Why We Left Islam (21 page)

This letter urges all of us to realize that Islam is part of the problem, not the solution. Only by acknowledging what it stands for can we successfully stand against it. And if we don’t stand against it, we in the West will find ourselves under its oppressive power.

Testimony of an Apostate who Found Freedom in the U.S.

I was born in an Islamic country to Muslim parents, but I was raised in the United States. Throughout my life, I considered myself to be a Muslim, and I maintained a large arsenal of uninformed apologies, explanations, and blind denials to promote and defend Islam. Of course, I had never once read the Qur’an, and I had relied exclusively on what I heard from my parents, my relatives, my Muslim friends, and the Islamic media.

Then one day, at the age of twenty-six, I decided to read the Qur’an so that I could become a “better Muslim.” The first three
pages alone shocked me with their illogic and obvious contradictions with the constant claim that Allah was the “most merciful” and “most compassionate,” but I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, held on tightly, and pushed ahead with absolute certainty that it would all be explained and would get better. However, it only got worse—much worse.

After reading the Qur’an, I realized that I couldn’t possibly endorse Islam as a religion, as a philosophy, as a moral standard, as an ethical code, or even as useful fiction. I determined that these philosophies and this image of Allah could only come from an extremely warped and disturbed person who suffered from an aggregation of the most severe and profound human weaknesses.

Since 1996, I’ve read and re-read the Qur’an and the
Hadiths
(which are even worse than the Qur’an), and I’ve always reached the same conclusion—Islam is an absolute disaster for the entire world, for Christians, for Jews, for pagans, for atheists, for women, for children, and, most of all, for Muslims themselves.

I’ve discussed Islam’s fundamental weaknesses endlessly with many relatives and friends, and nobody has ever been able to respond in any meaningful way. Nobody has ever been able to manufacture any legitimate story that indicates that Islam is a useful or positive force on this earth. From the Islamic apologists, I hear that somehow the Jews are responsible for my betrayal. I hear that I’ve been “brainwashed” by the media, which, according to them, is Jewish. I hear that I need to understand Islamic “history” to understand the unlimited illogic, cruelty, internal inconsistency, and injustice. I hear that somebody, somewhere in some distant Islamic country, could validly answer my questions, but the people I speak with can say only that there is some good explanation, but that they don’t know enough to tell me.

Of course, when those allegedly wise Muslims appear, they themselves can’t possibly answer the questions and they play the same game—it’s the Jews, it’s the media, I don’t know enough Islamic history to understand, and they know somebody eight thousand miles away who could explain it all to me. Ultimately, nobody can sufficiently explain how the Qur’an is anything other than arbitrary, cruel, unjust, evil, and riddled with evidence that
it is based on the most profound human weaknesses. I don’t use those terms lightly or imprecisely or emotionally. As a matter of dispassionate fact, Islam—as written in the Qur’an—is arbitrary, cruel, unjust, and evil, and it contains endless conclusive evidence that the founder of this “religion” suffered from the most intense form of the worst human weaknesses on earth.

Of course, my life has improved drastically since I read the Qur’an and realized the obvious human weaknesses from which it originated. I sincerely hope that all Muslims will read the Qur’an and simply think about whether this religion comes from a good person or a bad person, from an intelligent person or from a fool, from good or from evil, from compassion or from cruelty, from justice or injustice, from decency or from depravity—however anyone wants to define those terms.

Islam is, in fact, the problem for the entire world, but the biggest problem on earth for Muslims themselves. Unfortunately, in addition to destroying themselves with Islam, the rest of the world is likely to meet its end as soon as true Muslims assemble the weaponry required to destroy the earth.

It’s absolutely imperative that the people who I call “pretend Muslims”—who are the vast majority of people who call themselves Muslims—disassociate themselves from this bizarre superstition called Islam and from the few true believers who rely on the pretend Muslims for their strength and legitimacy. President Bush and others are dead wrong when they say that Islam is a great and peaceful faith that has been hijacked by a few extremists. In fact, Islam is a vile and violent faith that establishes extremism and that has been hijacked by the pretend Muslims who, by their own human decency, have given this barbaric superstition the appearance of legitimacy to the uninformed.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
MY LEAVING ISLAM TESTIMONY

“[After leaving Islam], I am starting college. I choose what I want to wear, I choose how I want to live. I am bringing my kids up away from the damaging effects of Islam. I hope more Muslims than ever leave Islam this year and the next and the next until none are left.”

W
HILE TERROR ATTACKS have traumatized the world, some apostates have experienced their own form of terrorism and persecution within their own homes. In Shara’s story we learn how persecution and tyranny within Islamic families is tolerated and can find itself in a family home in England. Indeed, in recent years we have witnessed the term and seen the effects of “honor killing” in many western cities. Shara’s testimony gives even more evidence that women frequently suffer under Islam—even in the West.

Shara’s Testimony

My father, who is Moroccan, came over to England in the early ‘70s. He applied on a student visa at the time, and immigration was a good thing rather than what it has become today.

He wasn’t a strict Muslim at the time; he was quite a rebel. He met my mother, who was English, not long after he came over. And after seeing her a few times, he decided to marry her.

She was sixteen when she married my father, still not aware of Muslims and the truth. After about a year of marriage, my sister was born; things were not good between my parents. He was violent and would lash out at my mother quite often, and most of the time over silly things like too much salt in the food,
etc.

He was obviously trying to push her into being a good Muslim woman, and her loving him meant that she stayed and gave birth to me two years after my sister, and then gave birth to my younger sister another four years later.

As a Muslim man, my father grew angry at the fact that my mother had only given birth to three girls. He beat my mother very badly; she was hospitalized and the doctors were forced to remove her womb from where he had beaten her so badly. It was the only way to save her life. When she awoke, my father was kind enough to tell her that he would be divorcing her now that she could no longer have children, and being a man, he needed a son.

She ran away from him and she ran away from us. When my younger sister was only six months old, my mother packed her stuff and left our life for good; we never saw her again until I was twenty years old (but that is a whole other story). I was only four years old at the time, and was not old enough to understand why she had left us. All I could see was that she couldn’t have loved us.

My father couldn’t cope with three kids, so he gave us up, and placed us in a children’s home. It was a temporary thing, until he could get himself sorted out. It took him three years. He used to visit us while we were living there.

Can you imagine how lost and alone we all felt; one second we had a mum, she left, and the next day my dad gave us away? Needless to say I was a very screwed up young girl.

But I look back on the three years we had in that children’s home with a certain fondness, because that was the only time in my life when I experienced the fun of being a child. When I turned seven, my father came back for us and took us to his house to live. But first he needed to get married, so off we all went to Morocco for his arranged wedding.

Our family over there was taking no chances on him marrying a
kafir
woman again, and had handpicked a lady from the village.

We met her, and she seemed nice enough. We were desperate for a mother’s love.

My father married this lady and we returned to England to start our family life. Things went bad right away: My father became religious and my stepmother was a monster. She had barely
been in the country for a few months when we first experienced a physical beating.

Because we had lived in an English home before my father took us back, we couldn’t speak Moroccan, so the first thing my parents implemented was a new rule. No speaking in the house unless it was in Moroccan. Seeing how we didn’t know any of it, and we were talkative kids, we broke the rule. My sister said “Dad” instead of the Moroccan equivalent. She was whipped across her back until she bled; we all were as they felt that all should be punished whenever any one of us broke a rule.

Life changed quickly, and my childhood was spent in a haze of pain, beatings, and tears. Amongst the various physical punishments were whippings, burnings (where a red hot knife would be placed on our skin), being tied up and left there, and being force-fed excrement. I do not lie, these are the things they did to train us, but I wouldn’t even train a dog like that.

We were taught the Qur’an, and how to recite it; any mistakes and we were beaten. We did all the chores, and we covered ourselves when at school. We were not allowed to have friends, and we never went anywhere. The only times we ever had fun was when we were on holiday in Morocco. Then our parents were too busy to notice us most of the time.

Later, I was eleven and on holiday in Morocco. My father beat me badly in the
medina
(a place in town where everybody goes); he was very cruel. That was the first time I tried to kill myself. I just wanted to die, to give up, and I took as many pills as I could find and I swallowed them. Sadly all I did was make myself very ill. I spent the whole night puking, and my uncle was really worried; he ran and fetched my dad, who took one look at me lying there and said, “Good, let her die.” Believe me, at that moment all I wanted to do was die.

I didn’t die; I carried on. We came back to England, and life carried on the same: beatings and crying late at night.

One day when I was thirteen, my stepmother went too far while beating me. I returned home late from school (not very late) because I had been studying in the library. I walked in to the house and she just jumped on me. She had a ladies high heel
shoe, and used the heel part to beat me on the head. She just kept hitting and hitting. I remember feeling something warm running down my face. I remember putting my hands over my face and pulling them away to see that they were both covered with blood, so much blood.

I passed out. When I woke up in the hospital, they told me that I had been in a coma for three months.

Academically, I was a top student. I passed all my exams on a regular basis and I was about to be awarded with the first sponsorship from my school to go to NASA when I was sixteen. These were all dreams because my father never would have let me go. Here is an example of his attitude about learning: I loved to read, so I would sneak books up to my room and read them whenever I got a spare moment. My book collection became a bit too hard to hide and my father discovered my books. He beat me and made me watch while he burned them; he then placed the Qur’an in my hand and said that was the only book I should be reading.

But my stepmother’s attack on my skull and the subsequent three-month coma set me back. I was never able to fully recover. Where once numbers made sense and science was as easy as riding a bike, all I could see was confusion. I became stupid.

I was placed into a state-funded home, because my parents no longer had the right to care for me. I just kind of drifted about pointlessly. I quit school, ashamed at how low my grades had become in some classes. People knew what had happened to me, but I was too ashamed to face them.

When I was seventeen, I went on holiday with my family, to Morocco. I knew how bad my parents had been to me, and I no longer lived at home, but I still craved family love, so I gave them this chance and went away with them. I knew the risks. I packed away copies of my passport and birth certificate, some extra money, and the contact details for the British embassy over there. I was worried that they would try to keep me over there by force.

That shouldn’t have been my only worry. I didn’t wear a
hijab
at this stage, and dressed how I wanted to. I was raped on that holiday by a cousin; when he had finished the deed he looked at me and said that I couldn’t tell anyone because no one
would believe me, and the way I had been dressed meant people wouldn’t blame him.

I knew he was right. I cried myself to sleep the whole time I was there. No one understood why I became a recluse, or why I made my uncle escort me everywhere—even my uncle didn’t know. I just needed a chaperone.

What’s worse is that a few years later I told my sister what had happened. I needed to tell someone; I needed someone to tell me it wasn’t my fault. She went and told my parents. They didn’t believe me. My father shouted at me, and my stepmother told me to consider myself lucky as he was a fine young man.

Nothing hurt as much as that. . . at least not yet.

I spent seven years doing what I wanted, going where I wanted. Wearing what I wanted. But I was still a Muslim at heart. I just considered myself to be a non-practicing Muslim. I had issues, and even though my father was so cruel to me, I still tried to gain his admiration and acceptance.

I met my ex-husband when I was twenty. I was at a petrol station and we just started talking. He seemed so nice and polite, and had a nice smile. He was also a Moroccan, which was perfect because I still wanted my dad to love me. He asked me out on a date, and I accepted. We had a good time, and continued to see each other when I had time off from work.