A few conversations I have had within the last couple of weeks have been fascinating, if not thought-provoking. They have all revolved non-belief where I live, especially in the context of needing to keep up a facade of belief by fasting during Ramadan. By themselves, I would merely consider them to be personal anecdotes. However, as I will clarify in this post, there are multiple polls and reports suggesting that there is indeed a trend of increasing disbelief among Arabs.
- The first one was with a friend (who was also my brother's classmate). He immigrated years ago, and his online posts expressed support for secularism, LGBT rights, and other unconventional positions where we're from. I was under the impression he was a liberal Muslim until I talked to him privately, where I came out to him as an atheist. His response?
"Yeah, I've also been irreligious for around 10 years. I'm a deist now. People like us are becoming more common. We're not alone, but stay low-key and safe, bro."
We then talked about immigration. I'm actually in the process of checking out a link he sent me to look at a scholarship abroad--it's a good way to immigrate for those in our field of study.
- The second one was with a friend I met in the army. We were casually talking when his cousins came up in conversations: he said they're both atheists, although one of them is especially the outspoken type. He told me his uncle (their father) respected their freedom to choose and at one point didn't take a photo of one of them at the mosque because that guy is apparently so anti-religious that he refuses to be associated with religion in any way.
What interested me most wasn't just the fact that they both became irreligious but also that their parents respected their freedom. Where I live, this entire scenario would have almost been a fantasy for most families 15 or 20 years ago.
- Then comes the third conversation, which happened between me and the same army friend in the above story. He saw something I posted on Instagram and was like, "Are you irreligious too?" I know he's trustworthy and was asking out of curiosity rather than malice, so I answered in the affirmative. He has also never been the type to ask me about praying, fasting, etc., including when we were in the army together. He'd simply go about his business and leave me to go about mine.
So he asked me how I became irreligious, when I did, etc., and brought up that he knew multiple people who had also deconverted aside from his two cousins.
One common factor in all of the above situations is that disbelief remains largely taboo and unsafe to publicly declare, unlike in most secularized countries. Despite this, it has been growing for years. There has been increasingly prominent discourse about the rising numbers of atheists in the Arab world, including in the most conservative of its countries such as Saudi Arabia. Most recently, there was an online "demonstration" where thousands of atheists across the Arab world signed an online petition to certify their lack of belief and indicate that atheists were greater in number than what some hard-line religious outlets suggested.
Whether this trend will continue in the coming years is quite a complicated question, but if the current indicators are anything to go by, I suspect it will. Far more uncertain is what kind of social and political effects the rise of disbelief in the Arab world will bring to the table in the coming years and decades, especially in a region where such conspicuous disbelief in religion was, up until several years ago, largely an anomaly. Now it is becoming an inescapable part of public discourse even among the most strictly conservative countries thereof.
- The first one was with a friend (who was also my brother's classmate). He immigrated years ago, and his online posts expressed support for secularism, LGBT rights, and other unconventional positions where we're from. I was under the impression he was a liberal Muslim until I talked to him privately, where I came out to him as an atheist. His response?
"Yeah, I've also been irreligious for around 10 years. I'm a deist now. People like us are becoming more common. We're not alone, but stay low-key and safe, bro."
We then talked about immigration. I'm actually in the process of checking out a link he sent me to look at a scholarship abroad--it's a good way to immigrate for those in our field of study.
- The second one was with a friend I met in the army. We were casually talking when his cousins came up in conversations: he said they're both atheists, although one of them is especially the outspoken type. He told me his uncle (their father) respected their freedom to choose and at one point didn't take a photo of one of them at the mosque because that guy is apparently so anti-religious that he refuses to be associated with religion in any way.
What interested me most wasn't just the fact that they both became irreligious but also that their parents respected their freedom. Where I live, this entire scenario would have almost been a fantasy for most families 15 or 20 years ago.
- Then comes the third conversation, which happened between me and the same army friend in the above story. He saw something I posted on Instagram and was like, "Are you irreligious too?" I know he's trustworthy and was asking out of curiosity rather than malice, so I answered in the affirmative. He has also never been the type to ask me about praying, fasting, etc., including when we were in the army together. He'd simply go about his business and leave me to go about mine.
So he asked me how I became irreligious, when I did, etc., and brought up that he knew multiple people who had also deconverted aside from his two cousins.
One common factor in all of the above situations is that disbelief remains largely taboo and unsafe to publicly declare, unlike in most secularized countries. Despite this, it has been growing for years. There has been increasingly prominent discourse about the rising numbers of atheists in the Arab world, including in the most conservative of its countries such as Saudi Arabia. Most recently, there was an online "demonstration" where thousands of atheists across the Arab world signed an online petition to certify their lack of belief and indicate that atheists were greater in number than what some hard-line religious outlets suggested.
Whether this trend will continue in the coming years is quite a complicated question, but if the current indicators are anything to go by, I suspect it will. Far more uncertain is what kind of social and political effects the rise of disbelief in the Arab world will bring to the table in the coming years and decades, especially in a region where such conspicuous disbelief in religion was, up until several years ago, largely an anomaly. Now it is becoming an inescapable part of public discourse even among the most strictly conservative countries thereof.
