! TRIGGER WARNING !
First of all, please excuse me for my poor English, I am French.
I wanted to tell you something extremely difficult that I had to experience when I was 15 and which contributed to my anger towards religions.
At that time I began to practice Islam, and I made a Muslim friend with whom I immediately created a great bond.
My new friend was a young French Moroccan girl, I loved her deeply and it was reciprocal, we spent a lot of time together and I was often invited to sleep at her place. I quickly took affection to his mother, who was very nice to me. She constantly talked about religion and the behavior I should have as a pious woman.
I was treated like a member of the family but this good treatment began to decline when I began to turn away from Islam. By dint of researching and practicing, I doubted more and more the veracity of islam and other religions. I didn't hide the fact that I no longer believed and I saw that the others didn't like it at all; they often tried to reason me, they even advised me to do a roqya (exorcism). My friend didn't care about that but I had no idea it would have such a dramatic impact on her family behavior.
My friend, whom I support in her faith despite everything, decided to take off her veil after wearing it for 6 months. She said she was too young, and I agreed with that, I later learned that his mother whom I loved very much and who played the nice card in front of me, had put the blame on me. According to her, I was keeping her daughter away from religion. I was a "sheytan". But I didn’t know all that yet.
One day when I was alone with her (the mother) she asked me if I was still a virgin, to which I told her that I had been the victim of a pedophile when I was 12… it was a secret but I trusted this woman who represented for me the mother I needed, knowing that mine did not take care of me. She said she was sorry for me. Then went into the kitchen to phone.
She came back to me a few moments later to ask me if I wanted to go shopping for her, and that my friend's cousin was going to pick me up by car to accompany me to the supermarket. I said yes.
Before going down to join the cousin, she (the mother) asked me not to say anything to my friend about this outing, I found it weird but I told myself that she had her reasons, then at the moment to close the door behind me she said something that I will remember for life
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"by the way, are you sure you are no longer a virgin?" Disconcerted I said yes and I asked why this question,
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"for nothing, see you later" then she closed the door.
On the way I came face to face with my friend's cousin, a Moroccan man of around 35 who didn't speak French very well and who was in the country for a few weeks on vacation. I got in the car and we headed to the supermarket. I bought some ingredients for the evening meal, then on the way back, the cousin stopped in front of a small hotel where he was staying and then asked me to come and help him look for stuffs he had brought back from Morocco for tonight's meal. I trusted her (the mother) so I didn't see the danger. He finally sexually assaulted me once we arrived in the room, in which there were no "stuff".
When I was trying to defend myself he said "she told me that you weren't a virgin and that it would be easy with a girl like you" this sentence broke me. I did not speak to my friend for 1 month, she harassed me to understand my silence and one day I told her everything. Following that I had to change my address because the cousin and other family members threatened me with death, telling me that my place was in hell and that I was soon going to go there. That a girl like me has no value and that I was a bad company, that since my departure my friend had put on her veil.
Here’s my religious trauma… More than ten years later I have made a fight of it and I will fight all my life against these monstrous ideologies which push people to become the demons of which they speak EVERY SINGLE DAY.
I have heard that “atheism is a religion” so often that I sought out and attended an atheist church. I Iearned that services are held on a Friday, Saturday belongs to the Jews and the Christian’s have monopolised Sunday.
The temple was beautiful, a long hall with stained glass windows on either side depicting men of science like Copernicus, Galileo, Feynman, Newton, Sagan and others. Behind the altar was a large jewel encrusted “A” which shone and glittered in the candlelight. The officiant entered stage right in full Dawkins regalia, he lead us in the invocation after which he read a few passages from our bible, The Origin of Species. After what was a wonderful service we all met for coffee and buns……
Of course none of this happened because atheism is NOT a fucking religion.