'t allow me to live my life the way I want. I would rather date and get to know someone and fall in love with them before I get married. I think falling in love is a natural thing we all experience and important in life but religion suppresses it.

I feel very isolated being the only atheist in my community and life feels very limiting not being able to \'come out\' to my parents and other relatives. I know for sure they would disapprove of my decision and disown me. I also know there are others out there going through the same thing, and would like to say that you guys give me hope. The more there are of us, the better!

I will patiently wait for the day when religion completely dies out because all it has caused us is nothing but misery but that won\'t be anytime soon maybe 2-4 generations down... maybe.