Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now Read Online Free PDF

abuses they are against—from child marriage to the persecution of homosexuals—to the religious tenets on which the abuses are based. To give just a single example, in August 2014 the theocratic regime in Tehran executed two men, Abdullah Ghavami Chahzanjiru and Salman Ghanbari Chahzanjiri, apparently for violating the Islamic Republic’s law against sodomy. That law is based on the Qur’an and the hadith.
    People like me—some of us apostates, most of us dissident Muslims—need your support, not your antagonism. We who have known what it is to live without freedom watch with incredulity as you who call yourselves liberals—who claim to believe so fervently in individual liberty and minority rights—make common cause with the forces in the world that manifestly pose the greatest threats to that very freedom and those very minorities.
    I am now one of you: a Westerner. I share with you the pleasures of the seminar rooms and the campus cafés. I know we Western intellectuals cannot lead a Muslim Reformation. But we do have an important role to play. We must no longer accept limitations on criticism of Islam. We must reject the notions that only Muslims can speak about Islam, and that any critical examination of Islam is inherently “racist.” Instead of contorting Western intellectual traditions so as not to offend our Muslim fellow citizens, we need to defend the Muslim dissidents who are risking their lives to promote the human rights we take for granted: equality for women, tolerance of all religions and orientations, our hard-won freedoms of speech and thought. We support the women in Saudi Arabia who wish to drive, the women in Egypt who are protesting against sexual assault, the homosexuals in Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan, the young Muslim men who want not martyrdom but the freedom to leave their faith. But our support would be more effective if we acknowledged the theological bases of their oppression.
    In short, we who have the luxury of living in the West have an obligation to stand up for liberal principles. Multiculturalism should not mean that we tolerate another culture’s intolerance. If we do in fact support diversity, women’s rights, and gay rights, then we cannot in good conscience give Islam a free pass on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity. And we need to say unambiguously to Muslims living in the West: If you want to live in our societies, to share in their material benefits, then you need to accept that our freedoms are not optional. They are the foundation of our way of life; of our civilization—a civilization that learned, slowly and painfully, not to burn heretics, but to honor them.
    Indeed, one highly desirable outcome of a Muslim Reformation would be to redefine the meaning of the word “heretic” itself. Religious reformations always shift the meaning of this term: today’s heretic becomes tomorrow’s reformer, while today’s defender of religious orthodoxy becomes tomorrow’s Torquemada. A Muslim Reformation would have the happy effect of turning the tables on those I am threatened by—rendering them the heretics, not me.

 
    CHAPTER 1
    THE STORY OF A HERETIC
    My Journey Away from Islam
    I was raised a practicing Muslim and remained one for almost half my life. I attended madrassas and memorized large parts of the Qur’an. As a child, I lived in Mecca for a time and frequently visited the Grand Mosque. As a teenager, I joined the Muslim Brotherhood. In short, I am old enough to have seen Islam’s bifurcation in the latter half of the twentieth century between the everyday faith of my parents and the intolerant, militant jihadism preached by the people I call the Medina Muslims. So let me begin with the Islam in which I grew up.
    I was about three years old when my grandmother started teaching me what little she had memorized of the Qur’an under the feathery leaves of the Somali talal tree. She could not read or write—literacy began to be promoted in Somalia only in