i am 26 years old and of Bangladeshi origin. I have always lived in London, and for 25 years of my life I lived in East London, which has a dense muslim population as well as a large Bangladeshi community. This made it hard making friends who had similar ideologies as me. All my close friends during school were muslim or at least Asian, with only one exception.

As far as I can remember, I never believed. I can\'t actually remember a time where I thought \"if I do good I\'ll go heaven, if I do bad, I\'ll go hell\"
During college many of my friends wore the hijab and I was very close to following suit. I remember wanting to believe. Going to Islamic talks with friends, watching the Islam channel during Ramadan etc. I have to admit, there were 1 or 2 times in my life where I prayed namaaz with all the right intention because I really wanted God to hear me. But that was very short lived.

I am lucky that I have a friend who has also been raised in a muslim family but she\'s a non believer. She\'s much more open about it to her family than I am. They just think she\'s going through a \'phase\' and kind of ignore her rants. If I was to do the same my parents would definitely take me to a \'fake sheikh\' and give me some ridiculous talisman to wear.

I don\'t think I can ever \'come out\' to family. I would be disowned and I\'m just not courageous enough to make that step.

Sometimes it feels like I\'m the only one in my community who feels like this but I know that\'s the case. I read a statement below by Tasnim, who is 22 year old Londoner, and she\'s Bangladeshi! It\'s really given me hope that I\'m not some kind of pariah. I would really like to find some like minded people out there, especially other British Bangladeshi women who feel the same as me.