People sometimes wonder when you left Islam were people trying to kill you. No, for me it wasn’t like that. People weren’t trying to kill me. I had all different types of people trying to help me. I was well known in the community as a convert because I converted from Ismailism right. So I had a ton of friends everybody loved me. They were trying to help me to come back to Islam.

Yes, people online maybe wanted to kill me. I mean I got some death that’s online but my actual community where I live they all felt really bad for me and some of them were even crying like when they heard that I left Islam because they were so sad that I’m going to go to hell now.

One of my good friends for over 10 years we used to do Dawah together said, “I’m not going to help you move houses because you told me that you have a blog now” This is before I even started YouTube and I had just created the blog. His reasoning was that I was talking against Islam on my blog which automatically turned me into his enemy despite the fact that we had known each other for over a decade.

The problem is a lot of my relationships and friendship were all based on Iman on faith. We weren’t friends just because we had mutual interests or something. I put myself in this religious bubble almost like a cult. So all of these people were friends with me for religious reasons.

So when I left Islam, of course, they all left me. They didn’t care about me anymore. You can see what type of friends they were because a true friend would never do that. I mean there are a few exceptions. There’s still one guy that’s still good friends with me and there’s another guy that became friends with me who is kind of like in the doubting phase he’s still Muslim but he agrees with a lot of the things I say and so he’s still Muslim but he knows that what I’m saying is true that it doesn’t make sense that Islam tells people to kill apostates. 

He even told me, “We always want Christians to become Muslim but what if their religion said they had to be dead too? What if all religions said that? You would never be able to convert right.” So he knows he’s a strict Salafi Muslim and he’s like I agree with you this makes no sense. So he’s my good friend but unfortunately, what I do I can’t trust anybody. I really can’t. It’s just it’s too dangerous.

There are too many crazy people out there and I can’t be friends with Muslims anymore. The risk is they might leak my information to someone else who might do something and that’s the kind of way I live. Somehow people found out where I was working and they called up my company and they said, “This guy should be fired because he’s a bigot and he hates Muslims”. They escalated it all the way to human resources.

Human resources and the CEO of the company got involved and it’s not a small company. They had a meeting and I only found out about this after the fact.  Actually, I was trying to report threats that I was receiving when they told me about the calls the management had been receiving for a while.

Thankfully, they didn’t fire me. I didn’t even know about it. They didn’t even tell me until I went to them first. When he told me I was like, “Why didn’t you tell me?”. He’s like, “Oh we didn’t feel the need to tell you because it’s your own personal business what you’re doing and you’re doing your job. You’re doing a good job at work.”

Honestly, I got lucky I had a good boss because I could have been fired for that. They tried to cancel me for speaking against the religion even though I am the most supportive of Muslims than probably most ex-Muslims. I go out of my way to say that we should not be bigoted against Muslims.

We should respect Muslims not respect their beliefs. We should respect them as human beings. The issue is not them being Muslim. Rather, the issue is Islamism and them trying to encroach on my rights and your rights and to tell us we cannot be disbelievers.

The Quran actually promotes that Muslims should not hang about with infidels and to only have believing friends, you know fellow brothers who are Muslims. So when you question and leave Islam, you’re pretty much an infidel and you’re an outcast. It also says that the punishment to those who cause corruption in the land are the ones who are basically rebelling against Allah.

Ali Dawah threw a tirade in one video posted on his YouTube page regarding the punishment that people should receive for leaving Islam. Here is a direct quote: “…Because people like you little weaklings leave their religion and cause corruption in the land by spreading it. Capital punishment and Islamic law will be applied to you.” This is a view that held by a lot of Muslims although some would say this punishment should only be applied in an Islamic state.

So when you’re questioning your faith and teachings that you grew up with, your friends may probably still want to be a friend with you. They probably may still want to engage and do things with you. But the dean/ religion will cause him to deny you as a friend because you’re an infidel and you’re waging war against Allah. Under Sharia law, they could actually crucify you because you are basically speaking against Islam. They would be able to kill you

This is called being friends with disbelievers is not allowed and us versus them ideology.

This thinking is very dominant in the Salafi/Wahhabi Muslim. They have this sort of thinking that they cannot be friends with you, sit with you, or talk with you because you’re an apostate. The Sufis and other sects are not as crazy as the Salafis in this regard.

The worst of all are the people that are in Hizbut-Tahrir or these Islamic movements. So Hizbut-Tahrir is a group that wants to re-establish Islamic law rather they want to re-establish the Islamic state. One of their leaders told me that “You’re going to end up addicted to drugs, drinking alcohol, homeless, living on the streets because you left Islam. He called me to my face an enemy of Allah. 

Those are the type of people you have to be careful of. The typical Muslim doesn’t even care. They’re like “Yeah I don’t like you talking about my religion and I’m just not going to be friends with you on Facebook anymore. A lot of them stayed friends with me on Facebook, which surprise me.

 

As for that one Muslim friend that I have now, we still talk about religion but for the most. We just try to avoid that topic there’s no point. He’s not Salafi so he’s willing to just be friends with me for the sake of like okay we know each other for many years like over two decades or whatever. He knows my family and I know his family and so for that reason, we’re still friends