I was born into and subsequently raised in a Muslim family and had remained a Muslim for at least 17 years of my life.
My family\'s culture is awash with religion and although my mother and father were not the most strict of parents, I was still required to attend mosque from an early age to read the quran at least once in my lifetime all the way through to the end.

During my years as a child when I should have been playing football after school with my friends I was in the mosque after school reciting the quran and being disciplined by mullahs for laughing and being a kid in the mosque.

I grew a subconscious dislike for the establishment because of this but the indoctrination was so powerful that I grew to love and appreciate the brotherhood that arises within that establishment. Although, i wasn\'t at school playing with my friends, I was in the mosque making, new friends.

After the age of 14 my affiliation with Islam became moderate at best as I would claim the Islamic faith when asked what my religion was, but never followed suit on all the strict requirements. And it remained this way until I turned 17. Then religion took a sideline to all the other experiences in my life but I remained a moderate.
Up until I Turned 23 and I truly began to question not Islam, but the whole concept of religion, I took Islam out of context and tried to look at religion as a whole and what it represents. I studied all the other world\'s religions and began sensing something was not right.

I watched Islamic scholars debate with atheists and agnostics. I discovered Christopher Hitchens. I read a few of his books amongst other outspoken atheists of our time (Dawkins, Harris).

It was a very difficult decision to make to myself that I was agnostic because the brainwashing in Islam is very proficient at doing its job. The penalty for apostasy in Islam is death and they say in Islam that God has created a very specific hell for people who leave Islam. So the fear of not believing keeps a lot of people in check.