Muslimish

I attended for the first time the 2017 Muslimish conference in New York a week ago. It's an annual conference highlighting secular voices of ex-Muslims and questioning Muslims. I got to meet the lovely Sarah Haider and Ali Rizvi. There were some really powerful stories told in a section they had about personal experiences growing up with Islam and eventually coming out of it. One woman was beaten by her family for questioning Islam's holy doctrines and is seeking asylum in the US; another woman survived an attempted honor killing by her husband for wanting to divorce her and take custody of their daughter. Now she's gotten sole custody of her daughter and they're both atheists!

It's unbelievable what people have had to go through, especially women, because of religions like Islam. The horror and abuse, the attempts on one's life⸺it all makes me very happy to have been raised in a secular home. I can't even imagine what it must be like to not be free to disbelieve and live your own life as you wish. Millions of secular people like me have taken this for granted. So I support their cause. We have to be able to question ideas, and fundamentally religions are ideas. And no religion deserves to be questioned today more than Islam.

Here are some pics: