In most cases across the world, people tend to practice a faith as a result of being born into it. At a tender age, parents tell their children how better their faith is compared to any other alternatives. At that age, a child has no choice than to follow the parent.
At this stage, you are forced to participate in any activity that your parent consider vital for propagating your faith. This reminds me of an experience while growing up which I will summarize frictionally as follows.
Bello and Umar were siblings that were born into Islam. The were enrolled in Islamiya (Arabic education) at a tender age of five. Muktar, their father, would always be telling them how their faith is the only thing that can make them live a worthy life. He would say to them;
"Don't joke with here (world) and hereafter (heaven). For you to be successful, you need to believe in this faith strongly. For you to go to paradise after death, you need to believe. The boys, as expected never questioned all these.
They would return from school each day and go for Arabic classes. The way their father presented the issue of Islam to them, they had expected a perfect world especially among people of like faith. Once in a while, Bello, who is more outspoken would engage his father about his observations. In one of such engagements, he had asked;
"Dad, why do we have people preaching what they don't practice?
"The rules written in the scripture are perfect on paper but the preachers are not living after them yet they preach to us to live by the rules"
This is a question too complex for his father to devise the best approach for explaining to the understanding of the son.
In his response, the father said; "You need to be good as a human and follow the rules of Islam"
"Once you are doing good, is it necessary you must follow religious rules?" Bello queried
"You can't be good without practicing your religion well" Muktar replied.
Bello was more confused than ever at the stage but avoided further questions.
Source
Muktar was however not comfortable with those questions coming from his son. It's a red flag showing a possible future apostasy which is a taboo.
Few month after, it was reported that a man was attacked and escape death by whisker for renouncing his faith. Muktar was in the living room with his sons when this was being reported on the television. This brought up another session of questions and answers.
"Why can't people be allowed to practice their faith, renounce it if they so wish without any problem?" Umar asked.
Surprised that Umar is joining his brother in such suspicious questions, Muktar became authoritative.
"It is a crime against our faith for someone to renounce and practice another faith" So, you both should be warned.
Bello and his brother were dumbfounded. They were seeing the whole thing from different perspective. To them, staying true to one's belief about nature is more real than necessarily identifying with a religion.
Rather than bring them closer, such reply took them away from Islam.
At the end, they renounced their faith and became what they called "free thinker"
Knowing the consequence, they left their hostile town before making their intention public. The popular punishment for apostate in the town is a death by mob action.
At a time, they engaged their father on the rationale behind extra judicial treatment to apostate. As usual, they were not able to get convincing reply.
They were able to convince their father that just like there is freedom to worship, there should be freedom to be an apostate. Their father understood with them and they lived together with individual practicing what he believes.
Moving away from from the story back to what is happening presently, we need to be more tolerant to one another if we really want a better society. Anyone denouncing his faith should, however, desist from talking bad of the the faith they are leaving. Know that whatever hurts you may also hurt someone around you. Let respect leads.
My advice to everyone is to be an apostate of negative tendencies that derail humanity. Denouncing any negative energy is a plus to humanity. Let's strive to advance humanity with our actions and inactions.
