I am pretty sure I got rid of my Islam. I was just thinking about my Allah and then I started getting doubts and then purposefully thought kufr and now I want to die!
I don't want to live no more I killed my Islam because of my sins and now the kufr I have had! I don't know what to do I am super depressed and hurting myself because look at me I have had waswas and now I don't know if I made the the thought or not but I'm pretty sure it was me.
I always thought bad things and hypocritical things against my Islam I always said bad things when asking Allah to guide me towards Islam I think of the opposite. I want to be a Muslim I don't want to lose the one thing that made me happy. I just want to kill myself and I think I should cause now when I say good my heart feels empty and my heart is dead so why should I weep when it was all my fault I should just end it. I feel empty and it's all my fault
Last edited by TheLostSoul; 05-23-2016 at 12:27 PM.
It is hard to find Muslims who feel safe enough to speak publicly about living with a mental illness. It is even harder to find Muslims who will go on the record stating that they have contemplated or attempted suicide. Because suicide is a major sin in Islam, as in most religious traditions.
The irony here is that most of the time when I see Muslim Canadians rally to do something about mental illness in our communities it is in the wake of a suicide, often of a young Muslim. So, we know for a fact that Muslims are committing suicide in our communities.
It is strange that we use the word “commit” when describing the act of suicide. That’s because attempting suicide used to be a criminal offence in Canada before 1972.
A sin and a crime-who is going to admit that they have done this?
So here it goes. I have attempted suicide both before and AFTER my conversion to Islam, and I have contemplated suicide so seriously in the last few years that I have had to go to the hospital emergency and be taken under long-term hospital care. Alhamduillah, I am still here and healing but my mental illness is a reality l live with on a daily basis. It is not something that can be “cured” but with proper supports it can be managed.
I have been speaking publicly about living with a mental illness, in my case chronic depression and anxiety, since my teens. I was officially diagnosed with a mental illness at 15 at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO). My first well-paying job came from CHEO as I was hired to be part of a team of other CHEO teen patients to make a video about the teenage experience of living with mental illness which would be used to help train psychiatrists. I would eventually take the video to my high school and ask to present it in any class that would take it.
I had a certain bravado around speaking publicly about my illness from a young age. One reason for this was that I knew it was so important for me to speak out so other people knew they were not alone. But another reason was that, I was just not afraid of being judged or attacked or shunned because of my illness because nothing anyone could say or do to me would ever be worse than the things I said and did to myself.
And that is the reality for many of us who have gotten to the point of trying to take our own lives. We have become experts at self-loathing. No hater can beat us at hating on ourselves. No mean girl clique could more efficiently make us feel worthless than the bullies in our own minds.
And this reality of self-loathing is what we need to be very careful about when we talk about suicide. I am always fascinated by how talk of suicide raises anger in other people. “People who commit suicide are selfish. People who commit suicide are cowards.” Okay, do you really think saying things like that is going to make someone who feels so much self-loathing that they want to end their life NOT want to die?
The same goes for religious arguments that revolve around hell. “If you kill yourself, you are going to go to hell.” If you are full of self-loathing you probably wrote off the possibility of EVER being good enough to go to heaven. You might think you BELONG in hell.
When I am overwhelmed by a compulsion to end my life I don’t think about how bad a Muslim I would be to throw away Allah’s gift because I think that I am so worthless that I should no longer be taking up the food, water, and oxygen of other more deserving parts of Allah’s creation. I don’t fear the punishment of hellfire because I think that is what I deserve.
The “carrot and stick” logic we often use when trying to enforce religious rulings often doesn’t work when you are dealing with deeply suicidal people who have lost all hope. In my own experience, what has brought me back from the brink has not been the promise of reward or the fear of punishment. It has been connection, to my creator, to people, to pets, to a sense of purpose. As a community, the more we can help people feel connected, and the less we increase people’s self-loathing by dumping a bunch of shame on them, the more we will be able to offer support to those of us who are struggling with suicidal thoughts.
If asked, I will continue to speak publicly about living with mental illness and contemplating suicide; however, my hope is that more and more Muslims will come forward and feel supported enough by their families and safe enough in the community to share their stories because we need to learn from their experience, wisdom and insights if we are going to develop into a community that can prevent its members from taking their own lives.
My advice for those of you who are Muslim and are considering public speaking on your journey with mental illness is to make sure you have a support system in place so that you can cope with the number of other Muslims who will want to confide in you about their own struggles with mental illness or ask for referrals to counselling services, something which I am asked to do regularly since I started speaking openly about my illness. Frankly, we need support groups in our mosques and community centres so Muslims struggling with mental illness can connect with each other for mutual support.
Also, be prepared for the haters because they will come. For many years when I publicly spoke about mental illness to Sunni, Shia and Ismaili Muslim communities, I never had to deal with this problem, but since taking up the role of Muslim Link Editor in Chief, I guess being a more public community figure has changed how I am perceived by some people. I have received some pretty mean-spirited attacks when I have shared about my struggles. I have been accused of trying to get attention and of “showing off” my trauma. So again, have a strong support system so you can deal with this kind of backlash but know that the people attacking you are probably just in a lot of pain themselves. Don’t let them stop you from sharing your story. Your story is too powerful and can help too many people for you to let anyone silence you.
My message to Muslims coping with suicidal thoughts is that Allah created you for a reason even if you are not so sure what that is. We know it is to worship Allah but that can manifest itself in so many ways beyond the five pillars. I still am not really sure what my exact purpose is. What I do know is that because of my illness I have had to give up on many dreams around school, career, and family which, when I am not well, can feel like failures that rob me of any sense of hope for the future, but when I am doing well, I can see them more as opportunities to take less well-trodden paths in life.
Our lives may not turn out as we had hoped, but that doesn’t mean we cannot find things to be grateful for. Since my mother’s death I have had to cope with her loss, the loss of a job, and the loss of a friendship. On bad days, this is all I can see, this is all the illness lets me see.
But on better days, I can see what I still have and what I have gained- the ongoing support of so many awesome friends and community members, the continued opportunities to meet and connect with wonderful people and expand my understanding of the world, the strange new recent experience of finding myself crying for joy at a friend's wedding.
I look forward to the lessons about myself and the world that Allah keeps teaching me through the surprises and unpredictable moments of my life. This is where my hope comes from now.
I cannot promise you that life in this world, the dunya (the temporal world), will get any easier. But you are supposed to be here, sopleasestay.
Anyone that is truly suicidal will not make posts on forums... they'd just do it.
From my experiences of the pain of the fellow humans life - this is just what many people whose are truly suidical do. They seek help as they talk or write but it´s unfortunately quite common mistake to think that a person who really is in the danger to end his life, wouldn´t never talk about it.
Why do people always make threads about not wanting to live? If you don't want to live then go top yourself already and stop seeking attention. Just know that when you kill yourself you'll experience 1000x worse pain than you're in now. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, life's hard, get over it.
ATTENTION SEEKING ??? so my step dad was attention seeking when he killed himself because he asked for help the times before he had tried to killed himself
we really have to stop saying its attention seeking mental health isnt attention seeking ,getting help or asking for help isn't attention seeking, self injury is not attention seeking
i must be Attention seeking posting in this forum as well
Faith goes up and down all the time. Rarely is it the same over long periods of time. You're going through a period of low faith, but that doesn't mean your faith will always be low.
ATTENTION SEEKING ??? so my step dad was attention seeking when he killed himself because he asked for help the times before he had tried to killed himself
we really have to stop saying its attention seeking mental health isnt attention seeking ,getting help or asking for help isn't attention seeking, self injury is not attention seeking
i must be Attention seeking posting in this forum as well
Calm down sweetie, I apologise for my previous comment, it was perhaps somewhat insensitive. Suicide is for the weak minded though.
When the journey gets a little rough you don't just get off the train...
I would advise anyone who's feeling suicidal to seek professional help from a trained psychiatrist.
I did not read all the advises above they would definitely be beneficial. I would rather advise you on something of different nature. It may sound out of place, but what you really need is to increase your observation. We all in modern times need it. Wake up early for prayer, offer fajar with jam3a (if mosque is near) and then do not sleep. Go out and take walk and look at the sun and the sky, look at the beauty of the morning, observe the small details of the universe. Look at the beautiful design and then look at yourself. Look how beautifully designed your hands are, how marvelous humans are designed, think about your intellect; ponder why dogs, cats and animals not have self consciousness! Observe the universe. This is what all the Prophets have done before getting the Prophethood. The natural universe is so amazing that once you fall in love with it, then definitely you would appreciate and love the maker of all of it. I personally find observing the universe very beneficial in order to increase my imaan, especially the morning walk.
my step dad was ill when he killed himself people who are suicidal are ill
after my step dad died my mum told me he heard voices he might have been hearing voices before he killed himself if he retched out and asked for help he might still be here ,
its why its so important what is said to someone who suicidal will not make them hurt or kill themselves we arent not trained to deal with people who are suicidal
there are helplines in the uk and other countries what deal with this
Sometimes it helps people and sometimes it dont
and its heart breaking to lose anyone but through suicide is more heart breaking your left wondering if you could have done anything to help or what its something i did wrong that made him do it
Sorry for blowing up at you ( i have a bad temper ) its just made me angry
my step dad was ill when he killed himself people who are suicidal are ill
after my step dad died my mum told me he heard voices he might have been hearing voices before he killed himself if he retched out and asked for help he might still be here ,
its why its so important what is said to someone who suicidal will not make them hurt or kill themselves we arent not trained to deal with people who are suicidal
there are helplines in the uk and other countries what deal with this
Sometimes it helps people and sometimes it dont
and its heart breaking to lose anyone but through suicide is more heart breaking your left wondering if you could have done anything to help or what its something i did wrong that made him do it
Sorry for blowing up at you ( i have a bad temper ) its just made me angry
I never understood what can make someone not want to live... I mean I understand why suicide bombers do what they do because they think they're getting a better life, maybe they are who knows. As for your average person, how can life be so unbearable that you want to end it? Perhaps if your whole family were killed or something then I might understand.
Being suicide is a serious thing of course but I do think if the person just goes to see a psychiatrist and tries to have a bit of optimism they'll stop feeling that way. It's kinda like depression... If you really just stop feeling sorry for yourself and pick yourself up, dust yourself off you can get back to living life. I think I a lot of being just want things fixed for them rather than taking the initiative to get up and fix themselves.
Can't we be more understanding towards those who are suicidal and stop acting self-righteous. They seek help, and if we turn them away cold-heartedly, we might be accountable before Allah SWT.
Allah SWT sent us a suicidal person, now what we do is act self-righteous? yes, one will be in Jahannam, forever if one kills themselves. we therefore have to help them get out of that state. you don't be like to someone about to jump from a roof "go ahead, you will earn Jahannam, attention seeker!"
are you serious? attention seeking? far from it, if they really are suicidal, it isn't attention seeking it is a seeking out for help.
The very fact that you feel bad, is actually a good thing. If you didn't feel anything, that's true trouble. Secondly, like mentioned above, even if you did something wrong, you can still seek Allah's forgiveness. Allah has made us in such a way that we are susceptible to sin and the shaytan is good at misleading people. It's only natural that we will make mistakes. Allah knows this and has provided us with a means out of this - by simply seeking his forgiveness.
Have fear of Allah but also have hope in his mercy.
format_quote Originally Posted by EgyptPrincess
Why do people always make threads about not wanting to live? If you don't want to live then go top yourself already and stop seeking attention. Just know that when you kill yourself you'll experience 1000x worse pain than you're in now. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, life's hard, get over it.
format_quote Originally Posted by EgyptPrincess
Anyone that is truly suicidal will not make posts on forums... they'd just do it. Like when someone is on top of a building for 3 hours and eventually comes down. I think people who are suicidal just do it. Rather than the OP saying "I don't want to live anymore" he should be saying "my life is pretty crap at the moment, do you have any suggestions to make it better".
Only a few weeks have past since you were annoyed at being at the receiving end of unduly harsh and judgmental posts. Please don't be an oppressor yourself.
No, those who are suicidal won't just kill themselves, why? They still have the fear inside of them, the uncertainty, etc. No suicidal person just jumps off. It starts off slow, they seek for help, and it slowly goes over to killing oneself.
I think it has already been enough discussion over why someone suicidal would post for help. I think it is better to leave why he posted, and help the actual person.
Only a few weeks have past since you were annoyed at being at the receiving end of unduly harsh and judgmental posts. Please don't be an oppressor yourself.
I never understood what can make someone not want to live... I mean I understand why suicide bombers do what they do because they think they're getting a better life, maybe they are who knows. As for your average person, how can life be so unbearable that you want to end it? Perhaps if your whole family were killed or something then I might understand.
Being suicide is a serious thing of course but I do think if the person just goes to see a psychiatrist and tries to have a bit of optimism they'll stop feeling that way. It's kinda like depression... If you really just stop feeling sorry for yourself and pick yourself up, dust yourself off you can get back to living life. I think I a lot of being just want things fixed for them rather than taking the initiative to get up and fix themselves.
That is ... really not how clinical depression works... at all
That is ... really not how clinical depression works... at all
Exactly... These types of issues can only be understood by people who have gone through it maybe still struggling but not at the rock bottom they once use to be.
For those who havent been through it, this is where we will find harsh comments even judgemental observations.
I pray that Allah saves everyone from these types of trials and situations, as they are far harder to bare and deal with than most people are led to believe, you dont just snap your fingers and feel better
Narrated Jubair ibn Mut’im: The Messenger of Allah (S.A.W), said: "He is not one us who calls for `Asabiyah, (nationalism/tribalism) or who fights for `Asabiyah or who dies for `Asabiyah." [Sunan Abu Dawud (Vol. 2, pg. 753) No. 5121]
So how does one get better then? Assuming someone who is depressed just lays in bed all day or doesn't want to do anything but at some point you just have to get up and start getting on with it right?
So how does one get better then? Assuming someone who is depressed just lays in bed all day or doesn't want to do anything but at some point you just have to get up and start getting on with it right?
It takes time, it takes everything out of you to even believe it will get better
The process is not as easy as you make it out to be.
Do you think people want to be deppressed and feel sorry for themselves, not being able to do what they use to before and cant bare to go outside or do anything
Some suffer in silence others are more able to speak about it.
Many people with Deppression can border line ptsd and have anxiety wich links with very traumatic experiences they cannot deal with or are finding extremely difficult to deal with such as
loss of life
Abuse
Sexual abuse
Rape
Mental abuse
Traumatic experiences!
The fact you make it out like the person "just" does this shows you havent been in that situtation, so will never be able to comprehend what exactly it takes to do some of the most simple things in life that you (and everyone) else are able to do without batting a eyelid and im literally directing this to anyone else who thinks the same as you.
What you may think is easy, someone else could find it absolutely terrifying to deal with and not be able to cope, vise vera
We all deal with things different and how you or anyone else copes is not always the best way for another person
Narrated Jubair ibn Mut’im: The Messenger of Allah (S.A.W), said: "He is not one us who calls for `Asabiyah, (nationalism/tribalism) or who fights for `Asabiyah or who dies for `Asabiyah." [Sunan Abu Dawud (Vol. 2, pg. 753) No. 5121]
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