Apostates Under Fire: Muslims Leaving Their Religion

May 26, 2015 | Politics

As debate rages over the radicalisation of young British Muslims, are we overlooking a different crisis of faith? Ex-Muslims who dare to speak out are often cut off by their families and fear for their lives.[...]" He was perfectly happy to be a cultural Muslim, take part in celebrations and observe traditions, but he couldn’t pretend a faith he didn’t possess."[..]Last week the hacking to death in Bangladesh of the blogger Ananta Bijoy Das was a brutal reminder of the risks atheists face in some Muslim-majority countries. And in an era in which British Islamic extremists travel thousands of miles to kill those they deem unbelievers, an apostate’s concern for his or her security at home is perhaps understandable.[...]“I’ve had bouts of clinical depression,” Nasreen says. “The thing is, Islam teaches you to grow up with low self-esteem and lack of self-identity. Without the collective, you’re lost. You’ve been taught to feel guilty and people-pleasing as a woman, and you do that from a very young age. I kept thinking, ‘Why do I want to wear short skirts? That’s so disgusting!’ No, it’s not disgusting. It took me a long time to appreciate my sexuality and my femininity. There was a lot of stress. I lost my friends. You’re very lonely and you’re ostracised.”[...]She blames the ghettoisation of multiculturalism and identity politics for this shift, the tendency to view individuals as members of separate cultural blocks. Or as Namazie puts it: “The problem with multiculturalism – not as a lived experience but as a social policy that divides and segregates communities – is that the “Muslim community” is seen to be homogenous. Therefore dissenters and freethinkers are deemed invisible because the ‘authentic’ Muslim is veiled, pro-sharia and pro-Islamist.”One success of the Islamist movement in Britain has been to define the cultural identity primarily in terms of religion.“We went from a Bengali to a Muslim community. It’s almost as if we’re suffering a second colonisation, the Arabisation of Asian cultures. Even my brother wears long Arab dresses.” As a consequence, she thinks Muslims have been encouraged to police other Muslims.“I’ll give you a couple of examples,” she says. “The other day I ordered some food online – pork buns – and afterwards a guy called me up from the company and he said ‘Nasreen, do you know it’s not halal?’ I said yes, I’m not a Muslim, but afterwards I wish I’d said ‘Who are you to police what I’m eating? How dare you call me up to remind me.’ But that’s how people think: you’re a Muslim, you’ve got a Muslim name.”[...]Nasreen, Vali and Shams all agreed that it will only be by bringing greater attention to Muslim apostates in British society that their predicament will improve. It would also help, they say, if they could rely on the progressive support that was once the right of freethinkers in this country.“Attitudes need to change,” says Cottee. “There has to be a greater openness around the whole issue. And the demonisation of apostates as ‘sell outs’ and ‘native informants’, which can be heard among both liberal-leftists and reactionary Muslims, needs to stop. People leave Islam. They have reasons for this, good, bad or whatever. It is a human right to change your mind. Deal with it.”

Islam destroys--dramatically with killings, and silently by destroying its adherents' spirit. [...] Islam is evil, most fundamentally because it requires its followers to abandon their reasoning mind in favor of blind obedience. Faith--instead of reason--rules the religious person, and it is this rejection of man's unique tool of survival that ultimately destroys those who follow Islam (or any religion) consistently.

What We Owe Our Soldiers on Memorial Day

May 22, 2015 | Politics

From Memorial Day: What We Owe Our Soldiers - Capitalism Magazine:

Every Memorial Day, we pay tribute to the American men and women who have died in combat. With speeches and solemn ceremonies, we recognize their courage and valor. But one fact goes unacknowledged in our Memorial Day tributes: all too many of our soldiers have died unnecessarily–because they were sent to fight for a purpose other than America’s freedom.The proper purpose of a government is to protect its citizens’ lives and freedom against the initiation of force by criminals at home and aggressors abroad. The American government has a sacred responsibility to recognize the individual value of every one of its citizens’ lives, and thus to do everything possible to protect the rights of each to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. This absolutely includes our soldiers.Soldiers are not sacrificial objects; they are full-fledged Americans with the same moral right as the rest of us to the pursuit of their own goals, their own dreams, their own happiness. Rational soldiers enjoy much of the work of military service, take pride in their ability to do it superlatively, and gain profound satisfaction in protecting the freedom of every American, including their own freedom.

How Moderate Muslims Should React To The Mohammed Cartoons

May 14, 2015 | Politics

From Defying the Islamic Totalitarians:

Although it is true that any form of mysticism, including religion, is philosophically an enemy of freedom, what is at issue here is a political enemy—an enemy who is willing and able to use force against us. The act of drawing figures of Mohammed was directed against the Islamic jihadists. It is they who want to forcibly impose their religious beliefs upon others. It is they who kill infidels and seek to establish a global caliphate. And it is they who must be publicly denounced and resisted.The so-called moderate Muslim—if that term is to have any real meaning—is someone who renounces force. He practices his religion but acknowledges everyone’s right to reject or ridicule it. Such a person is no threat to our freedom; he can, in fact, be an ally in this conflict. But anyone who believes that the denigration of Islam must not be allowed is in the camp of the jihadists.  That camp consists of not only the people who perform the beheadings and the machine-gunnings of non-believers, but also their tacit supporters. This includes all the Muslim states that have penalties for any type of blasphemy or apostasy—i.e., the practitioners of legalized jihadism—along with all the people who endorse such penalties. The jihadists and the jihadist-sanctioners are the enemy we need to stand up to.The “Draw Mohammed” event did just that.Was the peaceful Muslim offended by the Mohammed cartoons? Perhaps. His response, however, should be, first, thankfulness that he lives in a free, secular society, in which one is allowed to praise or to condemn Allah because the government neither inhibits nor promotes religion; second, anger against the jihadists, who are a threat to his rights as well; and third, enthusiastic support for the imperative of confronting that threat.

No “Hate Speech” Exemption To The First Amendment

May 8, 2015 | Politics

From No, there’s no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment - The Washington Post:

I keep hearing about a supposed “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment, or statements such as, “This isn’t free speech, it’s hate speech,” or “When does free speech stop and hate speech begin?” But there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment. Hateful ideas (whatever exactly that might mean) are just as protected under the First Amendment as other ideas. One is as free to condemn Islam — or Muslims, or Jews, or blacks, or whites, or illegal aliens, or native-born citizens — as one is to condemn capitalism or Socialism or Democrats or Republicans.To be sure, there are some kinds of speech that are unprotected by the First Amendment. But those narrow exceptions have nothing to do with “hate speech” in any conventionally used sense of the term. For instance, there is an exception for “fighting words” — face-to-face personal insults addressed to a specific person, of the sort that are likely to start an immediate fight. But this exception isn’t limited to racial or religious insults, nor does it cover all racially or religiously offensive statements.

Taqiyya in America

May 7, 2015 | Politics

From Texas Attack: It's Not (Just) About the Cartoons:

A misleading and dangerous narrative has formed in the wake of the shooting in Garland, Texas that is music to the ears of Islamists.

"The Islamic Community Center of Phoenix says Simpson was a consistent attendee and Soofi sometimes also came. Simpson was popular among the other young attendees."As pointed out by former CIA officer Clare Lopez, the mosque's Facebook page says it is owned by the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity whose links to Hamas earned it being called an unindicted co-conspirator designation in a terrorism-financing trial."Lopez also notes that the mosque's imam, Sheikh Mahmoud Abdul-Aziz Ahmad Sulaiman, is a member of a the North American Imams Federation, a group so radical that it is interconnected with the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America, an anti-American Islamist organization that supports Hamas and forbids Muslims from serving food to the U.S. military."The Federation had (or has) an official linked to the Jamaat-e-Islami group in Bangladesh; Sulaiman was even convicted as a war criminal there. Daniel Greenfeld discovered that the mosque held an event with Lauren Booth from PressTV, a propaganda outlet for the Iranian regime. Lopez also noticed that Simpson converted to Islam around the same time as he began attending the mosque, strongly indicating that his original interpretations of Islam were shaped by what was being preached at the mosque."