Arab atheists inch out of shadows
Rafat Awad fervently preached Islam at his university, encouraging his fellow students to read the Qur’an and pray. But throughout, the young Palestinian-born pharmacist had gnawing doubts. The more he tried to resolve them, the more they grew.
Finally, he told his parents, both devout Muslims, that he was an atheist. They brought home clerics to talk with him, trying in vain to bring him back to the faith. Finally, they gave up.
“It was the domino effect — you hit the first pin and it keeps on going and going,” Said Awad, 23, who grew up in the United Arab Emirates and lives there. “I thought: It doesn’t make sense anymore. I became a new person then.”
An openly self-described atheist is an extreme rarity in the Arab world, where the Muslim majority is on the whole deeply conservative. It’s socially tolerated to not be actively religious, to decide not to pray or carry out other acts of faith, or to have secular attitudes. But to outright declare oneself an atheist can lead to ostracism by family and friends, and if too public can draw retaliation from Islamist hardliners or even authorities.
Still, this tiny minority has taken small steps out of the shadows. Groups on social media networks began to emerge in the mid-2000s. Now, the Arab Spring that began in early 2011 has given a further push: The heady atmosphere of “revolution” with its ideas of greater freedoms of speech and questioning of long-held taboos has encouraged this opening.
One 40-year-old Egyptian engineer, born a Muslim, told The Associated Press he had long been an atheist but kept it a deep secret. The 2011 uprising in Egypt and its calls for radical change encouraged him to look online for others like himself.
“Before the revolution, I was living a life in total solitude. I didn’t know anybody who believed like me,” he said. “Now we have more courage than we used to have.”
His case illustrates the limits on how far an atheist can go. Like most others interviewed by The Associated Press, he spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, harassment or troubles with his family. His “going public” is strictly online.
Even the Internet is not entirely safe. In most Arab countries, being an atheist is not in itself illegal, but there are often laws against “insulting religion.”
A Palestinian atheist, Waleed al-Husseini, was arrested in 2010 in the West Bank town of Qalqilya for allegedly mocking Islam on the Internet. He was held without charge for several months, and after his release also fled to France.
Still, the online space is flourishing. There are some 60 Arabic-language atheist Facebook groups — all but five of them formed since the Arab Spring.
It is impossible to know the number of atheists in the Arab world, given their secrecy. It is not clear whether the increasing online activity reflects that numbers have risen or simply that more are emerging from isolation.
In any case, atheists remain a tiny minority. The Arab Spring uprisings fuelled the debate in the region over the role of religion in society and politics, but even secular activists are quick to distinguish themselves from atheists.
Declaring oneself an atheist can mean breaking from family and friends and networks that determine a Muslim’s entire social life.