Why We Left Islam (23 page)

Abul’s Testimony

My name is Abul Kasem. I am a native of Bangladesh, a Muslim majority country. Currently, I am an Australian. During my childhood and adulthood, which I spent in the Islamic society of Bangladesh, I witnessed how Islam has decidedly rendered our rich Bengali culture to the servitude of Arab Bedouin culture. Islam has robbed the very essence of our Bengalihood. In 1971, in the genocide of Bengalis by the Islamic army of Pakistan, I experienced the true color of Islam—it was inhumane, barbaric, and imperialistic. My personal experience forced me to ponder deeply what I always believed to be infallible words of Allah in the Qur’an, and the personal actions of his messenger Mohammad. I took Islam very seriously, spent many years reading and comprehending
the “real Islam,” just to satisfy myself that I was not wrong in my understanding of Islam.

The result is that I had no choice but to leave this terrible cult of hate, terror, destruction, and savagery. Islam is the opposite of civilization. In these few passages you will learn more about my perception of Islam.

An Islamist is like an addict of a hardcore drug. The more you tell him about the truth of the drug “Islam,” the more he will cling to it. In fact, he cannot live without the drug. But deep inside he knows for sure that he is under the influence of a powerful drug and what is going on around today’s world is truly inspired by the doctrine of “true or real Islam.”

It is like smoking. Most smokers know the potential danger of smoking yet they cling to it despite so much warning by the government and the medical doctors.

However, we should not get disappointed with this. I myself was one of these drug addicts. I used to think in exactly the same way that these Islamists are reacting whenever they see the truth. It is not that simple for these people to give up their faith. In fact, we should never even say that they should do this. Because this will surely be counterproductive. All we do is just show them the picture. Let them go and deny. But they are definitely agitated; if not they would not even bother to respond. The agitation of their mind and their denial is the clearest signal that the message has gone through although there is denial. This is what we do; that is, we create some doubt and a little confusion. It will take some time before the next stage sets in. In this stage they may even turn more to their religion. This is another sign that a Muslim is desperate to make sure that what he believes is correct. This may continue for some time.

At some point during this stage he may suddenly wake up and have a second look at his irrational belief. This is the time he will slowly stop practicing his rituals and read more about what we write. This is the time when we win.

I receive plenty of hate mail and even threats to my life. Almost all of them call me a traitor. All this hate mail proves is that my message is causing agitation and the Islamists are feeling insecure. Whenever I receive hate mail I become quite confident
that the message has hit the target. I do not bother even to respond to these hate messages. Time will take care of everything. We just plant the seed of doubt, that’s all. Leave the rest to nature. It will take care of itself.

Let me also tell you that I have received quite a few sincere emails from Muslims who told me that they have left Islam after carefully examining the pros and cons. No Muslim will announce publicly that he has left Islam; therefore, be certain that most Muslims will seldom tell you that they have left Islam.

Therefore, we should not at all get disappointed when we receive irrational/hate mail from the Islamists. It will take a very long time (probably a century) before we can see any visible and tangible result of our effort. I will have died by that time. To me, that is fine. I do not expect a billion Muslims to discard their religion overnight simply by reading a few articles. This is not going to happen. The path to enlightenment is extremely slow.

Please kindly note that without the advent of the Internet we could not have even gotten what we have achieved today. The Internet has changed everything. You can see that so many Web sites are now telling the truth about the “real Islam.” Even a few years ago these were unthinkable for the Muslims. I myself got most of the truth about Islam from the Internet.

Therefore, we need some patience. Islam today is the most hated religion in the world. The words “Islam” and “fundamentalism” are associated with terrorism, genocide, murder, bombing, hate—anything that goes against humanity. This has caused a great deal of pain, anxiety, panic, and insecurity amongst the Islamists. They know rather well that it is the Internet and the extraordinary power of the electronic media that is their enemy. That is why the Islamists are scanning the entire cyber world to monitor what the world is thinking about Islam and they are determined to counter the truth with falsehood and deception even if they have to twist their own holy scriptures for this.

I have tried to give you my idea on how to respond to an Islamist. The best response is no active response. We just portray the “real Islam” and let the Islamists think.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-T
HREE
LIVING WITNESSES VS. POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

“What if—despite our deepest hopes and wishes—Islam is not, at its core, a basically good, peaceful, and tolerant religion? What if Islam at its core is actually very similar to Nazism or any number of other misguided or even evil belief systems, and does in fact want to dominate the world?”

H
AVING CONCLUDED the testimony portion of the book, one resounding element seems to stand out. Despite the endless claims of Muslim apologists, when Islam displays outstanding measures of personal freedoms or tolerance of non-Muslims, it is the exception and not the norm. As we all know by now, the goal of radical Islam is to bring about complete Islamic global domination.

If the Islamists are not stopped, then what you have read here—the stories of oppression, intolerance, and the extreme discrimination that the West left behind decades ago—will eventually be told, not from the other side of the world, but from our own neighborhoods. If the Islamists are not stopped, then the accounts of those you have read here could become part of the daily lives of future generations in the West. If you think this is a preposterous notion then consider the following: Whether or not we choose to ignore the facts, the Islamic world and the West are currently involved in a holy war. And the West does not appear to be winning. In truth, there are people who are prepared to die and kill us simply because we do not embrace Islam as they do. Additionally, they are also prepared to kill other Muslims, such as Benazair Bhutto, who also do not embrace radical Islam. This reality is further evidenced by the increasing number of news stories citing Allah
and Islam as a justification for cold-blooded murder. Indeed, radical Islam’s violence and hatred towards Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and most particularly toward Jews is quite apparent to anyone who reads the newspaper even casually.

As we all know, on September 11, 2001, in addition to the collapse of the Twin Towers, radical Islam also attacked the Pentagon. Yes, in the name of Allah, terrorists targeted the very epicenter of America’s military might. This was war executed in the name of Allah. From that moment on, these subsequent years have witnessed waves of evil, all carried out in the name of Islam, and there is no hope of this going away any time soon. In recent years things have most certainly gone from bad to worse.

In truth it is becoming increasingly evident that Islamic fundamentalism is a global problem, and if it is not stopped will soon arrive at a neighborhood near you. By the time that this book goes to print, a host of new stories will no doubt have made the headlines. There are in truth millions of people who want to convert or kill us in the name of Allah. Let us never forget 9/11, 7/11, the Madrid bombings, the Indian train attacks, and the Bali atrocity. Yet, despite the realities of these stories and the testimonies presented in this book since September 11, the West still seems confused regarding the true nature of Islam.

On one hand, we have been told, if once then a thousand times, “Islam means peace” (the truth is that Islam means submission to Allah). We have been told that Islam is a truly beautiful religion and that it is just like any other world religion. We have been assured that Islam is not in any way inherently violent. We have been told that “real Islam” does not support
jihad
or holy war against “infidels.” We have been told that those that make up the radical Muslim fringe are only a very tiny minority of the world Muslim population. They have “hijacked a noble religion,” we have been told.

Yet among those who have left Islam, we hear a very different account. Are those who talk of the peaceful religion of Islam not in fact talking about the sterilized, decaffeinated, or “Christianized” version of Islam that is specifically packaged for acceptance in the West? Is the diet Islam-lite the real Islam, or is it the Islam that we
see on the nightly news? Here’s the difficulty: The voices that paint Islam as mild and serene are most often the politicians, or Muslim apologists, or the spokesman for the local mosque.

On the other hand, there is another Islam that we see. This is the Islam that produces far too many violent and even murderous individuals. It is the Islam of Osama bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the suicide bombers. It is the Islam of
jihad
and “kill the infidels.” This is the Islam that most would simply like to wish away into nonexistence. But now, having read the stories of these brave and dear men and women, the question is now posed: Who will we listen to? Will we continue to accept the claims of the hopeful politicians, the Muslim apologists, and the evangelists funded by the Wahabbi Saudi Arabian government, or will we accept the accounts of those who have actually lived Islam? Will we accept what we are told, or will we accept what we have seen over the past decade on a global scale? Will we ascribe weight to the voices of the scholars who have spent a lifetime studying Islam such as Robert Spencer or Daniel Pipes, or will we believe those who claim that “slaughter the infidels wherever you find them” (
Qur’an 2:191
) really means to “love your neighbor as yourself”?

Whenever any particular story breaks in the news regarding yet another inhuman atrocity that was committed by someone who has come under the influence of Islam, almost reflexively various commentators stumble over themselves to explain and qualify that, despite the acts of a few misguided and underprivileged souls, Islam itself is truly a great and noble religion and is most certainly not to blame. They comfort and reassure us that what we are seeing today with the suicide bombings and the beheadings are simply the actions of a few evil and violent perverts who have “hijacked a great religion.”

When we as Westerners make such claims—namely that Islam is at its core a great, peaceful, and good religion—when we make these claims based not on objective realities, such as a solid examination of the various sacred texts and history of Islam, but rather based on our own sheer faith that it simply must be so, we are literally committing cultural suicide. This is not an exaggeration.
It is Jonestown on a scale unimaginable. This poison, however, may take a few generations to complete its work, but it is no less effective than the infamous Kool-Aid that was swallowed enmasse in Ghana.

Now, by “faith” we are speaking in two ways. First, we say faith in the sense of a belief system, in this case that vague and yet so popular unnamed belief system that says—and we’ve all heard the cliché a thousand times—that all religions lead to God and all religions are basically good. We also say faith in the sense of hope—or probably a better word would be desperation. A desperately held belief that Islam simply must be good at its core; otherwise. . . then what?

It must. It simply must.

But what if it isn’t?

Are we allowed to even ask these questions? We can hear the charges of spreading hatred already. Yet, is it truly “hateful” to critique or question an ideology? In other words, isn’t hatred directed toward individuals and not concepts or ideologies? Or rephrased, in the early 1940s, could someone both love the German people and still speak out against Nazism without being accused of hatred? Or another relevant question would be: Is not one of the premier strengths of any truly “progressive” society the ability to freely debate and discuss virtually anything? Is not this one of the greatest strengths of Western culture? Iron sharpens iron. Or is the sound of iron sharpening iron now simply perceived as unnecessary and annoying “negative vibes” that are only to be quieted?

Has the “politically correct” runaway juggernaut of a social experiment already robbed our society of the ability to civilly discuss those things that are oftentimes messy or uncomfortable? Has a hyper-political correctness robbed us of one of the premiere freedoms that truly make us great? In our efforts to become sensitive, have we become absurd? We would argue that we have.

There has also emerged an attempt to explain many of the atrocities that have been carried out in Allah’s name. Frequently, the blame is placed on the creation of the state of Israel or American interference in the Middle East—specifically the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. After all, somewhere deeply ingrained in
each of us is the need for a rational explanation as a means through which we can try to solve problems. If we can simply change ourselves, then we could eliminate our enemies’ desire to kill us—or so the thinking goes.

Sadly, this belief is based more on fear-based emotionalism, guilt-based self-hatred, and a glaring ignorance of the history of Islam than on any legitimate reasons. It is interesting that back in the 1930s, as Europe faced the looming threat of Nazism, the Roman Catholic historian and intellectual Hilaire Belloc believed that Islam would one day pose an even greater danger than that of Hitler’s regime and was acutely aware that historically, “Vienna, as we saw, was almost taken and only saved by the Christian army under the command of the King of Poland on a date that ought to be among the most famous in history—September 11, 1683.”
¹