December is Ex-Muslim Awareness Month so this week, while much of the world’s focus has been on Christmas and elsewhere, the Freethinker is publishing articles highlighting the underknown plight of ex-Muslims in Britain today.
Apostasy is the decision to renounce a faith and/or convert to another religion. Along with other unalienable human rights, freedom of and from religion is considered a fundamental right in free Western democratic cultures. However, according to Islamic law, apostasy is a sin that carries a death sentence.
Given that December is Ex-Muslim Awareness Month, it is a sad fact that the threats and mistreatment that apostates of Islam endure remain largely irrelevant to global human rights advocates to this day.
For most Westerners, publicly criticizing or leaving religion is usually not dangerous. But criticizing or leaving Islam is still a huge statement in and of itself. Many critics of Islam and ex-Muslims face vicious consequences at the hands of those who try to control them through fear, intimidation, and violence. Over the years, apostophobia has visibly increased in the West.
Family members and community members ostracise, torture, and disown ex-Muslims, while officials and well-meaning liberals frequently advise them to refrain from upsetting religious fanatics. For many people, this may sound antiquated, like a story from a medieval history book, but it is a reality of daily life for apostates of Islam living in the free Western world.
The freedom to abandon the religion of their upbringing may be taken for granted by many Westerners, but for the apostate of Islam, life quickly turns into a bed of thorns.
Ex-Muslim Awareness Month is an online campaign that was first organised by the content producer and ex-Muslim activist Haram Doodles in 2022. This year, as she told me via WhatsApp, Haram Doodles has, along with the global Ex-Muslims International coalition, emphasised that
Apostophobia is widespread in Muslim families and countries because of the death penalty for blasphemy and apostasy in Shariah. Ex-Muslims fear being found out and persecuted and face harsh, violent, and even fatal consequences, like being disowned, abused, imprisoned, or even killed. As an ex-Muslim content creator, I’ve heard firsthand from ex-Muslims all over the world, at different stages of their journey out of Islam. We invite ex-Muslims to share their stories of apostophobia, invite non-Muslims to support and amplify ex-Muslim voices, and join ex-Muslims in calling [for] an end to the fear, hate, harm, and apostophobia that people experience for leaving Islam.
The founder of the Council of ex-Muslims of Britain Maryam Namazie told me that:
Apostophobia has a devastating effect on the lives of ex-Muslims and includes everything from shunning (a form of long-term psychological torture), hostility, discrimination, threats, and even death. A new brief by the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain reveals the pervasive violence and harm and the need to support ex-Muslims on their courageous journey from control to freedom.
Muslim communities around the world generally hold the view that converting to another religion or abandoning Islam is an unforgivable sin that ought to be punished by death. Coming out as a non-believer in traditional Muslim households can be perilous at a time when young people are expected to live up to certain religious and cultural standards.
There have been documented instances of young people being threatened, intimidated, and shunned by their communities and, in certain situations, subjected to severe physical violence after telling their families they were no longer Muslims.
The increasing number of ex-Muslims sharing their horrific experiences on social media platforms while having almost no one to turn to for support is disheartening.
Needless to say, young men who reject Islam and face torture and ostracism need to be protected and supported, as do girls who rebel against the hijab and then abandon Islam as a last resort to escape abuse and violence at the hands of their family members. Ironically, these miserable souls are often told by the authorities to keep a low profile and not offend fanatics for their own safety.
Sadly, all too often, discussions of defiance against Islam have been branded as ‘Islamophobic’ and the urge to avoid these discussions has been euphemized as protecting ‘community relations’. This makes it convenient for the relevant authorities to overlook the suffering of ex-Muslims.
There is little to no awareness of the issue surrounding the plight of ex-Muslims, nor is there any policy on protecting these minorities within minorities. As a result, many young people suffer in silence. Since any act of defiance in Islam has been categorised as blasphemous, offensive, and Islamophobic, ex-Muslims have simply been left to come to terms with their sad reality. It’s just safer to stay quiet could be their motto.
But no one should be made to live such a miserable life. This complacency is staggering.
Just recently, in the House of Commons, backbench Labour MP Tahir Ali has called for the reintroduction of blasphemy laws in order to ‘prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions.’
I think, at this point, we need to avoid using euphemistic terms to describe what happened in Parliament and call a spade a spade. People are beheaded, tortured, imprisoned, and burnt alive for disrespecting Islam in countries where draconian Islamic blasphemy laws are enforced. The fact that a British MP can effectively side with these inhumane laws while encountering little to no resistance in our Parliament is abominable.
Such thinly disguised attempts to outlaw blasphemy under the guise of combating Islamophobia are not new. However, in addition to being evasive and ambiguous, the Prime Minister’s remark that desecration is ‘awful’ simply gave credence to the use of such rhetoric. Whether this was intentional or not, it is an alarming development.
This cannot be emphasised enough: the ex-Muslims who are already subjected to abuse at the hands of their families and communities would be thrown to the wolves if British legislation were to make a reassuring accommodation with Islamic blasphemy laws.
It would only exacerbate the plight of ex-Muslims to have blasphemy legislation hanging over their heads while they are being vilified by Muslim fundamentalists and told by many liberals to not be so harsh on Islam. They are already called ‘sellout’, ‘coconut’, ‘Uncle Tom’, ‘native informant’, and the like for merely criticizing Islamic teachings and traditions which are discriminatory, misogynistic, and incompatible with human rights.
Any criticism of Islam as a set of beliefs is now often framed as victimizing or discriminating against Muslims, and proponents of free speech who firmly believe that it is a human right to change one’s mind on religion and who support critical scrutiny of Christianity are often reluctant to grant these rights to ex-Muslims.
Like any other religion or belief system, there are a variety of reasons why people leave Islam. Islam, as a set of beliefs, has no rights; however, ex-Muslims, as people, do. Their efforts to examine religion and criticize its inconsistency with the humanistic norms of democratic Western societies should be acknowledged as legitimate, and the ongoing demonization of ex-Muslims should be called out and opposed.
Ex-Muslims are not only the canaries in the coal mine warning the West about the lurking dangers of religious extremism, but they are also soldiers fighting on the front lines in the battle to defend, protect, and preserve the hard-won freedoms and liberties that many naïve Western liberals now take for granted. This is something that people of all faiths and no faith need to realise. Time to step up and support #ExMuslimAwarenessMonth.
Related reading
The plight of ex-Muslims in Britain today, by Benjamin Jones
Breaking the silence: Pakistani ex-Muslims find a voice on social media, by Tehreem Azeem
Surviving Ramadan: An ex-Muslim’s journey in Pakistan’s religious landscape, by Azad
The Galileo of Pakistan? Interview with Professor Sher Ali, by Ehtesham Hassan
Mind Your Ramadan! by Khadija Khan
From religious orthodoxy to free thought, by Tehreem Azeem
‘The best way to combat bad speech is with good speech’ – interview with Maryam Namazie, by Emma Park
The far right and ex-Muslims: ‘The enemy of my enemy is not my friend’, by Sara Al-Ruqaishi
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