S.K.

Dear Dr. Ali Sina,

I am a 28 years old muslim man from a gulf country. I have always had doubts about my religion. Many things did not make sense, but somehow told myself "hey, Allah knows best". However, this doubt is very disturbing, and therefore I went to Haj last year which was the beginning of my religious investigation and my path to righteousness. I married a Muslim religious girl who is more a humanist than religious and to me she is my life. During and after hajj, the more I dug in researching Islam, the more confused and skeptic I got. I faced my wife with my findings and she did not have a convincing answer, and to tell you the truth I think she was skeptic herself. Anyway, I wanted to research the internet, and I never thought I would find opposing views of Islam. And accidentally entered your site. To make things short, I read almost all your articles, and then , as they say in Islam, surrendered myself not to Allah but to freethinking.

Now came the hardest part, although I did change my set of beliefs, I have to deal with people whose beliefs are too strong even for logic and reason. Being outcast by people I love, and watching how this religion is suppressing my people were big concerns. I cannot stress how painful it is to see many countries prospering while your people are getting poorer, getting corrupted and finding themselves a victim of a 'conspiracy theory'. In their search for a solution, their salvation is somehow Islam which makes them even poorer and more corrupt; It is a vicious cycle. You have no idea how politicians exploit this weakness and thrive on it. One example, a Kuwaiti Government is buying 'Islamic' Politicians votes by recently stating that they are willing to accept Shari'a punishment law to be implemented in this country. Separation of state and religion is stated publicly to be a sign of infidel, and people are very careful to even come close to critiquing Islam. That is why many of my people among them myself are double faced; if not triple or multi. On the other hand, you have Mullas giving out fatwas right and left 99% of them is in the in the intention of constraining freedoms. Therefore, this is haram and that is haram, and so forth. Of course each of them concludes whatever they want from extracting a vast amount of hadiths whatever fits his personality and serves his intentions. One time buying a Ford Mustang was haram. This is justified by so and so , and therefore we conclude blah blah blah.

Anyway, your site is very educational and informative. I read about your objectives and found them similar to my objectives. However, you're objectives can be accomplished much sooner if your website was in arabic. Please provide me with your thoughts on this matter