In digital computers, an interrupt (sometimes referred to as a trap) is a request for the processor to interrupt
currently executing code (when permitted), so that the event can be
processed in a timely manner. If the request is accepted, the processor
will suspend its current activities, save its state, and execute a function called an interrupt handler (or an interrupt service routine, ISR) to deal with the event. This interruption is often temporary, allowing the software to resume normal activities after the interrupt handler finishes, although the interrupt could instead indicate a fatal error.
Interrupts are commonly used by hardware devices to indicate
electronic or physical state changes that require time-sensitive
attention. Interrupts are also commonly used to implement computer multitasking, especially in real-time computing. Systems that use interrupts in these ways are said to be interrupt-driven.
History
Hardware interrupts were introduced as an optimization, eliminating unproductive waiting time in polling loops, waiting for external events. The first system to use this approach was the DYSEAC, completed in 1954, although earlier systems provided error trap functions.
The UNIVAC 1103A computer is generally credited with the earliest use of interrupts in 1953.Earlier, on the UNIVAC I
(1951) "Arithmetic overflow either triggered the execution of a
two-instruction fix-up routine at address 0, or, at the programmer's
option, caused the computer to stop." The IBM 650 (1954) incorporated the first occurrence of interrupt masking. The National Bureau of StandardsDYSEAC (1954) was the first to use interrupts for I/O. The IBM 704 was the first to use interrupts for debugging, with a "transfer trap", which could invoke a special routine when a branch instruction was encountered. The MIT Lincoln LaboratoryTX-2 system (1957) was the first to provide multiple levels of priority interrupts.
Types
Interrupt signals may be issued in response to hardware or software events. These are classified as hardware interrupts or software interrupts, respectively. For any particular processor, the number of interrupt types is limited by the architecture.
Hardware interrupts
A
hardware interrupt is a condition related to the state of the hardware
that may be signaled by an external hardware device, e.g., an interrupt request
(IRQ) line on a PC, or detected by devices embedded in processor logic
(e.g., the CPU timer in IBM System/370), to communicate that the device
needs attention from the operating system (OS) or, if there is no OS, from the bare metal program running on the CPU. Such external devices may be part of the computer (e.g., disk controller) or they may be external peripherals. For example, pressing a keyboard key or moving a mouse plugged into a PS/2 port triggers hardware interrupts that cause the processor to read the keystroke or mouse position.
Hardware interrupts can arrive asynchronously
with respect to the processor clock, and at any time during instruction
execution. Consequently, all incoming hardware interrupt signals are
conditioned by synchronizing them to the processor clock, and acted upon
only at instruction execution boundaries.
In many systems, each device is associated with a particular IRQ
signal. This makes it possible to quickly determine which hardware
device is requesting service, and to expedite servicing of that device.
On some older systems, such as the 1964 CDC 3600,
all interrupts went to the same location, and the OS used a specialized
instruction to determine the highest-priority outstanding unmasked
interrupt. On contemporary systems, there is generally a distinct
interrupt routine for each type of interrupt (or for each interrupt
source), often implemented as one or more interrupt vector tables.
Masking
To mask an interrupt is to disable it, so it is deferred or ignored by the processor, while to unmask an interrupt is to enable it.
Processors typically have an internal interrupt mask register, which allows selective enabling
(and disabling) of hardware interrupts. Each interrupt signal is
associated with a bit in the mask register. On some systems, the
interrupt is enabled when the bit is set, and disabled when the bit is
clear. On others, the reverse is true, and a set bit disables the
interrupt. When the interrupt is disabled, the associated interrupt
signal may be ignored by the processor, or it may remain pending.
Signals which are affected by the mask are called maskable interrupts.
Some interrupt signals are not affected by the interrupt mask and therefore cannot be disabled; these are called non-maskable interrupts (NMIs). These indicate high-priority events which cannot be ignored under any circumstances, such as the timeout signal from a watchdog timer. With regard to SPARC,
the Non-Maskable Interrupt (NMI), despite having the highest priority
among interrupts, can be prevented from occurring through the use of an
interrupt mask.
Missing interrupts
One
failure mode is when the hardware does not generate the expected
interrupt for a change in state, causing the operating system to wait
indefinitely. Depending on the details, the failure might affect only a
single process or might have global impact. Some operating systems have
code specifically to deal with this.
As an example, IBM Operating System/360
(OS/360) relies on a not-ready to ready device-end interrupt when a
tape has been mounted on a tape drive, and will not read the tape label
until that interrupt occurs or is simulated. IBM added code in OS/360 so
that the VARY ONLINE command will simulate a device end interrupt on
the target device.
Spurious interrupts
A spurious interrupt
is a hardware interrupt for which no source can be found. The term
"phantom interrupt" or "ghost interrupt" may also be used to describe
this phenomenon. Spurious interrupts tend to be a problem with a wired-OR
interrupt circuit attached to a level-sensitive processor input. Such
interrupts may be difficult to identify when a system misbehaves.
In a wired-OR circuit, parasitic capacitance
charging/discharging through the interrupt line's bias resistor will
cause a small delay before the processor recognizes that the interrupt
source has been cleared. If the interrupting device is cleared too late
in the interrupt service routine (ISR), there will not be enough time
for the interrupt circuit to return to the quiescent state before the
current instance of the ISR terminates. The result is the processor
will think another interrupt is pending, since the voltage at its
interrupt request input will be not high or low enough to establish an
unambiguous internal logic 1 or logic 0. The apparent interrupt will
have no identifiable source, hence the "spurious" moniker.
A spurious interrupt may also be the result of electrical anomalies due to faulty circuit design, high noise levels, crosstalk, timing issues, or more rarely, device errata.
A spurious interrupt may result in system deadlock or other
undefined operation if the ISR does not account for the possibility of
such an interrupt occurring. As spurious interrupts are mostly a
problem with wired-OR interrupt circuits, good programming practice in
such systems is for the ISR to check all interrupt sources for activity
and take no action (other than possibly logging the event) if none of
the sources is interrupting. They may even lead to crashing of the
computer in adverse scenarios.
Software interrupts
A
software interrupt is requested by the processor itself upon executing
particular instructions or when certain conditions are met. Every
software interrupt signal is associated with a particular interrupt
handler.
A software interrupt may be intentionally caused by executing a special instruction which, by design, invokes an interrupt when executed. Such instructions function similarly to subroutine calls and are used for a variety of purposes, such as requesting operating system services and interacting with device drivers (e.g., to read or write storage media). Software interrupts may also be triggered by program execution errors or by the virtual memory system.
Typically, the operating system kernel
will catch and handle such interrupts. Some interrupts are handled
transparently to the program - for example, the normal resolution of a page fault is to make the required page accessible in physical memory. But in other cases such as a segmentation fault the operating system executes a process callback. On Unix-likeoperating systems this involves sending a signal such as SIGSEGV, SIGBUS, SIGILL or SIGFPE,
which may either call a signal handler or execute a default action
(terminating the program). On Windows the callback is made using Structured Exception Handling with an exception code such as STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION or STATUS_INTEGER_DIVIDE_BY_ZERO.
In a kernel process, it is often the case that some types of software interrupts are not supposed to happen. If they occur nonetheless, an operating system crash may result.
The terms interrupt, trap, exception, fault, and abort are used to distinguish types of interrupts, although "there is no clear consensus as to the exact meaning of these terms". The term trap
may refer to any interrupt, to any software interrupt, to any
synchronous software interrupt, or only to interrupts caused by
instructions with trap in their names. In some usages, the term trap refers specifically to a breakpoint intended to initiate a context switch to a monitor program or debugger. It may also refer to a synchronous interrupt caused by an exceptional condition (e.g., division by zero, invalid memory access, illegal opcode), although the term exception is more common for this.
x86 divides interrupts into (hardware) interrupts and software exceptions, and identifies three types of exceptions: faults, traps, and aborts.
(Hardware) interrupts are interrupts triggered asynchronously by an I/O
device, and allow the program to be restarted with no loss of
continuity.
A fault is restartable as well but is tied to the synchronous execution
of an instruction - the return address points to the faulting
instruction. A trap is similar to a fault except that the return address
points to the instruction to be executed after the trapping
instruction; one prominent use is to implement system calls. An abort is used for severe errors, such as hardware errors and illegal values in system tables, and often does not allow a restart of the program.
Arm uses the term exception to refer to all types of interrupts, and divides exceptions into (hardware) interrupts, aborts, reset,
and exception-generating instructions. Aborts correspond to x86
exceptions and may be prefetch aborts (failed instruction fetches) or
data aborts (failed data accesses), and may be synchronous or
asynchronous. Asynchronous aborts may be precise or imprecise. MMU
aborts (page faults) are synchronous.
Triggering methods
Each
interrupt signal input is designed to be triggered by either a logic
signal level or a particular signal edge (level transition).
Level-sensitive inputs continuously request processor service so long as
a particular (high or low) logic level is applied to the input.
Edge-sensitive inputs react to signal edges: a particular (rising or
falling) edge will cause a service request to be latched; the processor
resets the latch when the interrupt handler executes.
Level-triggered
A level-triggered interrupt is requested by holding the interrupt signal at its particular (high or low) active logic level.
A device invokes a level-triggered interrupt by driving the signal to
and holding it at the active level. It negates the signal when the
processor commands it to do so, typically after the device has been
serviced.
The processor samples the interrupt input signal during each
instruction cycle. The processor will recognize the interrupt request if
the signal is asserted when sampling occurs.
Level-triggered inputs allow multiple devices to share a common
interrupt signal via wired-OR connections. The processor polls to
determine which devices are requesting service. After servicing a
device, the processor may again poll and, if necessary, service other
devices before exiting the ISR.
Edge-triggered
An edge-triggered interrupt is an interrupt signaled by a level transition
on the interrupt line, either a falling edge (high to low) or a rising
edge (low to high). A device wishing to signal an interrupt drives a
pulse onto the line and then releases the line to its inactive state. If
the pulse is too short to be detected by polled I/O
then special hardware may be required to detect it. The important part
of edge triggering is that the signal must transition to trigger the
interrupt; for example, if the signal was high-low-low, there would only
be one falling edge interrupt triggered, and the continued low level
would not trigger a further interrupt. The signal must return to the
high level and fall again in order to trigger a further interrupt. This
contrasts with a level trigger where the low level would continue to
create interrupts (if they are enabled) until the signal returns to its
high level.
Computers with edge-triggered interrupts may include an interrupt register
that retains the status of pending interrupts. Systems with interrupt
registers generally have interrupt mask registers as well.
Processor response
The
processor samples the interrupt trigger signals or interrupt register
during each instruction cycle, and will process the highest priority
enabled interrupt found.
Regardless of the triggering method, the processor will begin interrupt
processing at the next instruction boundary following a detected
trigger, thus ensuring:
The processor status is saved in a known manner. Typically the status is stored in a known location, but on some systems it is stored on a stack.
All instructions before the one pointed to by the PC have fully executed.
No instruction beyond the one pointed to by the PC has been
executed, or any such instructions are undone before handling the
interrupt.
The execution state of the instruction pointed to by the PC is known.
There are several different architectures for handling interrupts. In some, there is a single interrupt handler
that must scan for the highest priority enabled interrupt. In others,
there are separate interrupt handlers for separate interrupt types, separate I/O channels or devices, or both.
Several interrupt causes may have the same interrupt type and thus the
same interrupt handler, requiring the interrupt handler to determine
the cause.
If an additional component is used, that component would be
connected between the interrupting device and the processor's interrupt
pin to multiplex several sources of interrupt onto the one or two CPU lines typically available. If implemented as part of the memory controller, interrupts are mapped into the system's memory address space.
In systems on a chip
(SoC) implementations, interrupts come from different blocks of the
chip and are usually aggregated in an interrupt controller attached to
one or several processors (in a multi-core system).
Shared IRQs
Multiple devices may share an edge-triggered interrupt line if they
are designed to. The interrupt line must have a pull-down or pull-up
resistor so that when not actively driven it settles to its inactive
state, which is the default state of it. Devices signal an interrupt by
briefly driving the line to its non-default state, and let the line
float (do not actively drive it) when not signaling an interrupt. This
type of connection is also referred to as open collector. The line then carries all the pulses generated by all the devices. (This is analogous to the pull cord
on some buses and trolleys that any passenger can pull to signal the
driver that they are requesting a stop.) However, interrupt pulses from
different devices may merge if they occur close in time. To avoid losing
interrupts the CPU must trigger on the trailing edge of the pulse (e.g.
the rising edge if the line is pulled up and driven low). After
detecting an interrupt the CPU must check all the devices for service
requirements.
Edge-triggered interrupts do not suffer the problems that
level-triggered interrupts have with sharing. Service of a low-priority
device can be postponed arbitrarily, while interrupts from
high-priority devices continue to be received and get serviced. If there
is a device that the CPU does not know how to service, which may raise
spurious interrupts, it will not interfere with interrupt signaling of
other devices. However, it is easy for an edge-triggered interrupt to be
missed - for example, when interrupts are masked for a period - and
unless there is some type of hardware latch that records the event it is
impossible to recover. This problem caused many "lockups" in early
computer hardware because the processor did not know it was expected to
do something. More modern hardware often has one or more interrupt
status registers that latch interrupts requests; well-written
edge-driven interrupt handling code can check these registers to ensure
no events are missed.
The elderly Industry Standard Architecture
(ISA) bus uses edge-triggered interrupts, without mandating that
devices be able to share IRQ lines, but all mainstream ISA motherboards
include pull-up resistors on their IRQ lines, so well-behaved ISA
devices sharing IRQ lines should just work fine. The parallel port
also uses edge-triggered interrupts. Many older devices assume that
they have exclusive use of IRQ lines, making it electrically unsafe to
share them.
There are 3 ways multiple devices "sharing the same line" can be
raised. First is by exclusive conduction (switching) or exclusive
connection (to pins). Next is by bus (all connected to the same line
listening): cards on a bus must know when they are to talk and not talk
(i.e., the ISA bus). Talking can be triggered in two ways: by
accumulation latch or by logic gates. Logic gates expect a continual
data flow that is monitored for key signals. Accumulators only trigger
when the remote side excites the gate beyond a threshold, thus no
negotiated speed is required. Each has its speed versus distance
advantages. A trigger, generally, is the method in which excitation is
detected: rising edge, falling edge, threshold (oscilloscope can trigger a wide variety of shapes and conditions).
Triggering for software interrupts must be built into the
software (both in OS and app). A 'C' app has a trigger table (a table
of functions) in its header, which both the app and OS know of and use
appropriately that is not related to hardware. However do not confuse
this with hardware interrupts which signal the CPU (the CPU enacts
software from a table of functions, similarly to software interrupts).
Difficulty with sharing interrupt lines
Multiple
devices sharing an interrupt line (of any triggering style) all act as
spurious interrupt sources with respect to each other. With many
devices on one line, the workload in servicing interrupts grows in
proportion to the square of the number of devices. It is therefore
preferred to spread devices evenly across the available interrupt lines.
Shortage of interrupt lines is a problem in older system designs where
the interrupt lines are distinct physical conductors. Message-signaled
interrupts, where the interrupt line is virtual, are favored in new
system architectures (such as PCI Express) and relieve this problem to a considerable extent.
Some devices with a poorly designed programming interface provide
no way to determine whether they have requested service. They may lock
up or otherwise misbehave if serviced when they do not want it. Such
devices cannot tolerate spurious interrupts, and so also cannot tolerate
sharing an interrupt line. ISA cards, due to often cheap design and construction, are notorious for this problem. Such devices are becoming much rarer, as hardware logic becomes cheaper and new system architectures mandate shareable interrupts.
Hybrid
Some
systems use a hybrid of level-triggered and edge-triggered signaling.
The hardware not only looks for an edge, but it also verifies that the
interrupt signal stays active for a certain period of time.
A common use of a hybrid interrupt is for the NMI (non-maskable
interrupt) input. Because NMIs generally signal major – or even
catastrophic – system events, a good implementation of this signal tries
to ensure that the interrupt is valid by verifying that it remains
active for a period of time. This 2-step approach helps to eliminate
false interrupts from affecting the system.
A message-signaled interrupt does not use a physical interrupt
line. Instead, a device signals its request for service by sending a
short message over some communications medium, typically a computer bus. The message might be of a type reserved for interrupts, or it might be of some pre-existing type such as a memory write.
Message-signalled interrupts behave very much like edge-triggered
interrupts, in that the interrupt is a momentary signal rather than a
continuous condition. Interrupt-handling software treats the two in
much the same manner. Typically, multiple pending message-signaled
interrupts with the same message (the same virtual interrupt line) are
allowed to merge, just as closely spaced edge-triggered interrupts can
merge.
Message-signalled interrupt vectors can be shared, to the extent that the underlying communication medium can be shared. No additional effort is required.
Because the identity of the interrupt is indicated by a pattern
of data bits, not requiring a separate physical conductor, many more
distinct interrupts can be efficiently handled. This reduces the need
for sharing. Interrupt messages can also be passed over a serial bus,
not requiring any additional lines.
In a push button analogy applied to computer systems, the term doorbell or doorbell interrupt is often used to describe a mechanism whereby a software system can signal or notify a computer hardware
device that there is some work to be done. Typically, the software
system will place data in some well-known and mutually agreed upon
memory locations, and "ring the doorbell" by writing to a different
memory location. This different memory location is often called the
doorbell region, and there may even be multiple doorbells serving
different purposes in this region. It is this act of writing to the
doorbell region of memory that "rings the bell" and notifies the
hardware device that the data are ready and waiting. The hardware
device would now know that the data are valid and can be acted upon. It
would typically write the data to a hard disk drive, or send them over a network, or encrypt them, etc.
The term doorbell interrupt is usually a misnomer.
It is similar to an interrupt, because it causes some work to be done
by the device; however, the doorbell region is sometimes implemented as a
polled region, sometimes the doorbell region writes through to physical device registers,
and sometimes the doorbell region is hardwired directly to physical
device registers. When either writing through or directly to physical
device registers, this may cause a real interrupt to occur at the
device's central processor unit (CPU), if it has one.
Interrupts provide low overhead and good latency
at low load, but degrade significantly at high interrupt rate unless
care is taken to prevent several pathologies. The phenomenon where the
overall system performance is severely hindered by excessive amounts of
processing time spent handling interrupts is called an interrupt storm.
There are various forms of livelocks,
when the system spends all of its time processing interrupts to the
exclusion of other required tasks.
Under extreme conditions, a large number of interrupts (like very high
network traffic) may completely stall the system. To avoid such
problems, an operating system must schedule network interrupt handling as carefully as it schedules process execution.
With multi-core processors, additional performance improvements in interrupt handling can be achieved through receive-side scaling (RSS) when multiqueue NICs are used. Such NICs provide multiple receive queues
associated to separate interrupts; by routing each of those interrupts
to different cores, processing of the interrupt requests triggered by
the network traffic received by a single NIC can be distributed among
multiple cores. Distribution of the interrupts among cores can be
performed automatically by the operating system, or the routing of
interrupts (usually referred to as IRQ affinity) can be manually configured.
A purely software-based implementation of the receiving traffic distribution, known as receive packet steering (RPS), distributes received traffic among cores later in the data path, as part of the interrupt handler
functionality. Advantages of RPS over RSS include no requirements for
specific hardware, more advanced traffic distribution filters, and
reduced rate of interrupts produced by a NIC. As a downside, RPS
increases the rate of inter-processor interrupts (IPIs). Receive flow steering (RFS) takes the software-based approach further by accounting for application locality;
further performance improvements are achieved by processing interrupt
requests by the same cores on which particular network packets will be
consumed by the targeted application.
Typical uses
Interrupts
are commonly used to service hardware timers, transfer data to and from
storage (e.g., disk I/O) and communication interfaces (e.g., UART, Ethernet),
handle keyboard and mouse events, and to respond to any other
time-sensitive events as required by the application system.
Non-maskable interrupts are typically used to respond to high-priority
requests such as watchdog timer timeouts, power-down signals and traps.
Hardware timers are often used to generate periodic interrupts.
In some applications, such interrupts are counted by the interrupt
handler to keep track of absolute or elapsed time, or used by the OS
task scheduler to manage execution of running processes, or both. Periodic interrupts are also commonly used to invoke sampling from input devices such as analog-to-digital converters, incremental encoder interfaces, and GPIO inputs, and to program output devices such as digital-to-analog converters, motor controllers, and GPIO outputs.
A disk interrupt signals the completion of a data transfer from
or to the disk peripheral; this may cause a process to run which is
waiting to read or write. A power-off interrupt predicts imminent loss
of power, allowing the computer to perform an orderly shut-down while
there still remains enough power to do so. Keyboard interrupts typically
cause keystrokes to be buffered so as to implement typeahead.
Interrupts are sometimes used to emulate instructions which are unimplemented on some computers in a product family. For example floating point
instructions may be implemented in hardware on some systems and
emulated on lower-cost systems. In the latter case, execution of an
unimplemented floating point instruction will cause an "illegal
instruction" exception interrupt. The interrupt handler will implement
the floating point function in software and then return to the
interrupted program as if the hardware-implemented instruction had been
executed. This provides application software portability across the entire line.
Interrupts are similar to signals, the difference being that signals are used for inter-process communication
(IPC), mediated by the kernel (possibly via system calls) and handled
by processes, while interrupts are mediated by the processor and handled
by the kernel. The kernel may pass an interrupt as a signal to the process that caused it (typical examples are SIGSEGV, SIGBUS, SIGILL and SIGFPE).
This article
is about the sociological perspectives of ex-Muslims. For a general
description of the religious and legal meaning and implications of the
concept and process of apostasy from Islam, see Apostasy in Islam. For the situation of actual or purported apostates from Islam (ex-Muslims) in each individual country, see Apostasy in Islam by country. For organisations by and for ex-Muslims, see List of ex-Muslim organisations.
According
to Pauha and Aghaee (2018), apart from context and additional levels of
struggle, the deconversion process and some of the reasons for leaving
religion might not be much different for Muslims leaving their religion
compared to Christians leaving theirs. According to Simon Cottee (2015), the intellectual process of leaving religion begins with the onset of doubt about Islam and its practice. In Islamic tradition, doubts about the religion are generally severely reprimanded with threats of hell in the afterlife toward impressionable young children and associating doubting individuals with possession by devils and further superstitious practices of exorcism. Therefore, doubt tends to be significantly discouraged, ranging from bad-mouthing about those who raise any doubts to brutally punishing them. This builds up peer and community pressure not to doubt and deviate from the status quo, leading to unsettling fears that someone whose doubts would be revealed might be put to shame and further banishment. The next steps for doubters are self-censorship and attempts to suppress recurring thoughts, leading to frustration.
Simon Cottee study
Simon Cottee
(2015) wrote that it is very difficult for Muslims to express doubts
and questions about Islam. Those who get the opportunity, must conduct
self-search on the Internet,
and if they wish to ask questions to any religious expert, then they
have to do so with a lot of caution to avoid accusations of disbelief;
rather than asking why God said something in the scriptures, they need
to rephrase their inquiry in religiously 'right' language, asking what
God meant by something. In other cases, doubters use real or imaginary
proxies to avoid hostility towards themselves. Since many doubts are not
answered, the unintended consequence is a further level of
dissatisfaction.
Cottee says ex-Muslims focus their doubts mostly on the truth claims of
Islam, and the utility and morality of Islamic commands or
prohibitions.
Phil Zuckerman summarizes Cottee's points about types of doubts engaged by ex-Muslims on the path of leaving Islam, namely: epistemological,
moral, and instrumental doubts, as well as forms of doubts such as
significant personal experiences, exposure to alternatives, scriptural
discoveries, spiritual alienation, political events, etc. Epistemological doubts question the existence of God in several ways, such as through the problem of evil,
by looking at injustice and misery around the world, which allegedly
would not have existed if there really would have been a good God. They
also question the Islamic creation myth with respect to the theory of evolution, and the contradictions between the concepts of free will and predestination. Moral doubts concern issues such as the unequal treatment of women in Islam, and why non-Muslim children or good non-Muslims go to hell
according to Islamic theology. Instrumental doubts question the utility
and morality of Islamic commands or prohibitions, such as the
prohibition of artistic representation of living beings (see Aniconism in Islam), which doubters claim hamper freedom of artistic expressions such as drawing, photography, sports like chess, music, etc. (see also Muslim women in sport), in turn, hampers individual growth and social-cultural participation.
Cottee's study indicates that ex-Muslims start feeling that they
are betraying their true self and also deceiving their loved ones in the
process, leading to feelings of shame for their own continued closeted
pretending and subsequent feelings of isolation and loneliness. On the
one hand, ex-Muslims often opt to reduce commitment to social
relationships that require pretending to be Muslim; on the other hand,
they often do not have the freedom to choose the kind of social
relationships they prefer, thus exacerbating their social isolation and
loneliness further.
Cottee outlines different phases on the way of leaving Islam: disavowal
of self, relief, excitement, guilt, anger, residual anxiety, confusion,
disclosure, and more.
Khalil Bilici study
The
2007 Khalil Bilici study stated that motivations for leaving Islam can
be broadly classified into two categories, namely
intellectual/ideological motivations and social/experiential
motivations.
According to Teemu Pauha and Atefeh Aghaee (2018), the first group
would find religion to be naive and irrational, whereas second group
emphasizes the constraints and breaches of human rights
of individuals negatively affecting social progress as their most
significant concern. Pauha and Aghaee further point out that, depending
on the doubting group one belongs to, one may find religion to be an
example of stupidity or viciousness.
Findings of the Khalil Bilici study state that among ex-Muslims
with intellectual/ideological motivations, the following ones seem
important:
Cottee's interviewees inform their intellectual doubts about
perceived religious inconsistencies in Islam like, the barbarism of
certain verses in the Qur'an, the improbability of the existence of God,
the wickedness of the possibility of God creating Hell, discontent with
the treatment of women, and more.
Among apostates with social/experiential motivations behind leaving Islam, Khalil Bilici noted the following reasons:
Unpleasant encounters with bad and cruel Muslims;
Muslims as oppressive;
Backwardness among Muslims;
Ill-treatment of women among Muslims;
Ill-treatment of non-Muslims by Muslims;
Muslims being in a state of illusion regarding their own religion.
Bilici stated that ex-Muslims are not necessarily always taking into
account the whole range of historical and contemporary Muslim scholarly
opinions, and their understanding may be mixed one. The Khalil Bilici study attributes gender discrimination
and repulsive feelings owing to negative individual experiences and
perceptions as the most prominent motivations of individuals leaving
Islam.
Khalil Bilici states that their study confirms earlier scholarly
findings that some ex-Muslims commonly cite the experience of the 1971 Bangladesh genocide as an example of the oppressive nature of Muslims.
Bilici further informs that like in many other conversions, a
considerable number of Muslims from frontiers where they are exposed to
different perspectives may be leaving Islam. Narratives about "leaving
Islam" come from individuals of various ethnic backgrounds and age
groups, and from across the world (with South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and the West being prominent regions where ex-Muslims emerge), and that the gender mix seems to change relative to geography.
For example, Khalil Bilici takes note of some individual
narrations, such as one ex-Muslim who found it odd that the Quran got
'engrossed with trivial aspects' related to the private life of
Muhammad. In another example, an ex-Muslim found the 'killing of
innocent people' by natural phenomena such as disease to be unfathomable
to believe in God. A narration of another ex-Muslim asserted that life
as a Muslim imposed socially restrictive choices and made one skip
opportunities and responsibilities in order to fulfill mundane religious
mandates; the same account found the status of women in Islam and condoning child marriage by the prophet to be problematic. Before deciding to leave Islam, one ex-Muslim evaluated arguments for and against the theory of evolution
and found the theory of evolution to be more credible, found Quran to
be unscientific, the idea of eternal damnation horrible, and the
hypothesis of God unnecessary for explaining the existence of life.
During a panel discussion by Ex-Muslims of North America
at the University of Colorado, ex-Muslim women from countries such as
Lebanon and Saudi Arabia attributed flight from their countries of birth
to day-to-day controlled life full of gender repression, isolation, and
abuse by families and communities with internalized religious
narratives.
In many cases, the continuation of education becomes difficult for
women, since families and communities give preference to early marriage
(in many cases forced ones).
Teemu Pauha and Atefeh Aghaee study
In their analytical study of Iranian ex-Muslim accounts, Teemu Pauha and Atefeh Aghaee (2018) broadly concur with Phil Zuckerman about the reasons for leaving religion but prefer to classify categories of intellectual atheism
and social atheism is further broadly distinctive – but occasionally
overlapping – four sub-categories, namely: seekers, rationalists,
rebels, and disillusioned ones.
Pauha and Aghaee state that, while rationalists stress intellectual
grounds, those who belong to the seeker category stress moral
deficiencies as their respective reasons for de-conversion, but both
these sub-categories focus on theoretical aspects.
The sub-categories of rebels and disillusioned ones focus on their
experiences and knowledge about social behaviors of believers in Islam
as far from being ideal, practically harmful to individuals and society,
and not progressive enough – rebels attempt to rebel against this
perceived state of affairs and leave, and disillusioned ones leave
because they don't expect any change in the situation.
Other than the seeker sub-category, people in the other three
categories are already skeptics at some level to begin with, so their
change over to atheism is more straightforward and emotionally and
intellectually less confronting or stressful.
Pauha and Aghaee state that for people in the seeker
sub-category, the intellectual journey begins with hope, but the
practical realization that the morals of Islam are not in line with
their expectations is emotionally and intellectually confronting and
stressful. This happens because, in comparison to the other three
categories, seekers originally happen to be the most sincere devote
believers in Islam, usually having positive social relationships and
experiences since childhood. Basically, they do not start their quest
from a place of doubt, but from a desire to explore and seek more
knowledge about the faith. However, while doing so, when they conclude
that morals in Islam are not matching their own standard of moral values
and their expectations of an omnibenevolent God, they first go through a phase of denial,
but eventually, they prefer to accept their conclusions after quite a
bit of additional emotional and intellectual self-struggle (known as cognitive dissonance), and end up accepting atheism or a compromise with some sort of individual-level spirituality.
Maria Vliek study
According
to Maria Vliek (2021), larger structures of secularity help the
development of the relative need for and desire to express publicly to
contest dominant discourses and also identify oneself as 'ex-Muslim'.
Maria Vliek states that in an ex-Muslim's journey of 'moving out of
Islam' from previously being religious to becoming irreligious, there
are multiple stages of inbetweenness.
In her Former Muslims in Europe Between Secularity and Belonging,
Vliek makes a comparative study of ex-Muslims' (individuals and groups)
processes of 'moving out of Islam' vis-à-vis multiple secularities in
the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Vliek's study attempts to find
out why 'secularist ex-Muslim voices' in one European secular country
(Britain) are relatively more outspoken than the other secular country
(the Netherlands), and relates to the difference being in the nature of
secularism in both of these countries. British secularism is
diversity-inclusivist, whereas Dutch secularism focuses on social
integration and national development. According to Vliek, ex-Muslims in
the Netherlands seem to be concerned about whether their narratives
might be used by alleged 'secular crusaders' to stigmatise Muslim
communities, and that makes many of them feel that it's difficult to
express themselves openly against their former religion. On the other
hand, 'secularist ex-Muslim voices' in Britain can and do take recourse
to accommodative diversity of British secularity to question and
criticize reference points of the British secularity for giving space to
Islamism on both the institutional and social levels vis-à-vis
state-church relations in Britain, British multiculturalism, and
communitarianism.
Najma Al Zidjaly study
According
to Najma Al Zidjaly study in spite of high-risk restrictions and
official obstructions, the Ex-Muslims in Arab societies could manage to
form online communities and share challenging ideas which have been
permeating throughout Arabia.
Zidjaly says, ex-Muslims after studying Islam carefully, come to
conclusion to no longer stand by Islam's history, books and tenets, out
of respect for humanity and logic.
Zidjaly says the ex-Muslim community is diverse, Zidjaly says, some
Ex-Muslims convert to Christianity, but most shift to agnostics or
secular, according to Najma Al Zidjaly study due to restrictive
environments some ex-Muslims also fashion themselves as humanists,
liberals and/or secularists without disclosing about leaving their
religion. the Ex-Muslims include anonymous free thinkers and authors of both genders with differing scales of beliefs.
According to the Zidjaly study, While the Arab 2018 social media report
indicates lower participation of Arabian women on social media, many
active Ex-Muslims are women from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Ex-Muslims
also include a few non-anonymous writers like Brother Rachid and Hamid Abdel Samad who have YouTube channels. Both had to run away from their respective Arab countries.
Mutual interactions and Political and social events lead to cycles of
discourses. Ex Muslims on social media deploy humor, satire, facts,
repair, rhetorical questions, At the beginnings of the Islamic religious
deliberation by the masses during the early 2000s, the Quran itself did
not come for criticism. However, this too has changed, and now all Islamic texts are open to critique in the Ex-Muslim community; online Ex Muslim activism includes
Contesting and discrediting questionable principles in the
Islamic literature, including the Quran, the holy book of Islam; The
history of Islam and pre-Islam
Scrutinizing and pointing out questionable cultural behaviours (e.g.
lack of empathy, Shamata (الشماتة, schadenfreude, the practice of
finding joy in others’ suffering), the pervasive ideology of being
Muslim first and human second, unfair gender roles)
Create and share enlightening videos, facts, quotations and books on
relevant topics by Arab and international voices. Most of these focus
on contesting flaws in the Islamic information which is widely
inculcated through school curricula and Islamic literature.
Rewriting the traditionally or authoritatively presented history of Islam
Conversing in citizen sociolinguistics or linguistic exercises, like
redefining key terms for e.g. freedom as the right to choose instead of
negative perception of freedom in Muslim societies as the right to be
immoral and also supplanting key terms with more accurate versions (e.g.
Calling out Islamic crusades as Islamic invasions instead of Islamic
openings, as used in Arabic discourse)
Participating in public discourse among online Ex-Muslim community
and debating with those who identify as Muslims and engaging them with
counter-arguments.
Making follower comments and meta-comments which may range from support to trolling.
Giving likes and/or share (mostly by followers) and Retweeting at times.
Private direct messages sent by anonymous followers are retweeted
Examples of doubts by ex-Muslims
A Firstpost news report about ex-Muslims in India by Tufail Ahmad
informs one ex-Muslim could not believe that the god [Allah] who is so
great would not have a sense of fair play and will send all non-Muslim
kids of a school to the hell. Another questioned since a day can last
six months in countries near the North Pole, when should Muslims break
their day-long fast? One of the ex-Muslims' mother was a Christian; when
clerics pleaded to not to take food and water from non-Muslims, this
incident raised doubts in their mind.
In examples cited by the Pauha and Aghaee study, those who leave
Islam prioritize universal values of human morality ahead of religion,
some of the values in the religion being insulting to universal human
values, and experience that the practice of fasting by close relatives is not helping one from facing death. When comparing Islam with other religions,
doubters considered the possibility of the other religions being right,
studied various scriptures and were open to questions coming to one's
mind. Ethical objections that trouble doubters commonly included the
hypocrisy of conservative leadership, the worst practices of religious
people in practice, questions over homophobia,
and epistemological doubts about how, by failing to be clear in his
communications to humans, God is apparently putting millions of people
at risk of eternal damnation in hell (see also Problem of Hell and Argument from inconsistent revelations).
Cottee's respondent ex-Muslims further elaborate their questions,
including asking why any wonderful God would create hell and subject
even innocent non-Muslims to hell if predestination is his own creation, and whether predestination is compatible with free will.
To many ex-Muslim interviewees, a God who does not appear to provide
any solid physical proof of his own existence, while wishing to send
everyone to hell for eternity just for doubting him, even if they were
good people who lead a good life, does not seem to comply with the
qualities of benevolence or fairness that are commonly attributed to
God.
Other doubt-inducing questions concern how God allegedly allows for the enormity of suffering (the problem of evil), and why the Islamic God appears to be jealous, vain, and insecure, and demands worship all the time.
Cottee's other respondent ex-Muslims expressed the idea that, in
Quran-related epistemological doubts, many Quran revelations sound like
revelations of individual convenience. They also wondered how one could
know that other religions were wrong and only Islam was right and
concluded that the Islamic account of creation is problematic when the theory of evolution is taken into account.
Prohibitions on relationships with people of other religions
(especially for Muslim women), punishments for apostasy, and the unequal
treatment of women vis-à-vis men are reported to be questionable.
Cottee relates that ex-Muslims' personal experiences like abuse,
violence, illness, deaths, building or severing of relationships made
some of them reassess previously held beliefs, raising questions such as
how God could subject a child to illnesses such as leukemia
at a very young age. Some former Muslims arrived at the point of view
that they could choose how to live their own sexual lives and that religion imposed objectionable restrictions on individual sexual freedom.
Getting exposed to non-Islamic and atheistic thoughts of scientists and
about evolution brought doubts to the fore, and on further
investigation, ex-Muslims found these doubts confirmed and cemented.
Cottee says many of the ex-Muslims are devout in their rituals, either
to please their believing loved ones, or to defend Islam when they
embark upon reading Quran and Hadith with proper translations. However,
once they actually study and examine scripture, they stumble upon many
questionable and disturbing inexplicable acts in the name of God, such
as passages perceived to be violent, in which God throws unbelievers who
were good human being by behavior in hell as well, or is peeling off
the skin of the damned, or the slaughtering of the surrendered Jewish
tribe of Banu Qurayza
in Muhammad's life, or even recent Islamist or terrorist events that
were purportedly motivated or justified by Islamic scriptures.
Challenges in childhood and growing up years
One
respondent in Cottee's study elaborates on the kind of fear of hellfire
and God's wrath thrust upon young impressionable minds that she ended
up believing that the bullying that happened to her in school might have
been a result of her questioning religion in her mind. Another respondent remembers the fear of shaitan and the subsequent threat of the (allegedly abusive) practice of exorcism to dissuade children from doubting, even though this may not necessarily stop their minds from having doubts.
One of Cottee's respondents informs that she was scared of questioning,
because she was taught not to question. But when questions came to her
mind she had all those doubts, which she could not be confident to
discuss with anyone – from parents to teachers – since she would not
know how would they react. According to Cottee, these childhood fears
are carried to adulthood too to some extent as the beginning journey of a
closeted atheist life under pressure. Most children are dissuaded from asking difficult questions by parents by censuring them.
Scholarly and literary influences
Khalil
Bilici says leaving Islam is deeply influenced by various previous
literary works and other events and interactions, including that of Taslima Nasrin and Salman Rushdie, as well as writings of philosophers and scientists such as Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, and Richard Dawkins. According to Pauha and Aghaee, Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion (2006) is likely to be one of the most influential books among new generation atheists.
According
to Najma Al Zidjaly study ex-Muslims can also fashion themselves as
humanists, liberals and/or secularists without disclosing of leaving
their religion.
Since secular liberals and also Quranists contest Islamic authoritative
discourses, researcher Al Zidjaly considers them close to ex-Muslims to
a lesser degree than self-admitted Ex-Muslim.
According to Farzana Hassan many ex-Muslims have to hide their lack of
belief from their immediate family members, friendships, and the
communities since they are worried of getting ostracized.
Hassan says closeted ex-Muslims have to live strained double lives
specially if surrounded by religious family members, they have to
pretend much as of cultural Muslims participating in all the visible observances of the religion while reserving their disbelief to themselves.
Cottee says ex-Muslims who have not publicly declared that they
have left Islam need to cope with disapproving conservative attitudes
towards their non-compliance to religious tenets and liberal attempts.
To lie, conceal and managing a liberal expression of oneself remains a
difficult task under constant family, friend and community social
surveillance. The mental impact of this effort to hide one's true
thoughts is heavy for many ex-Muslim individuals, making leaving Islam a
long-term, arduous, and psychologically demanding process. Since the
larger society around ex-Muslims holds such activities to be sinful,
this causes increased anxiety and possible guilt among neophytes, and
the inability to communicate these feelings to anyone leads to feelings
of uncertainty, guilt, self-doubt, loneliness, and depression. Lack of
contact with similar-minded people and lack of support networks
exacerbates the feelings. According to Cottee, closeted ex-Muslims, even if not physically, are estranged psychologically from religion and practice.
Khalil Bilici's study says that closeted ex-Muslims usually tend
to hide leaving of Islam mainly out of fear of harm by radical
conservatives, or they are unwilling to come out of the closet for
possible dissolution of existing intimate relationships with a believing
Muslim. Al Zidjaly says social media like WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter provides closeted ex-Muslims agency
through technology, and ex-Muslims have played roles of being
undisclosed catalyst towards change in the religiously most
conservative Arabian Gulf countries.
Based on the accounts relayed to him by ex-Muslims during his study,
Cottee found similar processes of concealment and coming out amongst
ex-Muslims compared to the steps described by Ken Plummer as converts, such as sensitization, signification, coming out and stabilizing.
For many ex-Muslims, coming out comes at a cost to their
relations with their family, friends, the community, and the state. Even
immediate family are likely to express extreme reactions as well as
online threats.
Local police officers oftentimes do not understand the gravity of the
issues involved, and the danger the threats pose to the lives of
ex-Muslims. Phil Zuckerman
says that ex-Muslims are not only marginalized by their respective
families and the wider community of Muslim believers, but their views
and plight are also poorly understood by non-Muslim individuals and
communities.
Zuckerman concurs with Cottee that the challenges of "coming out" to
family and friends, as well as the reactions that often follow, are
stressful, can turn out to be very harsh and damning. Under such
pressures some apostates tend to go back into the closet once again;
while actually remaining nonbelievers, they end up pretending to be back
in the Islamic fold to avoid the loss of relationships with family, and
to save their loved ones from socially damaging shame and stigma.
Zuckerman stated that the degree to which many ex-Muslim' families and
friends condemn, despise, and reject their apostate relatives for
leaving Islam is generally too brutal.
Family and friends
After
coming out to their families and communities, ex-Muslims have reported
various kinds of extreme reactions in many cases, such as being forced
to undergo exorcisms, receiving threats to their lives, and being chased around with the intention of retaliation.
Human rights and social control
According
to Ziv Orenstein & Itzchak Weismann (2016), ex-Muslims happened to
be the strongest supporters of universal human values, human rights and
of integration.
They generally stand against divisive conservatism that controls Muslim
communities, and against misusing the camouflaged garb of
'multiculturalism' in non-Muslim majority countries (frequently
supported by a certain group within the non-Muslim left, known as the "regressive left") whenever it de facto enables this conservative control inside minority Muslim communities to persist. While ex-Muslims may differ in perception on how to face and combat religious extremism, they vehemently oppose religious terrorism, as well as the imposition of Sharia (Islamic law), the (compulsory) wearing of the hijab, and separate Islamic schools.
According to Azweed Mohamad et al. (2017), it is very common in
Muslim-majoritarian countries that conservative Muslim groups and
governmental bodies actively work to constrain apostasy by keeping a
religious taboo on the subject. However, despite governmental efforts to
the contrary – ranging from censorship to laws against blasphemy and
apostasy – apostasy from Islam is neither a rare phenomenon, nor can
information on it be kept hidden from public view due to the widespread
availability of the Internet.
Even news media are attempting to cover apostasy issues by making
strategic use of intricate linguistic tools, employing strong knowledge
in linguistic usage, and the rhetorical structure to promote intended
narratives, in spite of societal and governmental pressures.
Nevertheless, these pressures tend to subdue such reporting, and the
media are compelled to censor themselves to a certain extent.
Azweed Mohamad et al. stated that, as new information flows in,
governments scramble to use this information to update laws and
implement them in order to constrain apostasy on the one hand; on the
other hand, apostates use the same information as touchstones to renounce Islam.
According to Azweed Mohamad et al. conservative media in
Muslim-majoritarian countries play an influential role with its higher
followership by attempting to stall the rise of liberal practices and
institutions. Conservative media do this by overshadowing liberal
tendencies through their reporting by uplifting the image of
conservative practices and institutions. By contrast, liberal media
attempt to balance attitudes within their far more limited available
space (freedoms) in Muslim-majoritarian countries such as Malaysia,
retaining liberal rhetoric to the extent possible.
Conservative media in Muslim-majoritarian countries tend to raise
concern against the rise of liberal practices and institutions, hype
unease and emotions among Muslim conservatives, and obliquely speak of
threats to religious harmony and again ask credit for the same.
Liberal news media report in effort to find hope, and attempt to employ
supportive language for apostates, sometimes employing sarcasm to
obliquely mock conservatism. If liberalism is in trouble, the stakes are
increased by placing responsibilities across to the government or top
national leaderships, and at the same time searching for supportive
social soft corners.
Abuse of the flagging system on social media
While
pointing out usage of strategic ‘flagging’ i.e. 'mass misreporting'
as a tool in low-intensity online culture war to dislodge inconvenient
point of views on social media websites like Facebook and YouTube
is used by many; in the chapter, 'Facebook and Google as Offices of
Censorship' authors Stjernfelt and Lauritzen in their study 'Your
Post Has Been Removed: Tech Giants and Freedom of Speech' say that,
this tactic of misusing the flagging system seems to have been employed
by Islamist groups (or even governments in the Middle East?), in an
organized manner, with an intention to remove democratic Muslim or
anti-Islamist voices from Facebook.
The Stjernfelt and Lauritzen study notes, in 2016, the Council of
Ex-Muslims of Britain said that 19 different Facebook groups or sites
organized by Arabic ex-Muslims or freethinkers had to face either shut
downs or underwent attacks via organized misuse of the social media
flagging system.
According to a study of behaviour by young Moroccan non-believers in Facebook groups by Lena Richter (2021), humour
is one of the most popular ways of expressing experiences and thoughts
among non-believers in different parts of the world to challenge
religious authority. Richter says: "On the surface, Internet memes
and other jokes might appear trivial. While they often appear to lack
seriousness, they are an intrinsic part of today's digital culture
(Milner 2012; Shifman 2013) and carry important social, emotional,
cultural, and political messages (Miltner 2018; Bennett and Segerberg
2012). Beyond that, memes can be an important part of lived
(non)religion, as they are a common and participatory expression of
meaning-making in everyday life (Aguilar et al. 2017)."
Richter went on to state that humor remains a covert dissent strategy
which establishes differentiation towards the religious majority,
contributes to bridging (non)religious disagreement and the creation of
identification among non-believers.
Richter wrote: "In countries like Morocco, the room for humorous
activism is influenced by the semi-authoritarian context, which
restricts some freedoms but offers others (Ottaway 2003)." According to Richter, activism that openly advocates for freedom of conscience
is rather restricted, as many activists fear the legal and social
consequences. Suffering from stigmatization, activists reported cases of
(verbal) violence by family members, investigations by authorities, and
obstacles in professional, educational, and private life. As a
consequence, the restrictive situation for non-believers gives an
indication as to why many non-believers rely on "more indirect forms of
activism such as humor".
Richter found that "humor tests the border of what is still
tolerated to express. On the one hand, some jokes enjoy a free pass as
they are "not meant seriously" and provide a space of liberty that
allows people to vent frustrations (Davies 2007). On the other hand,
some topics, that touch the troika of "allah, al-watan, al-malik"
(Kettioui 2020) cross that line and are labeled as blasphemous. The
awareness that it is not possible to criticize or joke about certain
topics leads to (self-)censorship (Rahman 2012) and a try-and-see ethos
that tests the limits of freedom of speech (Iddins 2020)".
Instances of persecution and breach of human rights
In Malaysian textbook cases, Malaysian courts declined to approve
changes of religion and marriage to non-Muslim men to one Azlina
Jailani, who was allowed to change her name to Lina Joy, but not her religion. In another case, Nur'aishah Bokhari had to file habeas corpus
against her own parents and flee from Malaysia in order to marry her
non-Muslim boyfriend. In one more Malaysian case, the young woman
Revathi Masoosai was raised as a Hindu in childhood by her grandmother
before her parents converted to Islam. When Masoosai married a Hindu and
sought to change her religion, the Malaysian courts not only denied her
request to formally change the record of her religion, but also seized
her daughter and handed her over to her converted Muslim mother. Another recent case being, In August 2021, an ex-Muslim from Kerala, Abdul Khader Puthiyandadi was arrested without bail and sentenced to prison for three years for criticising Quran and Hadith by United Arab Emirates on the grounds of blasphemy law.
The term 'ex-Muslim movement' is used to describe the social movement of individuals and groups who have renounced Islam, seek to normalize religious dissent and leaving of Islam, support others who have done so or are in the process of leaving by linking them to support networks, and sometimes encourage Muslims to leave Islam.
According to Frank Fregosi, while publicly recommending leaving Islam,
Ex-Muslims mobilize on politically secular lines, and also defend
absolute freedom of conscience and freedom of criticizing Islam. Citing a 2017 Pew Research survey, The Wall Street Journals Daniel Pipes
stated that roughly a hundred thousand people in the United States may
be leaving Islam annually, and even if new ones join Islam in similar
numbers, still it is those who leave Islam who would ultimately
influence the Islamic faith more than any converts to Islam would do.
Ex-Muslim activism uses avenues of newspapers, public gatherings as well as online platforms. Smaller gatherings and events also take place in bars, cafes, and restaurants. According to Farzana Hassan, even many ex-Muslims who come out on YouTube channels
of other prominent ex-Muslim's channels like Harris Sultan, Apostate
Prophet, Ghalib Kamal, continue to prefer to maintain anonymity by
using pseudonyms or restricting the information to very trusted few. Hassan says, ex-Muslim activism is making Muslim world face some introspection.
Background
The Satanic Verses controversy (1988–2000)
"Mine is a voice..not yet found expression ..It is the voice of..born Muslims but wish to recant in adulthood, yet are not permitted to on pain of death. ..who does not live in an Islamic society cannot imagine the sanctions, both self-imposed and external, ..against expressing religious disbelief, .. along comes Rushdie..speaks for us. Tells the world that we exist.. ..we are not simply a mere fabrication of some Jewish conspiracy. He ends our isolation."
– A 1989 letter to The Observer covered by Daniel Pipes, The Wall Street Journal 6 Aug. 2020
Al Qaeda's terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 (colloquially known as 9/11) on the World Trade Center (1973–2001) in New York City and The Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
made a powerful impact on doubting and former Muslims. For some, it
(partially or temporarily) reversed their process of apostasy in the
face of a generalised anti-Muslim backlash that (mistakenly) targeted
them or their family and friends as "terrorists" in Western societies.
For others, it accelerated their loss of faith, or in fact planted the
first seed of doubt about their Islamic beliefs, that appeared to be
based on the same religious texts that the 9/11 hijackers used to
justify their terrorist attacks. Ali Sina, a Muslim convert to Christianity, founded the Faith Freedom International (FFI) website in October 2001. Meanwhile, Ibn Warraq compiled the first collection of stories from former Muslims: Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out (2003);
Seeing children of Muslim parents cheer at the 9/11 attacks, having checked that Osama bin Laden's justifications for it could indeed be found in verses of the Quran, and finally having read the Atheïstisch manifest of Dutch philosopher Herman Philipse, Dutch political scientist and former Somali asylum-seeker Ayaan Hirsi Ali renounced Islam in 2002 and became a prominent critic.
Due to her open hostility towards Islam in public discourse in the
Netherlands, where she became a Member of Parliament in 2003, she
received numerous death threats for leaving and criticising her former
faith, culminating in the assassination of Theo van Gogh on 2 November 2004, with whom she had co-produced the short film Submission. Hirsi Ali's essays were later bundled into two collections, De zoontjesfabriek and The Caged Virgin; the latter became an international bestseller and had been translated into about 10 languages by May 2006. Subsequently, in 2006, issues surrounding difficulties faced by apostates from Islam, for example by Italian journalist Magdi Allam, came into French discourse while discussing criticism of Islam by Robert Redeker in Le Figaro.
Rise of European ex-Muslim councils (2007)
The modern international organised ex-Muslim movement may be traced back to the 2007 foundation of the Central Council of Ex-Muslims (Zentralrat der Ex-Muslime, ZdE) in Germany. Its primary initiator was Mina Ahadi, an ex-Muslim refugee from Iran who escaped a death sentence that she received for criticising the Islamic regime; she settled in Cologne in 1996. After an April 2006 workshop on political Islam in Osnabrück, she discussed how to do better activism for people who have renounced Islam with Giordano Bruno Foundation spokesperson Michael Schmidt-Salomon,
who suggested the launch of an awareness campaign titled "Wir haben
abgeschworen!" ("We have renounced!", in reference to the 1971 campaign We've had abortions!, "Wir haben abgetrieben!" in German).
It would be a collection of photographs of people who had escaped
political Islam to Germany, and were willing to come out publicly with
their faces as former Muslims.
To carry out such a campaign, Schmidt-Salomon suggested the foundation
of a Central Council for Ex-Muslims, in contrast to the existing Central Council of Muslims in Germany
(founded in 1994). Although Ahadi and fellow apostates disliked the
term 'ex-Muslim' at first, because they preferred to call themselves atheists and humanists, they eventually agreed and made preparations. The council's formation was announced on 28 February 2007 at a press conference in Berlin, during which the "Wir haben abgeschworen!" campaign was launched as well.
Previously, former Muslims had expressed frustration at the media for
continually associating them with the Islamic religion that they had
left. For example, Ibn Warraq and Salman Rushdie
were called 'Muslim intellectuals'. But after the council's formation,
the term "ex-Muslim" was rapidly popularised in the media.
The American group Former Muslims United, headed by Muslim-turned-Christian Nonie Darwish, was founded in October 2009 in Los Angeles. It was followed in 2012 by the Muslimish group, and in 2013 by Ex-Muslims of North America (EXMNA), which formed a network of local ex-Muslim groups throughout the United States and Canada. Meanwhile, the online community Atheist Republic was set up by Vancouver-based ex-Muslim activist Armin Navabi
in 2012; by May 2017, it had become the largest online atheist
community in the world, with chapters ('consulates') in dozens of
countries.
Impact of Islamic State (2014–19)
We used to defend Islam. But now, with ISIS, it's like having to constantly make excuses for a serial killer. I refuse to participate in that any longer.
– Ir@qi@theist (pseudonym)
It is generally understood that the rise of the jihadist-terrorist organisation Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
(ISIL, ISIS, IS or Daesh), that proclaimed a caliphate in July 2014 and
committed massacres and systematic sexual slavery across Syria and Iraq
in the name of Islam, had a major impact on many thousands of Muslims
throughout the world (primarily the Middle East and North Africa) in dissociating themselves from their religion.
The period from 2014 to 2019 saw a surge in Kurdish Muslims converting to Zoroastrianism, the original faith of their ancestors that was prevalent in the region before the Muslim conquest of Persia. This surge is largely attributed to disillusionment with Islam after the years of violence and barbarism perpetrated by the ISIS jihadi group.
In Nigeria, Mubarak Bala, an Ex-Muslim and president of the Humanist
Association of Nigeria was forcible subjected to the psychiatric
institution on leaving Islam in 2014 and arrested again in April 2020,
he was arrested in Kaduna for blasphemy due to a Facebook post he made, facing difficulties in getting legal aid as of July 2020.
Globally quite a few notable ex-Muslim activists are of Pakistani and South Asian origin. According to the Gallup Poll In 2005, 1% of those Pakistanis who participated in the poll were atheist and by 2012, the figure rose to 2%. In 2012, the Atheist & Agnostic Alliance Pakistan was founded by Fauzia Ilyas, who had to take asylum in Netherlands after being persecuted under Pakistani blasphemy laws. Agents of the Pakistani state attempt to suppress nascent online
atheist activism by infiltration of atheist groups, and suppression by
blocking online and offline safe spaces for free speech and persecution
by unofficial abductions and Pakistani blasphemy law threats.
India
In the early 21st century, an un-organised ex-Muslim movement started to emerge in India, typically among young (in their 20s and 30s) well-educated Muslim women and men in urban areas.
They are often troubled by religious teachings and practices (such as
shunning of and intolerance and violence towards non-Muslims), doubting
their veracity and morality, and started to question them.
Feeling that Islamic relatives and authorities failed to provide them
with satisfactory answers, and with access to alternative
interpretations of and information about Islam on the Internet, and the
ability to communicate with each other through social media, these
people resolved to apostatize. On 16 March 2017, an atheist political activist of Dravidar Viduthalai Kazhagam (DVK) named Farook Hameed of Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu
(an Indian state known for decades of well-established atheist
politics) who had an open WhatsApp group named 'Murtad (atheist)', was
hacked to death allegedly by his own close friends for openly professing
his atheism. Ex Muslims of Kerala conduct several discussions on Islam and Atheism on social media and also conducts public debate with Islamic scholars. Ex-Muslims of Kerala observe every January 9 as Kerala 'ex-Muslim Day. Another Muslim organization from Kerala, Samastha Kerala Jamiat-ul-Ulema are conducting special programs to counter increasing atheism among Muslim youth. According to a 2021 Pew Research Center
report on a survey amongst Indians conducted in late 2019 and early
2020, 6% of Indian Muslims did not believe in God, and 12% of Indian
Muslims were uncertain whether they believed in God.
Bangladesh
In the Bangladesh Liberation War
(March–December 1971), a significant number of Bangladeshis left Islam
to join Christianity (because missionaries stood with them during their
difficult times during the civil strife) or to atheism after 1971 due to
their experience of oppression conducted by fellow Muslims from West Pakistan. After the Internet became available, atheist, secular and ex-Muslim Bangladeshi bloggers began to appear in the mid-2000s. Asif Mohiuddin
organised the first meeting of Bangladeshi freethinkers, atheists,
agnostics, and other nonbelievers in Dhaka in 2010, which was attended
by 34 people. Mohiuddin then became the first victim of the attacks by Islamic extremists in Bangladesh
(2013–2016), although, unlike many others, he survived the attempt on
his life, and managed to flee to Germany. According to him, the number
of 'secularist, humanist, atheist, nonbeliever' bloggers in Bangladesh
(which has an 89% Muslim population) grew from 'four or five' people in
2005 to '15,000–20,000' in 2015.
Maldives
In the small South Asian Muslim-majority island state of the Maldives,
free thinker activists contested extremist narratives on social media,
conducted silent protests and questioned some conservatives since 2010. At least one of them,
Mohamed Nazim, was arrested or in protective custody subsequently had
to publicly revert to Islam in the custody period. Another, the young
air traffic controller Ismail Mohamed Didi, was found dead after getting
exposed for his apostasy, and further multiple questionable deaths of
ex-Muslims over the years were linked to international terrorist
connections of the accused.
Sri Lanka
In Sri Lanka, 9.7% of the population is Muslim.
Due to the social taboo on leaving Islam, the Council of Ex-Muslims of
Sri Lanka was founded in secret in 2016. Members of the organisation
hold meetings in hiding. In June 2019, Rishvin Ismath decided to come
forward as a spokesperson for the Council in order to denounce
government-approved and distributed textbooks for Muslim students which
stated that apostates from Islam should be killed. Ismath subsequently
received several death threats.
In Malaysia, the pro-moderation group G25 stated in January 2020
that, while they do not advocate apostasy, they supported doing away
with anti-apostasy laws. In 2017 Malaysian government investigated a group of atheist republic chapter members in Kuala Lumpur
and declared atheism to be unconstitutional. Indonesian Atheist
Facebook page was started in 2008, face to face gatherings of atheists
were started in 2011 in Jakarta Indonesian atheist 'Karina'.Atheist republic chapter in Jakarta Indonesia also had to self-censor their activism further under pressure of blasphemy laws.
According
to Simon Cottee, ex-Muslims aspire to move on beyond religious
discussions, but materializing that aspiration remains a challenge.
Khalil Bilici, while admitting that the limitations of their 2007 study
database are too small, found a substantial number of South Asians who
tend to remain agnostic or atheist after leaving Islam, whereas a good
number of Middle Eastern people are likely to convert to Christianity
after leaving Islam.
Demographics
Religious conversion has no net impact on the Muslim population growth as "the number of people who become Muslims through conversion seems to be roughly equal to the number of Muslims who leave the faith."
Generally, there are few reports about how many people leave Islam in
Muslim majority countries. The main reason for this is the social and
legal repercussions associated with leaving Islam in many Muslim majority countries, up to and including the death penalty for apostasy.
On the other hand, the increasingly large ex-Muslim communities in the
Western world that adhere to no religion have been well documented.
A 2007 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
report argued that some Muslim population projections are overestimated,
as they assume that all descendants of Muslims will become Muslims even
in cases of mixed parenthood. Equally, Darren E. Sherkat questioned in Foreign Affairs
whether some of the Muslim growth projections are accurate as they do
not take into account the increasing number of non-religious Muslims.
Quantitative research is lacking, but he believes the European trend
mirrors the American: data from the General Social Survey in the United
States show that 32 percent of those raised Muslim no longer embrace
Islam in adulthood, and 18 percent hold no religious identification. Many Muslims who leave Islam face social rejection or imprisonment and sometimes murder or other penalties. According to Pew Research,
the number of U.S. converts to Islam is roughly equal to the number of
U.S. Muslims who leave the religion, unlike other religions, in which
the number of those leaving is greater than the number of converts. A survey conducted by Pew Research Center in 2017 found that conversion has a negative impact on the growth of the Muslim population in Europe, with roughly 160,000 more people leaving Islam than converting into Islam between 2010 and 2016.
According to historian Geoffrey Blainey from the University of Melbourne, since the 1960s, there has been a substantial increase in the number of conversions from Islam to Christianity, mostly to the Evangelical and Pentecostal forms.
Many Muslims who convert to Christianity face social and governmental persecution. According to 2015 Believers in Christ from a Muslim Background": A Global Census study
published by Baylor University institute for studies of religion, an
estimated 10.2 million Muslims have converted to Christianity based on
global missionary data.
Countries with the largest numbers of Muslims converted to Christianity
include Indonesia (6,500,000), Nigeria (600,000), Iran (500,000 versus
only 500 in 1979), the United States (450,000), Ethiopia (400,000), and
Algeria (380,000). Indonesia
is home to the largest Christian community made up of converts from
their former Islamic faith; since the mid and late 1960s, between 2–2.5
million Muslims converted to Christianity.
Support requirements
According
to Simon Cottee, overwhelming realization from the interviews of
ex-Muslims he has taken, marginalization of individual ex-Muslims across
the board is a serious cause of concern and Cottee earnestly pleads in
his book preface that ex-Muslims do deserve a better deal than what they
are presently getting.
According to Cottee ex-Muslim individuals, self-help groups and
forums would need to find financial support from larger society in lieu
of family and community. Cottee says ex-Muslims in the west ought to
manage the moral stigma attached to apostasy within their own
communities and emotional difficulties and challenges involved in
leaving Islam.
Cottee further says it is not about traditional notions families and
surrounding community is afraid about duty, honor, and shame has nothing
to do with Islam but empathy is a solution where in Ex-Muslim
individuals are looking forward to continuation of familial and
community relationships in spite of leaving their faith. Cottee says
even social workers and even mental health care workers need to be
trained not only about nuances of Islamic faith but also about
difficulties and dilemmas while leaving Islam.
Mutual criticism
One
of Simon Cottee's ex-Muslim respondent says that actually many of them
are originally very devote and when they study original scriptures and
Prophets life to defend against doubts about Islam they end up on side
of confirming doubts being valid enough. According to Aki Muthali, apologist claims of persecution of Muslims by new atheist ex-Muslims are dishonest; and actually it is atheists, who have been and are most persecuted by religious societies and how many more homicides of atheist Muslims would take it to acknowledge the need of (modernist) reform in Islam.
On the other hand, some ex-Muslims do complain that in non-Muslim
majority countries, non-Muslim right-wing conservatives attempt to
misuse their criticism to demonize Muslims as individuals or as a
community; on the other hand, liberals and politically left-leaning
people distance themselves from ex-Muslims to whitewash limitations of
as an ideology, narrative, and religion to avoid upsetting the minority.Ex-Muslim atheist author Ali Amjad Rizvi
expresses his anguish at the 'liberal left in non-Muslim majority
countries' contradictory attitude to treat non-Muslim far-right ideas as
bad, but hesitating in extending the same level of criticism to
questionable illiberal ideas and practices advocated in Islamic holy
books like the Quran from misogyny, homophobia,
extremist interpretations of jihad, harsh corporal punishments like
hand amputation, severe legal penalties for blasphemy and apostasy and
many more.
Rizvi calls, 'liberal left in non-Muslim majority countries'
behavior of not supporting ex-Muslims but rather distancing themselves
to shake hands with conservative Islamic bigotry as a kind of betrayal
of true liberalism, shared by ex-Muslims.
According to Rizvi, 'many liberals in non-Muslim majority countries'
inadvertently end up empowering inhumane and undemocratic attitudes of
Islamist institutions and governments in Muslim-majority countries, who
misuse the victimhood card to oppress and persecute liberal dissidents
within their own societies.
Rizvi further points out that bigotry against Muslims as a human
community and criticism of Islam are two different things. Ex-Muslims do
not support any hate against Muslims, but rather, ex-Muslims themselves
suffer from the same hate coming from the far-right for reasons such as
sharing Muslim-cultural names. Ex-Muslims face triple jeopardy: they
receive discrimination from the far-right, persecution from their
erst-while Muslim relations and community, and even the liberal left of
non-Muslims stand with persecutors of ex-Muslims.
According to Rizvi, critics of ex-Muslims tend to confuse between hate
against a community and legitimate criticism of Islam. Muslims as humans
do have rights and deserve respect, whereas Islam is just an idea, and
all ideas are very much expected to be open to unreserved criticism and
that ex-Muslims limit their criticism to Islam and do not extend it to
Muslims as a community. While quoting Maryam Namazie,
Rizvi reiterates that "criticizing Islam and Islamism is not
anti-Muslim", rather, avoiding legitimate criticism of Islam and
Islamism tend to create a vacuum as an open field for the far-right
which is frequently used against Muslims.
Ex-Muslims are found to have concerns about some of the Islamic
practices, including that of not allowing questioning in and about
religion; practicing hatred of kafirs (nonbelievers), hatred of certain
animal species like swine and dogs, sending more women to hell,
polygamy, and thighing.
Ex-Muslim literature
Crimp, Susan; Richardson, Joel (2008). Why We Left Islam: Former Muslims Speak Out. New York, WND Books. ISBN9780979267109
Ham, Boris van der; Benhammou, Rachid (2018). Nieuwe Vrijdenkers: 12 voormalige moslims vertellen hun verhaal (New Freethinkers: 12 Former Muslims Tell Their Story). Amsterdam: Prometheus. p. 209. ISBN9789044636840.
Al-Husseini, Waleed (2017). The Blasphemer: The Price I Paid for Rejecting Islam (Blasphémateur ! : les prisons d'Allah). New York City: Skyhorse Publishing. ISBN9781628726756.
Jami, Ehsan (2007). Het recht om ex-moslim te zijn (The Right to Be an Ex-Muslim). Kampen: Uitgeverij Ten Have. ISBN978-9025958367.
Mohammed, Yasmine (2019). From Al Qaeda to Atheism: The Girl Who Would Not Submit. Free Hearts Free Minds. ISBN978-1724790804.
Rizvi, Ali Amjad (2016). The Atheist Muslim: A Journey from Religion to Reason. New York City: St Martin's Press. ISBN9781250094445.
Saleem, Aliyah; Mughal, Fiyaz (2018). Leaving Faith Behind: The journeys and perspectives of people who have chosen to leave Islam. London: Darton, Longman & Todd. p. 192. ISBN978-0232533644. ASIN0232533644.
Sultan, Harris (2018). The Curse of God: Why I Left Islam. Australia: Xlibris. ISBN978-1984502124.
