I used to be religious Muslim till my early 20s. Although the version of Islam I was brought up believing was better than most interpretations I see online. It was a mostly traditional Sunni household with there being no shame in taking 'useful' ideas from non-Muslims. Good ideas and practices were to be assimilated rather than rejected. Islam was never seen as being in conflict with science since the two things covered different domains. Sufism was held in high regard although I didn't interact with a lot of sufis through my family.

So when I had the desire to improve my life in my mid-20s I thought the best thing I could do was double down on religion. I thought if I just tried hard enough in the right I would have some sort of religious awakening. I studied Sufism (I already had basic knowledge of fiqh and conventional Sunnism) and tried implement whatever I could understand. I kept putting in more effort, trying to purify my heart in hopes finally getting that personal connection with God and I had what I thought were some super natural experiences (SPOILER: They had nothing to do with there actually being something like the super natural)

That is around the time I began to finally move out of conventional belief. I was still a Muslim but there were two differences between me and a regular Sunni-Sufi.

The first thing was based on a dream I had. In the dream I died and went to the afterlife. Over there I had my whole family waiting in what looked like heaven to me. The first thing my said to me in the dream was 'welcome! There's good news, no one was judged to go into hell!'. I asked him if I was in heaven and said no. He told me that only a small number of people actually made it to heaven/paradise and this was the place for everyone else. You still had to work and earn money over there but it was nominal compared to our world. Something like 2-3 hours of light work giving you enough money to buy 10 sports cars or one big palace.

Despite having no other proof of this kind of afterlife from then on that is what I pictured it would be like. The second thing was that I stopped defining my religious belief based on the kalma.

I was fascinated with the sufi Mansoor Al Hallaj and his iconic line Ana al Haq (I am the truth). I knew that the conventional view of Islam was wrong but was still a theist. So instead of believing in Allah I changed to become a follower of Al Haq. Since Al Haq is one of the 99 names of Allah in Islam I didn't see my belief as opposed to Islam. I though Al Haq guides people who have good intentions and reveals the truth to them if they have no ulterior motives. I thought this was the same God which revealed all of the world's religions including Hinduism, Buddhism and all religions not covered as 'The people of the book'. I though this was the same God Muhammad was talking about and it was the stupidity of later generations who didn't really understand Muhammad's message.

This was my view till I came across debates of Christopher Hitchens. That's the first time I heard arguments against generalized theism and deism. At first I hated the arguments so like all ideas I hate I decided to keep looking at them till I could find the error in them. Although I could find some errors in Hitchens overall world view and knew he was imperfect as a person I couldn't for the life of me find flaws in his anti-theism. That's when I embraced the label of ex-Muslim. My belief system changed from an agnostic theism to gnostic atheism. I embraced the values of satanism (not believing in an actual satan obviously).

This has been how I've viewed things till now. Although I've been facing another cognitive dissonance for the last several months. Despite me agreeing with most ex-Muslims in my world view when we get down to the details I find myself in a tiny minority. I don't think Muhammad's teachings were bad for 7th century Arabia. If anything the enlightenment I see there was centuries ahead of their time. I just think Islam calcified around the 11th century becoming too dogmatic with emphasis on the letter of the law as opposed to the spirit of the law. Since then Islam and consequently religious Muslims have on the whole been regressing. Become worse and worse, so much so that the present day Islam is much worse than the Jahiliya Muhammad fought against.

The way I see it the essense of Islam was believing in what's right regardless of how powerful people with wrong beliefs are. While the essense of Jahilliya is an over emphasis on customs, rituals and traditions. The thought that this how things have always been and this is what my parents believed in so it's right.

Based on all this I've been thinking of identifying as either a 'Non-Practicing Muslim' or a 'Cultural Muslim'. I don't have a detailed of what these terms would even mean, are these sects within the bigger ex-Muslim community or do we need to make our own communities while being friendly with ex-Muslims and working as allies.

Let me know your thoughts on Cultural Muslims/Non-Practicing Muslims

If think such a belief would be problematic

Or if you've had experiences and faced ethical dilemas similar to mine

PS: This is not me trying to find fault with ex-Muslims and would love to keep the label in addition to the other labels for myself as long as the bigger doesn't find it hypocritical or offensive!