On Saturday 5 June 2010, I “came out” as an atheist with the publication of a piece called “No, I don’t believe in God” on the Guardian’s Comment is Free site. About two years later, my book, The Young Atheist’s Handbook , outlining in more detail my journey from being born into a Bangladeshi Muslim family to being an atheist, was published. One of my motivations for writing both the piece for the Guardian and the book was a desire to let “secret” atheists from similar backgrounds to my own know that they were not alone, that there were others who had had the same kind of upbringing and had arrived at the conclusion that there is no God and that the religion of their parents was not true.
Yes, there are secret atheists out there. This is something that some people might find hard to believe, but I used the term “coming out” earlier because, as many others have pointed out, there really are parallels to be drawn between the experiences of gay people and atheists, not least the reason why many people of all “orientations” feel compelled to keep the truth about themselves a secret – to avoid hurting and losing the people they love.
I’m one of the lucky ones: embracing atheism and humanism has not been a particularly difficult process for me. But since I started writing about my atheism in public, I’ve been contacted by many people for whom it’s not so easy. There is a common theme to many of these messages I’ve received, that of having to live a lie, as this email from a young woman shows:
“I am living a life full of lies. I lie to my parents and my siblings about my non-existent belief, I lie that I fast, that I pray and that I am trying to bring up my daughter with Islamic values. I am so tired and frustrated of having to hide this massive truth from my family and I just wish I had the courage to deal with it.”
Lots of people in the UK and around the world suffer anguish because they cannot be honest about their lack of belief in the god of their parents, community or country. Those of us who are free to be godless owe it to them to provide all the help we can. That’s why I’m excited to be part of the Rationalist Association's Apostasy Project – we hope to create a safe place where people thinking about leaving their religion can find the support and resources they need to get through what may be one of the most difficult challenges they face.
