In a new, in-depth article for our news blog, humanist hero and and freed religious prisoner Mubarak Bala tells us about his background in an ultra-conservative region of Nigeria, how he became a prisoner of conscience, and the hope and international support that kept him going.
My background
I was born the third of nine kids from my mum in a polygamous household with three mothers and about two dozen children. I was born in the mid-1980s on the southern edges of the Sahara, the Sahel Region, in an ancient, ultra-conservative city called Kano.
My culture and tribe and language is Hausa, although most of this has been lost to Islamic colonialism. I come from a clerical lineage that allied with Fulani conquerors in jihads two centuries prior, forging the largest empire in the region, which lasted a century and whose heritage still manifests in today’s West Africa. You can see it in the terrorism, jihadism, and Shari’a-mongering against the cultural dominance of non-muslims and minority tribes.
In my teenage years I was already a science weirdo. I was the the liar, the crazy one, the outlier.
I grew up curious and immediately saw the stark difference between my two schools, the morning classes (secular education), and the evening ones (madrassa or religious education). The former seemed to be rooted in what was factual and possible, the latter just relied on beating and scaring and threatening. Naturally, all kids are curious, but only a few of us were privileged to attend both schools. Parents where I grew up tended to be too steeped in Islamic culture to bother about education, or too educated to bother about the conservative Islamic lesson. My family thought it best to have both and thus to succeed in both lives: both here and in the imaginary hereafter.
In my teenage years I was already a science weirdo, saying crazy things such as “my father has a computer” (true), something which almost no-one had seen in the region before. I got to read the whole series of blue-backed encyclopedia. I told my friends that the bugs that bite us are female, that man has landed on the moon, that the world is like an onion (when everyone knew it was a flat plain resting on some angel wings). I was the weirdo, the liar, the crazy one, the outlier.
Growing up, leaving my faith
In my early 20s at university my philosophy developed and crystallized. I was sure that imaginary beings did not exist, and particularly that they could not be active in the cruel world I observed, with its poverty, ignorance, delusion, and helplessness. I took to writing for local newspapers, highlighting what a society should be able to figure out by itself. I focused on social justice, politics and science, avoiding the topic of religion to prevent harassment.
I recorded successes with governments at local and federal levels. A team of designers and myself managed to get the government to commission a water purifier for local villages, using locally available moringa oleifera seeds to create clean, disease-free potable water (most of the diseases in my region were water-borne). I also convinced the then-president to end the Almajiri system in northern Nigeria, potentially freeing eight million child slaves who were roaming the region in the name of Islamic tutelage, and allowing them to join adoptive families. Sadly, the president was defeated in the next election after the region turned against him because of this policy. A bigoted leader was installed who reversed the gains.
I dreaded the word ‘atheism’. But, with the new internet technology introduced to my country, I was able to discover the belief system to which a whole section of the world adhered: humanism, atheism with a conscience.
I then left Nigeria for a masters in chemical engineering in the UK. I told my family that they shouldn’t be heartbroken if they heard that I was no longer a Muslim, and that they shouldn’t blame the freedoms of Europe. Rather, they should know that for close to a decade I was just pretending to have faith while no longer believing. I dreaded the word “atheism”. But, with the new internet technology introduced to my country, I was able to find out the belief system to which a whole section of the world adhered: humanism, atheism with a conscience.
Family fallout
My family decided that if I don’t believe in Allah, nor believe in the “history” of Adam and Eve, if I thought that angels and demons were figments of the imagination enforced by floggings at the madrassas and the threat of frying in boiling lava after death, I must be crazy. It was as though I had told them I wanted to fling myself into a volcano. They felt it was their duty to stop the madness. So, they admitted me for psychiatric treatment.
Fortunately, the psychiatric doctor I visited in November 2013 said: no, atheism was not really mental illness. What I really needed was a spiritual awakening. My family told the doctor that I knew the religion better than anyway . They told him how I had wanted to convert people in my early life, to save them from the fire that a monstrous God wanted to condemn them to, for the trivial reason of picking the wrong beliefs. After that, I was left alone by my family, but observed.
My father arranged for me to see a psychiatrist, with whom he had agreed in advance that I would be told atheism was a mental illness. I was bundled away violently and locked up in a pschiatric hospital for weeks.
In mid-2014, with Ramadan approaching, my father grew more desperate. He decided to make arrangements for me to be locked up, away from society, especially as I was now active on social media, and his prestige as an Islamist fanning jihadism would be damaged. He arranged for me to see another psychiatrist, with whom he had agreed in advance that I would be told atheism was a mental illness, and that without a god I was a monster. I was bundled away violently and locked up in a psyhciatric hospital for weeks.
The story went viral as I sought help online. My family let me out, but not before I had endured weeks of forced medications, injections, and trauma. My mum pointed out streaks of grey hair to me that I had not had just weeks earlier. I thought I would die in there. I was lucky to escape, but then the floodgates opened: public threats that, that since I had left Islam, I must be killed, as per Shari’a law.
Arrest and imprisonment
I became an Internally Displaced Person, roaming the country fearless but hopeless. I started a job in a safer location in Nigeria’s north. But then, during the Covid-19 pandemic, after a Facebook post in which I was deemed to have insulted the prophet Muhammad, my local community put renewed pressure on the government to silence me. The government sadly swung to this demand, and in April 2020 I was arrested and returned to my home district of Kano, where I was charged with causing a public disturbance.
I was placed in jail for years, unprotected from other Muslims, people with the same ideology as Boko Haram, who would kill non-Muslims when their favourite candidate lost an election, or because of blasphemies occurring elsewhere in the world, or just to try to enforce Shari’a Law in the region. In 2022, after two years in prison, I was sentenced to 40 years in jail, 24 for posts on Facebook about violence and jihadism, and 16 for insulting Islam. [These terms were to run concurrently, meaning Mubarak faced a total of 24 years in prison.]
The international community came through, and especially the humanist community. They did all they could to get me out.
Drawing strength from humanism
The international community rallied to my rescue, but people from my region, and the government, didn’t care. I must be killed, or else kept in isolation for decades. They said I was worse than Boko Haram because I was inspiring evil in the land. People were leaving Islam at unprecedented levels in Kano region, and all because I refused to keep quiet. I wrote both in English and in the regional Hausa language. Several times I almost died, and I wondered if help would come before it was too late. My health deteriorated badly and I lost everything, including a first son. But the international community came through, and especially the humanist community. They did all they could to get me out.
I got out of jail and reluctantly left the country I love. I now live in Germany, but I hope to return to Nigeria someday. I hope my people will adjust their worldview and let me live amongst them in peace and civility, with my family around me, and with respectful conversation and disagreement permitted. I will never stop criticising Islam, nor any dogma that kills people, or asks people to murder, rape, and pillage. I want to change my country’s dangerous trajectory of self-destruction. I will try from a safe distance for now, but some day I want to return to live in a freer Nigeria and in a safer West Africa.
I thank all those that got me out: for the time and resources they dedicated to my cause, for over half a decade, to see me safe and sane
Looking forwards
I thank all those that got me out: for the time and resources they dedicated to my cause, for over half a decade, to see me safe and sane. Starting over once again is tough. I dread what awaits me after decades in the frontline. I had to start over in my twenties when I left home, then in my thirties when it was discovered at work that I was an atheist apostate. Now, out of jail in my forties, I am starting all over again. I am not in my element, socially, environmentally or economically. But I am determined to try and keep trying…
I think if I garner enough energy in five to ten years, I will return home and try to become an elected politician, so I can become part of the policy-making process in Nigeria, and turn things around before we lose the country. I have unique ideas and I nurtured even greater ideas when I was shackled away half a decade. I hope I can put them into action for a better world.
The future is ours. It’s for humanism. Temporary setbacks won’t change human history.
Humanists should be glad that the future is atheist. Temporary setbacks, like the rise of religious nationalism in the west, are simply a response to political and economic uncertainty. But by the close of the century I believe we will see more rational and secular populaces than conservatism and fanatical Islam are able to handle.
The Middle East is changing. The traditional sponsors of terror are now investing in youth and education and reforming their cultures and economies. Countries that refuse to evolve are being isolated. The last few dictators in the region will die out, and they will no longer be able to export terror, weapons, and dangerous ideologies to other countries.
The liberal occident, the west, may have a tough time combatting homegrown Islamist fanatics who clash with authorities and demand Shari’a law. But these people will tire as long we have education and freedom in the west. Generations to come will be more embracing, more tolerant, more rational, and more secular.
The future is ours. It’s for humanism. Temporary setbacks won’t change human history. We are still in our naive beginnings as a species, only a few centuries along on our path to progress. I am sure we will keep making mistakes here and there, some catastrophic, some avoidable. But we’re a small primate that only yesterday lost its hair and tail. We have a few more hours left to handle our small squabbles, and to tame our primal instincts. Our cousin primates died out, but we have a chance to make it. The future is solidly human.
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