The House of Apostasy

Welcome to the second edition of the X-Muslim Blogs Roundup. This is held regularly, and aims to be an enjoyable survey of the chatterings of the ex-Muslim blogosphere.

Thanks!

The House of Apostasy was very well-received and publicised on opening day: we extend our grateful thanks to all well-wishers, including Jihadwatch, Little Green Footballs, The Religion of Peace, The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, Clarity & Resolve, Protein Wisdom, as well as the wonderful people behind the Shire Network News. There are many others. Such a show of support is immensely important to ex-Muslim bloggers.

Increasing numbers of non-Muslims have come to understand, especially in the wake of 9/11, that Islam is unique among world faiths in a remarkable sense: it is a religion that has a stake in advancing territorial conquest and subjugation, whether through conversion, subversion or warfare. And they have also discovered, in addition to what Islam formally seeks, that Muslims themselves are not the most, shall we say, reliable allies when it comes to fighting this Islamic challenge with gusto. As the years since 9/11 demonstrate amply, the liberty-sapping political ambitions of Muslim groups have become more assertive, not less.

We ex-Muslim bloggers, of course, also know that mainstream Islam does not celebrate a retreat from political control; our own departures from Muhammad's holy realm requires that we hold our tongues, lest we suffer reprisals of the most grievous kind. And so we attach tremendous importance to the advancement of a free and secular society.

So, unlike Muslims, we ex-Muslim bloggers have every incentive to aid right-thinking non-Muslims in combating the Islamic threat. And non-Muslims should make no apologies to anybody, least of all to Muslims themselves, for seeking an alliance with us. We say to you: don't feel guilty for such an alliance, for we certainly do not. Those of us who have come to live in the West are grateful for its freedoms, and appreciate what it takes for you to sustain them on our behalf. Unlike Muslims, we ex-Muslims do not conceive of our relationship with the West as a one-way street; we do not believe in rights without responsibilities. And unlike Muslims, we ex-Muslims refuse to be victims: those of us who live in the West are empowered individuals, we will not abandon non-Muslims in your time of need, and we know you will not abandon us. We are on the same side, and our efforts will be synergistic. And combating the Islamic threat together is the only sensible way of being pro-Muslim in the best sense.

The Roundup

To hijack a tired-sounding cliche, ex-Muslim bloggers constitute a mosaic, not a monolith; however, a useful guide as to where we are unified, both in letter and spirit, is the set of principles enshrined in the St. Petersburg Declaration, an important outcome of the recent Secular Islam Summit. The Declaration was endorsed by most delegates to the Summit, with reformer Irshad Manji as one of the more notable exceptions, for which I think she deserves not just a little criticism. Manji's silly issues aside, however, other Muslim groups also refused to back the Declaration, and demanded that since they are Muslims, Islam can only belong to them; and therefore, they should be the only ones allowed to talk about the damn thing.

Some ex-Muslim bloggers took exception to this sorry attitude. One was The Apostate , who when it comes to books not only has an ear trained for the classics, she also writes like a demon. An excerpt:

For all of my life, I have engaged with Muslims on their turf, by their rules. Now it’s their turn.

 

These ‘outsiders’ are not so by choice. Many of them are being forced away and out by Muslims. To make us outsiders and then mock us for being so and calling us ‘irrelevant’ is pretty rich. Whether our styles of dissent displease Muslims or not, we are an integral part of Islam’s reform, even if that is not our explicit agenda. In a way, [Svend] White’s constant anxiety about image and how something is going to impact the mainstream Muslims is really patronizing. His instinct is to protect this infantilized Islamic world from our brutal assaults, not to let Muslims learn to handle unsavory criticism. They’ve been shielded long and hard enough - it’s time they joined the real world.

Elsewhere she writes that Muslims need shaming:
 

Muslims are being shamed in the media, and they best get used to regarding themselves critically. It’s about time. Perhaps this shame, if it’s ubiquitous enough, will actually seep in and do some good damage to their unjustified arrogance.

Not so long ago, Canada came close to instituting aspects of Shari'ah in family law. But in Europe, Muslims who call for the same can probably relax a bit - they may have already gotten it. Isaac Schrodinger , based in Canada, is rightly outraged at the case concerning a Muslim woman in Germany, a woman who in the course of seeking divorce from her violent, disgusting and utterly puerile husband, came up against a judge who appears to have confused herself as an Islamic qadi rather than a dispenser of Western justice. An excerpt:

The decision boils down to this:

• If a non-Muslim man beats, and threatens to murder, his wife, then the wife has a "right" to ask for an immediate divorce.
• If a Muslim man exercises his "right" to beat his wife and threaten her with murder, then the wife is essentially screwed.

Nimbu , another thoughtful ex-Muslim blogger, has an interesting discussion with a friend, a lapsed Muslim, about another friend who has become a hard-line Muslim. The story is relayed in two posts (Part 1; Part 2). Asks Nimbu, what on earth happens to make these people so screwed up? An excerpt from the second part:
 

He looked at me strangely and then confessed that he too had left a mosque because of these guys - only to land at another mosque where the imam was more progressive. “More progressive?” Yeah. That’s right. This imam teaches you good things.

“What good things?” I asked.

“This Friday, the imam taught about the virtues of forgiveness.”

“You needed an imam to teach you that? How come you didn’t know that before?”

“Well I guess I knew it, he just drove it home.”

“What? That’s insane. You always knew that you should forgive people. You never needed an imam to teach you that.”

“Whatever. It made me feel good.”

I said “That’s how they string you along. First they teach you good stuff you already knew and then slowly they start injecting the rest of their crap”

Speaking of psychology, Isaac Schrodinger takes a great stab at answering a reader's following question:

"What happens to the psychology of the Muslim-born person who was born & raised in the US, and who visits his parents homeland? Does seeing the difference between the hygiene and the dynamism of the US, and the filth and decay and backwardness of dar al Islam drive them away from Islam or towards it?"

Muslihoon highlights an example of the sheer double-standards adopted by Muslims when it comes to engaging their kuffar counterparts. An excerpt:

Furthermore, there are no restrictions in Christian societies on Muslims to preach their religion while Christians are forbidden to preach Christianity in Muslim societies.

...

The way Muslims behave, I feel like asking what they are afraid of. Such behavior seems to be signs of insecurity. Why are they insecure? Are they afraid Islam cannot endure challenges? Are Muslims so rationally or intellectually weak? And what is wrong if a Muslim, for whatever reason, leaves Islam, whether for another religion or not? How does such an act weaken Islam? Is Islam really so weak that the departure of one member threatens it or the Muslim community?

This double standard, celebrating and promoting conversion to Islam but rejecting and resisting and attempting to restrict leaving Islam, irks me.

Indeed. And it must be remembered that even in those Muslim-majority countries where the death penalty for apostasy is not legally stipulated, freelance jihadis are always more than happy, indeed rather obliged, to compensate for the state's shortcomings on this matter.

In Azar Nafisi's remarkable memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran , one of the author's students came to lament: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Muslim man, regardless of his fortune, must be in want of a nine-year-old virgin wife”. Muhammad's marriage to a six year-old girl, and his act of taking her to his bed from when she was nine years old, is how Islam has come to institutionalise paedophilia. The typical silence of many Muslim men on this matter indicates not their disapproval of this vile and disgusting behaviour, but of their embarrassed resignation to their urges. And yet there are also those who also feel the need to justify what Muhammad did. The Apostate discusses the twisted morality behind this thinking. An excerpt :

The Muslims who try to excuse Muhammad’s act, and the non-Muslims who are ‘understanding’ of his weakness, allege that this was a common thing in that era, hence couldn’t be “immoral” as morality is a social construct that changes with time and place. I agree with that last bit but the gall of Muslims using moral relativism is astounding - people who believe in an eternal religion suddenly abandon absolute morality when it suits them.

She also provides a link near the end as an example of the remarkable efforts that Muslim scholars go to in justifying what Muhammad did, scholars that at the same time characterise all those who feel repulsed and appalled by it all as having been subjected to something called "Western Colonialism of the Mind".

 

One more from The Apostate : a review of Bernard Lewis' What Went Wrong? An excerpt:

I was particularly struck by the analysis of how Muslim pride got in the way of modernization wherever modernization was translated as ‘Westernization.’ I know, from personal experience, just how profoundly true this modernization-westernization dichotomy is in the Muslim mind and how viscerally they object to it. And contrary to his own stated belief to the contrary, he is tracing these causes back to Islam: the status of women, the resistance to Westernization, the theocratic impulse, etc.

And finally, I'm pleased to report that yours truly was formally inducted by the incomparable Tom Paine into the Great-Zionist-Conspiracy at the Shire Network News very recently. Given that I already follow the SNN podcast religiously, I was happy to appear on the show. Generally, SNN's combination of scrutiny and occasional mockery is excellent, but there is no analytical depth sacrificed in whatever subject matter is being discussed. It is very clear that the hosts know that their listeners are intelligent people; there is no oratory or polemic being hurled around anywhere. And as a listener, I certainly have never heard them address me as "You people".

In other words, SNN rocks. The interview appears in two parts (Part 1; Part 2). Part Two will be linked as soon as it becomes available on Shire Network News later today. That leaves me waiting for my Cosmic-Zionist-Conspiracy-inductee cheque, however. Does it always take this long? Really, Tom, I mean how complicated is it for a simple Cosmic-Zionist-Conspiracy delivery guy to arrive with my cheque? Cosmic, my a**...

And finally, if you are a budding ex-Muslim who is thinking of blogging for the first time, I will let Basharee Murtadd , an ex-Muslim blogger already up and running, tell you what you already know in your heart:

I urge all apostates of Islam to open up Web sites and blogs exposing the truth about Islam. In fact, you need not even write about Islam in your blog. Just mention that you are an apostate and write about anything else, be it your job, your dog, your obsession about Anne Coulter (off the top of my head), et cetera. Merely mentioning your apostasy is sufficient to sow the seeds of doubt in Muslims who find apostasy to be as impossible as dividing a number by zero.

The blogosphere is very fertile ground for up-and-coming ex-Muslims, primarily because it easily preserves anonymity while generating attention about one's views and experiences as an ex-Muslim. And things like this Roundup can help bring attention to your views, as well as demonstrating that you are not alone, and not without support in the blogosphere.

If you are already an ex-Muslim blogger and would like to submit any links to your posts then, by all means, you are very welcome to email me through the website.

And we come to the end of this second edition of the X-Muslim Blog Roundup. We'll have another one up in a couple of weeks. I have tentatively decided to make the Carnival a fortnightly occurence. This may change because the ex-Muslim blogosphere is rather small, and this will no doubt affect the rate of involvement. But we'll see.

Thanks for reading and do check back in a fortnight! 

 

Welcome to the first edition of the X-Muslim Blogs Roundup! This will be held regularly, and will be an enjoyable survey of the chatterings of the ex-Muslim blogosphere.

Introduction

I am sure that, by now, you will have come across discussions of the Secular Islam Summit on various blogs and media outlets, and the release by its delegates of an all-important St. Petersburg Declaration. This time is as good as any other to showcase the very few but growing number of voices that make up the ex-Muslim blogosphere.

Ex-Muslims have a bad rep. In Muslim circles, those ad hominems fly thick and fast when even mere mention is made of their existence. For example, there are numerous "progressive" Muslim blogs that, while having achieved much respect across the blogosphere, happily take up this more regressive attitude when discussing former Muslims, and their view of the SI Summit was no exception. Conspiratorial Muslims generally demonise their "fallen" brothers and sisters both in public and in private, as if they were secret agents constantly scheming and plotting away, with each and every one briefed and sent by the devil himself.

But ex-Muslims are people. And most of them are very good, caring people. Many of them have families and friends who remain Muslims, but, of course, still care just as much about them, if not more. And one big reason for ex-Muslims' even deeper empathy with their Muslim families and friends is their worry about what manner of dark alleys the faith will lead them to. Many things can be said about ex-Muslims but at the end of the day, while they may have enduring disputes with central aspects of Islam itself, they are as pro-Muslim as one can get.

The Roundup

One of the Muslim critiques of ex-Muslims is that their primary identity is de facto negative i.e. they go around parading themselves as being not of Islam. Isaac Schrodinger says this point entirely misses the, well, point. For ex-Muslims, it may or may not be true that it is primary (whatever that means), but it is not the whole. Here's an excerpt:

I don't take pleasure in continually going over a wretched ideology. Just take a look at the categories I use for my blog. I want to write in detail about the Pakistani cricket team and the upcoming World Cup; the bad effects of a minimum wage, either local or global; the symbolic meaning behind the word marathon; how my early years in Lahore were so serene; who should be the villain for Kal-El in the sequel to Superman Returns; link to spectacular HDR images; talk about the motherboards that go well with the Intel Core 2 Duo (look at ASUS and Gateway, by the way) and so on.

I can choose to do all of that and ignore the daily misery that Islam brings. But I know that ignoring it won't make it go away. The war is here and now whether I like it or not. Westerners must be provided clarity on this great issue. That is the purpose of my voice. That is why I blog. That is why I rail against Islam. For it deserves a good railin'.

...

Being a murtad or an apostate is part of the identity for an ex-Muslim. A mussulman who becomes a Christian can call himself a convert to Christianity as well as an apostate. Both terms are valid. Somehow, I don't think the rhetoric would bother him as much as the fact that Muslims want to kill him.

As Isaac Schrodinger patiently explains in his post, those who have intellectually deconverted from Islam tend to do so on grounds that their former faith restricts their outlook on exploring more humanistic, life-affirming identities. Being an ex-Muslim is a starting identity, not an end point in itself; it is the undertaking of a journey that the mere contemplation of which invites outright fear for practising Muslims. Ordinarily, defection from many religions does not pay a heavy price, in which case a decision to go ahead and leave the religion does not tell you anything significant about the person defecting because the religion itself is non-strict. With Islam, however, the command to stay within the faith is done under pain of death. Ex-Muslims are not fantasising about reality, because they do not suffer deluded notions of Islam being inherently peaceful. And so the ex-Muslim label conveys something significant about the courage of someone who has begun a journey under that starting identity.

In the same vein, The Apostate makes this point very clearly:

Now that I am no longer a Muslim and don’t live in a Muslim country, my connection with Islam does not suddenly disappear, nor do my grievances against what it has done to my life evaporate. I have built a new and better life in the U.S., but I’ve paid a heavy price: I’ve lost my family, I’ve given up all right to public security or the government’s support in my native country, I’m committed to lying about my religious status in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (where my family lives, whom I have not seen in 4 1/2 years) or foreswear visiting these countries that I called home for most of my life, I’m condemned to never have full acceptance in my own culture, by my own people.

These are not random events which are nobody’s fault, that nothing is responsible for. All this is Islam and Muslims’ fault.

Another post from Isaac Schrodinger details one of his many encounters with traditional teaching methods from when he was a student in Saudi Arabian classrooms:

"No sir, please, I promise sir, I won't do it again. P-l-e-a-s-e sir."

His pleas made no difference. Our English teacher had a vise-like grip on the left wrist of that student. A few days before we had a brief English test. That student got 5 out of 10. Like everybody else, he had to get the signature of one of his parents. Which he did, after he had changed that "5" to an "8". Now, the student was fruitlessly attempting to avoid the customary thrashing.

The teacher held the wrist of the student with his left hand and with his right hit the student multiple times; on the head, the face, the neck, a few punches on the ribs. I sat in front of the class, a few feet away from the entire revolting episode.

I cannot resist relaying a personal episode when I was about 7 years old, which took place here in good ol' England. I used to regularly attend a class after school to learn to recite the Koran, and we all sat cross-legged on the floor. One day, one of my friends mispronounced one of the Arabic words as he went through a verse. The large, bearded, and rather strict teacher, who had been listening intently, told him to stop. He quietly stood up and then slowly but surely placed each foot on both of the student's knees until my friend was carrying the teacher's entire body weight. The rest of us stared in abject fascination, appalled. As the teacher balanced on my friend's knees, he then bounced up and down slightly. My friend was in tears.

I always took extra care not to mispronounce any Arabic word after that.

The Apostate, one of the newer ex-Muslims on the block, can perhaps be described as a sceptical feminist. This is her thought-provoking post on the question of how willing Muslim women actually are in not being slaves to their men:

 I don’t think we owe Muslim women anything. And I don’t think they want our help. They make it abundantly clear every time they open their mouths on the issue. Those of them who agree with us leave their religion or their homelands and come live with us and live like us - i.e., they don’t wear a universally recognized symbol of women’s oppression on their heads. They don’t impose a chastity belt on their sexuality. They don’t defer to men - in anything. The rest of them don’t want liberation, and we should let them be.

Muslim women are not the victims of Muslim men. They mostly choose to belong to Muslim men. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be so incensed that we seek to inform them they don’t have to belong to anyone. They see it as imperialism. Fine. Muslims have always been touchy on the subject of learning from their betters, so let’s let them stew in their misery. They’ll get fed up soon enough and actually decide to do something about it - do something that doesn’t involve touting Islam as the solution to all their ills. As if anything could take them farther from freedom than an explicitly patriarchal religion.

I have an interest in helping people who show some inclination to help themselves. If there is absolutely no recognition of their responsibilities and no interest in self-development or even in self-preservation at a higher level than where the next meal is coming from - I’m sorry, I’m not much inclined to waste my energy on you.

Here's one more excerpt from another of her typically well-written posts on some of the changes she has encountered as a result of the fact she has left home far behind: 

Today, while in the elevator with a man, I noticed the fact of being in an elevator with a man. And not feeling nervous in the slightest. Or even noticing it, even vaguely registering it in the back of my mind. This is significant because I used to be terrified of getting into elevators in case men got on, and I wouldn’t enter elevators if there was a man already in there. And if ever, perchance, I happened to be alone with a man, trapped for another 30 seconds, I would near-panic.

The fear was sexual assault. And it wasn’t ungrounded. I wasn’t the only woman I knew who felt or acted this way about men and secluded spaces.

This in turn reminds me of when Shazia Mirza, the British stand-up comedian, once seriously remarked that when she went to Mecca on pilgrimage, she found on separate occassions that as she walked right next to the Kaaba, her bum was pinched no less than three times. For real. Not until did she happen to publicise it for the first time in one of her routines, did Muslim women come to report to her that they had also been through the same. (The joke part was that she was going to gather them all together, and they were going to go on pilgrimage again next week).

Muslihoon, an ex-Muslim and a convert to Christianity, has a good post on how Muslim immigrants have generally helped to maintain the tension between individualism and collectivism in Western societies: 

What may be further nauseating is that still we, the West, are accused of devaluing people, of cheapening people’s worth and lives. They cannot see that the very fact a person may prostitute oneself in wanton sex if he or she so desires precisely underscores the value we place on a person and his or her life: so valuable is that person and his or her life that we dare not interfere in how he or she seeks enjoyment and meaning, even if it means doing completely idiotic things.

A child can do anything he or she wants: become an engineer, become an artist, become a dahipb designer, become an astronaut, even become President of The United States. His or her decisions are not determined by his or her parents or society. Unto each person is given a blank book to fill in, not a sheet within which to fill in the blanks.

And finally, yours truly has a post on the suburban mujahideen in our cities:

"I think you're hysterical", I say.

"Hysterical? Hysterical? What about our Muslim sisters and children in Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan? Tell me, are they stupid to be hysterical about their situation? Especially when an apostate aids the kuffar in abusing their dignity and livelihoods? Do you expect us to just sit back and ignore our Muslim sisters being ripped of their honour at the dirty hands of the kuffar? Do you expect us to stay silent and instead dance to Bush and Blair's tune? Tell me!"

"You're misguided, aren't you?"

"This is a Muslim area. Get out", says one of his comrades.

"Actually, sunshine, this is my country."

And we come to the end of this first edition of the X-Muslim Blog Roundup. We'll have another one up in a couple of weeks. I have tentatively decided to make the Carnival a fortnightly occurence. This may change because the ex-Muslim blogosphere is rather small, and this will no doubt affect the rate of involvement. But we'll see. The blogosphere is very fertile ground for up-and-coming ex-Muslims, primarily because it easily preserves anonymity while generating attention about one's views and experiences as an ex-Muslim. And things like this Carnival will be an extra reason for them to see they are not alone.

 

 If you happen to be an ex-Muslim blogger and would like to submit any links to your posts, then you are most welcome to email me through the website.

Thanks for reading and do check back in a fortnight!

 

Welcome to this abode of apostates.