Just playing around
Ibn Warraq: It’s meant for everyone, to show people who are dithering, those who are on the fence, those who are scared to speak out. One mustn’t forget the climate of fear in which many Muslims, even in the West – may I read you a letter that was sent to the Observer in London at the time of the Rushdie affair? The writer from Pakistan wrote anonymously, stated that “
- Salman Rushdie speaks for me. Mine is a voice that has not yet found expression in newspaper columns, it is the voice of those who are born Muslims but wish to recant in adulthood, yet are not permitted to, on pain of death. Someone who does not live in an Islamic society cannot imagine the sanctions – both self-imposed and external – that militate against expressing religious disbelief. ‘I don’t believe in God’ is an impossible public utterance, even among family and friends. So we hold our tongues, those of us who doubt”.
And this climate of fear continues even into the West. There was a remarkable article in The Washington Times by Julia Duin on October 13th 2002, where she talks of something like twenty thousand Muslims who convert to Christianity, but who are absolutely terrified of revealing this to friends and neighbours. And she gives examples of those who do reveal it, but who are then faced with ostracism, death threats, physical violence of various kinds. As far as I know, no-one’s been killed in the United States for example for their decision to leave Islam, but life is not particularly easy for them.
Stephen Crittenden: Well, it’s a book of testimonials, many of them like the one you just read. But if the book lacks anything, it seems to me it lacks the kind of demographic information – we know that Islam often describes itself as the fastest-growing religion in the world, but there’s not much information about how much leakage there is. Is that because there is no such information, is it because that information’s very hard to come by? What’s the story there?
Ibn Warraq: Yes indeed, for obvious reasons. Those who do leave Islam, those who become apostates, keep it quiet. And churches who baptise ex-Muslims are very reluctant to release the figures, they don’t want to create a sensation and so on. But we do have – according to the figures in this article in The Washington Times, you do have at least twenty thousand in the United States converting to Christianity. And then you have some figures that I do quote: people in Algeria, for example in the Qabili, converting to Christianity. One particular church recorded fifty baptisms in one year, which is quite remarkable in that it doesn’t sound a lot, but in a country where you can have your throat cut just for wearing lipstick, this open avowal of apostasy is quite remarkable. Stephen Crittenden. "The Religion Report".