r/AskReligion • u/Repulsive_Wait5390 • 9h ago
The more I think about Islam, the more confused I become.
I’m 18 years old, and I’ve been Muslim my entire life. I was born into a Muslim family, and ever since I was a child, I was taught that Islam is the only true religion. I never really questioned it because it was all I had ever known, and in my family asking difficult questions about religion isn’t really accepted. Whenever I try to ask, I’m usually told to have more faith or to stop overthinking.
But over the past few months, I’ve been going through a serious crisis of faith. I don’t want to leave Islam or attack the religion. Quite the opposite—I want to believe. I want to have genuine conviction, but I feel like I need answers that actually make sense to me. I don’t want to believe just because I was born into a Muslim family or because I’m afraid.
One of my biggest questions is about Allah’s justice. The Qur’an says that Allah guides whom He wills and leads astray whom He wills. If Allah is perfectly just, how am I supposed to understand that? How is it just if some people are guided while others are not?
I also struggle with the fact that most people simply follow the religion they were born into. If I had been born into a Christian family and spent my entire life being taught that Christianity was the absolute truth, I would most likely reject Islam just as many Christians do. The same applies to people born into Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, or atheist families. We all tend to believe what we’ve been taught since childhood.
So sometimes I ask myself: am I Muslim because I genuinely found the truth, or simply because I happened to be born into a Muslim family? Where is the justice if millions of people are raised believing another religion is the truth and naturally reject Islam because that’s all they’ve ever known?
Another question I have is about the purpose of creation. If Allah doesn’t need us, why create us at all? Why create a world filled with wars, disease, suffering, and pain? Why make this life a test? What is the purpose of the test if Allah already knows everything that will happen before creating the universe?
The question I struggle with the most, though, is about free will and divine decree.
People always give me the example of a teacher who knows which student will pass and which student will fail, but honestly, that example doesn’t answer my question at all.
A teacher may predict that a student will fail because they know the student’s habits, but the teacher doesn’t decide whether that student studies or not. The teacher doesn’t determine the student’s choices.
Allah, however, is different. Before I was even created, Allah already knew every single second of my life, and everything happens according to His decree.
So if every decision I will ever make, every action I will take, and whether I ultimately end up in Paradise or Hell were already decreed before I even existed, then where does my free will actually exist?
If Allah determined everything before my creation, then in what sense is this life really a test? What am I actually choosing? And how is it just to reward or punish someone for actions whose outcome had already been decreed before they were born?
I also find myself wondering who created Allah. I know the Islamic answer is that Allah was never created and has always existed, but my mind struggles to fully grasp the idea of an eternal being with no beginning.
I recently started reading the Qur’an in my own language because I wanted to understand it for myself. I began with Surah Aal ’Imran, and right from the beginning I found many verses about punishment for those who disbelieve. Instead of giving me peace, it filled me with anxiety.
Right now, I honestly feel like the main thing keeping me in Islam is my fear of Hell rather than genuine faith, and that scares me. I don’t want to believe only because I’m afraid. I want to believe because I truly understand and I’m convinced.
I’m not asking these questions to mock Islam or to attack the religion. I’m asking because I genuinely want to understand. If Islam is the truth, then I want my faith to be based on understanding and conviction, not fear or the fact that I happened to be born into a Muslim family.