Partnership with Faithless Hijabi to help former Muslims
Zara Kay
When Zara Kay publicly expressed support for the same-sex marriage of a family friend, she had no idea of the huge impact her words would have on her life.
Zara’s social media post, highlighting the homophobic response to the marriage within her conservative Muslim community, led to an avalanche of abuse, including threats of rape and even death. Some of these hateful messages came from people she had known her whole life.
For Zara, this was a pivotal moment in her relationship with Islam. Ultimately, it led to her leaving the faith and going on to create a non-profit organisation called Faithless Hijabi to support other ex-Muslims facing abuse, violence and threats as a result of their life choices. Now, Trauma Treatment International has formed a partnership with Faithless Hijabi to provide expert psychological treatment to its beneficiaries through our trauma clinic.
“I never felt like I fit in when I was growing up”
Zara explained that, when she was a child, being a Muslim had felt like a privilege, giving her a sense of being in a cosy, protective bubble. But at the same time, she knew she couldn’t live the life prescribed by her community in her home country of Tanzania.
She said: “Being a girl, the expectation was that you would grow up, get married and have children. You might have a job, but not a career. It was a very tight-knit community and everyone knew everyone else. There was a lot of shame and gossip, and it was scandalous even talking to boys.
“You were expected to behave a certain way, from modest dressing to accepting that your role in society was limited because of your gender. There was more social pressure to stay ‘in line’ and be agreeable as a woman. Nothing was worse than bringing shame to your family; honour is almost always solely a burden on females.”
She added: “I started wearing the hijab at about eight or nine. When I was 12, I told my mother that I didn’t want to wear it, but she said it was up to my dad. She also said that, when I got married, it would be up to my husband. Once I came to the realisation that I didn’t want to wear it, it started to feel oppressive.
“Because of all this, I never felt like I fit in when I was growing up. I knew my future wouldn’t be in Tanzania.”
Determined to carve out a different life for herself, Zara left home at the age of 16, moving to Malaysia to study interior design at university. “My parents weren’t keen on me living abroad but my dad said he would never stop me from pursuing education,” she said.
“It was unusual for someone like me, coming from a Muslim background in a developing country, to have the freedom to go off to university. Tanzania doesn’t have a wide range of courses so I deliberately chose interior design because it meant I’d have to go abroad.”
Zara says guilt and a fear of disappointing her family meant she continued to wear the hijab and long-sleeved clothing in Malaysia, and adhered to other customs such as not drinking alcohol. But living amongst people from alternative cultures and religious backgrounds saw the then-teenager move further away from Islam.
She said: “I talked to a lot of people with different world views and saw things from another perspective. I realised there was nothing wrong with being friends with non-Muslims, and that I didn’t believe that people will go to hell because of their sexual orientation or because they were born into a family who practiced a different faith.”
Having changed her educational path to engineering, Zara moved to Australia to complete her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Melbourne and start a career in the tech industry.
She said: “I wanted a fresh start in Australia where I could reinvent myself; I wouldn’t know many people and I’d lose the guilt and pressure. Just before I left, I worked towards letting the hijab go, just wearing it around my neck. When I fully let it go, I still adhered to modest dressing until I was 23. I felt so naked without the hijab at first; it took me a long time to feel comfortable.”
Zara’s journey to activism
The catalyst for Zara’s break from Islam came soon afterwards. “Someone whose parents were from my community in Tanzania moved to Canada and married another man,” she said. “There was a lot of internal homophobic chatter in my WhatsApp groups and so I exited them all and wrote a post about it on social media. People blocked me, abused me, and messaged me saying that they would kill me or rape me. Some of these people I’d known my whole life.”
She added: “I’d never gone through so much anxiety; I was in complete shock. Never in my life would I have thought that Muslims would react in this way. My parents had never believed in violence and my perception had been built on what they had taught me; I thought they were a faithful representation of Islam.
“I remember trying to find a religious article that said we can disagree in faith but not hurt each other. But I started crying because I couldn’t find anything that allowed free thought or dissent. From that moment, I couldn’t look back. I read more about the religion assigned to me at birth, and found that my secular humanist values didn’t align with the fundamentals of Islam.”
Instead of being scared into silence, Zara continued to speak out and started on her journey towards becoming an activist. She said: “I went on a live podcast to talk about my journey from faith to reason and 3,000 people were watching. Again, I had so much abuse because I was one of the first people from my community who had stood their ground. I had comments calling me a whore and a bitch, saying that I was a disappointment to my family.
“I just let the abuse go because I didn’t think anyone would take it seriously but I took screenshots as proof - because people like me get killed.”
She added: “I was heartbroken by the people I thought were my friends. But I realised that if they were only friends with me because of my religious beliefs, then they weren’t really my friends. Luckily, my family have become more open minded and understand why I’m doing it.”
As time went on, other ex-Muslims contacted Zara to share their own experiences of the abuse, violence and intimidation they’d experienced, while she found corners of the internet where people would discuss their often harrowing stories.
She said: “There was an ex-Muslim sub-Reddit forum and there were so many stories of depression, anxiety, suicide. So I decided to set up Faithless Hijabi as a storytelling place; somewhere people could talk about leaving Islam and honour-based violence.”
The work of Faithless Hijabi
Since the inception of Faithless Hijabi in 2018, the Australian-registered organisation has grown to include four other board members and a volunteer. The team works with people around the world from abusive backgrounds, guiding them to the organisations in their countries that can support them.
They also create resources and initiatives for ex-Muslims to achieve financial independence, while they have launched two video series called Life after Islam and Support Corner where people can share their stories and have their questions answered. In addition, there is a Faithless Hijabi community on instant messaging platform Discord where people can express themselves freely in complete anonymity.
Most recently, the association has grown to include a mental health programme, following the suicide of an ex-Muslim in Sweden. “A friend donated £500 to Faithless Hijabi when he heard about the suicide, because he wanted to help but didn’t know how,” explained Zara. “That gave birth to the idea that we could help people get therapy, and I arranged for a clinic to provide subsidised sessions. Since the end of 2020, we’ve helped 65 people access therapy.”
She added: “Unfortunately it can be hard to persuade people to accept therapy because there is still such a stigma surrounding it. But it’s such an achievement when you can see a transformation in someone, and see that they’re on the road to being happier.”
Unfortunately for Zara, her own traumatic experiences as an ex-Muslim continued when she was arrested in Tanzania in December 2020 while staying with family. Detained for 32 hours in a police station, she was interrogated about social media posts criticising the Tanzanian government, her reasons for leaving Islam, and why she was in the country.
Her Australian passport was confiscated and she was forced to remain in Tanzania pending the result of a police enquiry. A month later, she was told no charges would be brought, but was still unable to leave the country because her passport had been ‘lost’.
What’s more, she found herself subject to what her Australian legal counsel called “repeated and credible death threats”. Zara said: “I had messages saying, ‘behead this dog’ or ‘hang this dog’. People in Tanzania were happy that I’d been arrested, they thought it was the ultimate punishment for speaking out.”
Three months after her arrest, Zara was finally allowed to leave the country of her birth.
The 29-year-old, who now lives in Sweden, said: “It was not only a terrifying time for me, but also my family. I was put through hell. I never thought that Tanzania, a country that I was born in and proudly called home, would strip me of my dignity. Although I can legally return, I will never go back there now.”
Through Faithless Hijabi, Zara helps other people in similar situations, last year helping free a woman who had been arrested in Lebanon with support from Amnesty and Secular Rescue. “That was a year after my arrest so it brought up lots of feelings for me,” she said. “We had a big celebration when she was freed.”
The power of therapy
Zara is one of the first people from Faithless Hijabi to receive therapy through TTI’s trauma clinic, led by Dr Sarah Whittaker. She said: “Sarah has helped me a lot with what happened during my arrest; she has made me realise that none of it has been my fault. It’s because I dare to stand up and challenge the norms. She’s made me think about what I’m willing to compromise for the greater good.”
She added: “I am trying to accept that I am not defined by what has happened to me. I have to contextualise it and not lose hope.”
It is anticipated that, over time, TTI will offer training to Faithless Hijabi’s team to enable them to become fully trauma-informed. Zara said: “TTI will help prevent us becoming burned-out when supporting the survivors we work with. It will stop us being over-empathetic. But, of course, it’s hard not to feel their pain and feel anger at the perpetrators when you have been there yourself.”
To find out more about Faithless Hijabi, visit their website or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.