Interview with A.M.
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Alliance of Former Muslims
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/12
Published: September 12th 2017
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: As a law graduate from Pakistan, what was your experience there?
A.M.: What I observed in Pakistan became the main reason for my apostasy. Whenever I asked questions about the creation of the universe – and ultimately the creation of Allah, the maker of the universe – I was shushed. I was told that good Muslims never ask such questions. I did not know then that Islam had no answers. Islam needs submission and for people to follow the faith blindly, so blindly that they blow themselves up without asking why they should be deprived of a happy and fulfilling life.
The test of questions is so dangerous for Islam that Muslims have lobbied for blasphemy laws in their home countries and ‘hate speech’ laws in Western countries to avoid it. One can easily see that Islam has become a privileged religion, one that cannot be questioned. Muslims are given a free pass to rape young women, to preach hatred in the mosques and to wage jihad against non-Muslims, but if you question any of this, then you are labelled a bigot, a racist or an ‘Islamophobe’. The media directs its ire at you, not them.
In Pakistan, no politician actually practices Islam, as proper Muslims are supposed to. I have seen religious clerics on the payroll of the politicians. No resistance or revolutionary movement can prosper in Pakistan because the Mullahs preach in their Friday sermons for the Muslims have patience, because patience is what Allah wants. Allah is testing his followers’ strength, that they might be rewarded in Paradise. People believe this nonsense and keep calm, because they have been raised not to question their faith.
There are also violent clashes between the various different sects of Islam, who have severe differences with each other – so severe, that we have entire countries based on them, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran. During the recent migrant crisis, many Gulf countries refused to accept refugees from Syria because of these sectarian differences.
In Pakistan, mosques use loud speakers for the pronouncement of the azan, i.e. the Muslim call to prayer. Since different sects have different timings for it, with the prayer being five times a day, you have to listen to this noise pollution between forty and fifty times. This drives people crazy, but they can’t question it for fear of being charged with blasphemy. These are just a few examples of Islam’s brutality and stupidity.
Jacobsen: What prompted the need to flee the country?
A.M.: I have been very active as an advocate in my country. I did a lot of Public Interest litigation and stood for the rights of my fellow citizens on many issues, including hikes in oil prices. I challenged the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on the corruption surrounding his trumpeted laptop scheme for students. I questioned the legitimacy of Sharif’s nomination papers before the elections. I even challenged the then Foreign Minister’s right to hold office due to her default in the electricity bills, which amounted to 10 million rupees at the time.
With the same devotion and determination, with the help of a friend, I started a project to highlight the issue of child sexual abuse in religious schools. We decided to write a novel about it, for which I wrote the preface. We based the characters, stories and places on the real world, but changed the names. We wrote the novel in English so that it would reach the Pakistani elites, for whom English is a second official language.
Once published, the novel captured the attention of various classes of people. Part of the reason for this was my personal popularity on a local level as a lawyer and political worker. Naturally, the book drew criticism from religious fundamentalists, who quickly issued a fatwa against us and the novel.
Soon afterwards, I was threatened by a group of people outside of the High Court. Following this, I was attacked and shot at by two bikers, who thankfully were not on target. My friend and co-author also came under fire: the local people protested in front of his house, demanding that he be killed. Petitions in the High Court were also advanced by various individuals who invoked the blasphemy laws to see us punished. In the face of such hostility, we considered it necessary to run from Pakistan.
Jacobsen: How did you survive when people wanted you dead?
A.M.: In Pakistan, there is zero tolerance for criticism of Islam. However, the same can be said for Muslims all over the world. No matter where you encounter them, the moment you begin to question Islam, Muslims become furious. In Muslim majority countries, any anti-Islamic sentiment is dealt with under the blasphemy law, often resulting in the death penalty.
Honestly, the main reason for our survival in Pakistan was that we did not contact the authorities about it. There are many cases of alleged blasphemers who have died in police custody. Every honest Muslim wants blasphemers dead.
Jacobsen: You are an Ex-Muslim and a blogger. How has this impacted your life, simply writing words?
A.M.: To put it simply, it has forced me to live a dual life. I am not open about my apostasy for fear of my life, as well as abandonment by friends and family.
Understanding all of the deceptions of Islam is not easy. Until you critically examine the scriptures and their sources, you cannot reason yourself out of it. This is not made easy by the constant promotion of ignorance in Saudi-funded mosques. It’s a business racket for the Kingdom: they earn a fortune from the millions of Muslims who make the Hajj pilgrimage every year. They are getting richer day by day, while treating other Muslims as second-class citizens, e.g. Shi’a Muslims. Ordinary Saudis are not troubled by this, because they have been blinded by faith.
When I studied the objectionable content in both the Qur’an and the hadith, I felt deceived and downtrodden. I could not rationalise the killing of infidels to spread the faith, owning female slaves and using them for sexual pleasure, marrying girls as young as six years old, female genital mutilation, death for apostasy and blasphemy, and many other inhumane practices.
I felt as if my life had no meaning. I wanted to burst with anger, realising that I had wasted my life on this nonsense.
Islam compels each of us to become a ‘true Muslim’, which is a deliberately unattainable goal: no matter what you do, you will always fall short of the Prophet Muhammad. This imperfection creates a deeply ingrained sense of guilt, which the deceptive preachers of Islam readily exploit. For some, this guilt is so powerful that jihad In the name of Allah is the only means of overcoming it.
One example would be how teenage boys are made to feel guilty for experiencing sexual desire. Naturally, these boys begin to feel suffocated, and are thus drawn to the idea of an imaginary paradise of eternal virgins, obtainable only by jihad. For many, the puritanical doctrines of Islam make martyrdom the only way out of this physical and mental torture.
Jacobsen: How do you fight for human rights?
A.M.: I have been actively fighting for the rights of Pakistanis by filing Public Interest litigations. Nowadays, I am focused on defending the rights of Ex-Muslims and waking Muslims up to the evils of their faith. This is made difficult by the sinister collusion of the Left with Islam, but we are doing what we can. Keeping silent and feeling angry is not gonna get us anywhere. I thus maintain a blog and engage with people on Twitter.
Jacobsen: What is your next step in fighting for the rights of the non-religious?
A.M.: We are living in the era of social media. Facebook and Twitter are the best ways to spread our message far and wide. Alliance of Former Muslims gives us an organized platform to voice our concerns. I really appreciate Kareem and other members of our group for being active on this front. This struggle is hard, but we are relentless, we are determined, and we hope to achieve real breakthroughs in the near future.
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