Hey guys,
half an hour ago I was googling “I just need someone to talk to” and that’s how I ended up here. I know I know, so pathetic. But truth is, right now, I just feel desperate to talk. My problem is that I’m living in the dark ages here!
Today I was actually debating my teacher and classmates that people-who-leave-Islam shouldn’t be executed! Yeah!
Let me give you a little background check. I’m mostly non-religious homosexual high school student who lives in a Middle Eastern country called Yemen, in which the study of religion and sharia law as an absolute truth is mandatory, within a curriculum that promotes stuff like stoning and killing-apostates.
Being a ‘converted-muslim’ myself made me feel like I’m on a trial for my life. It’s in no way possible for me to actually state my disbelief in religion here. That’s a taboo you CANNOT even slightly approach in Yemen. Furthest I can do is debate the right of the underlying me to live.
How would you feel trying to convince your teacher that you don’t really deserve to die? But from outside I’m really just as everyone else, I’ve never dared to look someone’s in the eyes and admit those things I keep in the closet. I fake praying, I go to friday prayers, I sit there while they’re talking how that other dude is so good of a person for them to believe the rumors of him being a queer. I like to believe that I’m not owned by my sexuality or disbelief but not a single day would pass without hearing someone making bias judgments on some part of me that I keep hidden. I constantly hear people deriding or disrespecting women. Christians. Jews. Atheists. Seculars. Blacks. Homosexuals. It’s a nest of bigotry. Sometimes I’d sit there with the exam paper facing my eye, knowing that the ‘right’ answer that would give me full grades is one that typically stigmatize non-believers as immoral and going to hell. And I grab the pen and would often write the things in the curriculum that are so offensive even to myself and I would get an A but something inside me dies. Most of those bias judgments come from people who are supposed to be role models, parents, teachers, clerics…etc
The amount of disrespect to others in class rooms I have been is unbelievable. He’d say a non-believer is immoral, stupid, manipulative, lacks any reason to do something good, arrogant, hypocrite.
He said “an apostate violates the shell of islam, Islam tells you to be fully assured before getting in.” Thing is it’s actually difficult to debate things that are so obvious. one’s right to believe/disbelieve whatever he wants is a duh, common sense, right?
I argued religious beliefs of a person being something purely personal. And he made a prolonged speech that leaving religion is an insult and abuse to religion. He barely made me speak. I argued that a person disbelief is actually in no way a harm or an insult to an idea more than an expression of a subjective point of view. I even quoted quranic scriptures that contradicts what he’s saying. But I think what I really felt upsetting was that he seemingly had more people agreeing with what he’s saying, He had authority, louder voice, longer talks and the final word. I felt that I failed in saving me, that in the end of the trial I will be sent to the electric chair. And that maybe, if I had debated more strongly instead of nodding my head to his speeches, people in that class room might have got out more tolerant, and that they might actually stop hating and grow brain for a second.
This same isalmic studies teacher has told us before that in sharia law gay people should be sentenced to death by throwing them of a cliff or a high building.
Some times I question myself if I’m being a douche, over-sensitive, dramatic and over-protective of my sexuality and set of thoughts and ideas and I try to repress my anger over the complaints I mentioned above. But in the end I feel lonely and in need for someone to talk to openly with no restraints, to feel loved and not hated if they were to fully know me, and not having to feel that you must keep on hiding secrets.
I’ve hold an intense secret infatuation to this other boy for over a year. He’s likely not gay and doesn’t feel something back for me. I’m sexually and emotionally deprived. You know what I really want to do? Is just tell one of my friends like “hey you see that boy, I just like him, like in a homosexual way” You know those typical conversations that you might find trivial and unimportant, I just desperately want to have one of these.
I’m sorry if this is overly long, dramatic and weird. I guess my question here is how do I cope with all that? I’m not much of a fighter and it just seems to keep getting harder to survive in the face of all that and not let it get me depressed? I finally want to say that I am in no way making a case against Muslims, Islam, Yemen or anyone. Nor am I trying to disrespect or interfere with anyone’s beliefs. My case here is solely against bias bigoted judgments against other human beings, which is being practiced on a constant obsessive basis where I live, and how it affects me personally. And I am really not trying to reinforce stupid negative stereotypes on anyone.
