During one of Caregiver Alliance meet-up session, the conversation among participants drifted casually toward religion. The program manager was asking people which church they attended, discussing church-based activities and community involvement.
Then she turned to me and asked, “So Nora, which mosque do you go to?”
I replied, “None.”
She paused, then said, “Oh… so you pray at home only?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t pray.”
Another pause. “Oh…” Sensing the confusion, I closed the conversation simply: “I’m an atheist.”
She looked genuinely puzzled:- not hostile, just surprised. It was probably the first time she had met a Malay who was not Muslim, and she didn’t quite know where to place that information.
Later, during my engagement with Caregiver Alliance (now Mindful Community), a volunteer program manager asked me something else. Our activities often take place in churches, Buddhist temples, and other religious spaces. She asked, carefully, “Are you okay going to all these places of worship?”
I answered without hesitation, “Yeah. Why not?”
She seemed relieved and said, “It’s good to know. Some volunteers wouldn’t want to even enter other places of worship where we conduct programs.”
It was in that moment that I felt something quietly profound, a sense of freedom I hadn’t consciously articulated before. I was not afraid to be in any space. Not worried about contamination, transgression, or disapproval. I could enter a church, a temple, or any community space simply as a human being there to help.
This freedom did not come from certainty, and it did not require belief. It came from the absence of fear.
For many people, religion provides meaning and structure but it also draws boundaries. Who you can enter with. Where you can go. What you must avoid.
In my case, stepping away from belief also meant stepping away from those invisible fences. I wasn’t there to worship. I wasn’t there to judge. I was there to serve.
And in that, I realised something quietly important: non-belief had not made me less connected to community life. If anything, it had made me more available to it.
In a plural society, perhaps freedom is not only about what we believe, but about how unafraid we are to meet one another, wherever that meeting takes place.
November 2026
