In this shocking video, a speaker by the name of Asadullah Ali admits the level of doubt and apostasy among young Muslims is at record levels and has increased over the years.

First of all, who is Asadullah?  Asadullah is the Islamic name of Kevin, an American who became Muslim many years ago.  We have a history together, so to speak.  It’s a bit of a long story but I was introduced to Asadullah by a mutual friend.  Eddie of the Deen show.  You see I was actually a collaborator of Eddie’s. I had done some behind-the-scenes support of his website and had spoken to Eddie several times before.  When I left Islam, we had a long chat about it and he decided to send me to an “expert” friend of his. An expert on what might you ask? An expert on atheism.  

So Asadullah recommended I watch his boring-ass 6 part video series on “understanding atheism”, which ironically was more for a Muslim crowd who was having doubts about Islam and trying to keep them in line.  Of course, it didn’t help me, but Asadullah decided to keep me around on his friends list. This wasn’t exactly a good idea, and Asadullah eventually blocked me after “having enough”.  None of this really matters except it’s a fun story and it gives you some context to who he is. 

So to summarize Asadullah’s comments in the video, there are hundreds of young men and women who have openly admitted to Asadullah that they are apostates.  This includes Muslims who have memorized the Quran, are still leading prayers, and are involved in madrassa (Islamic education).  That the number of people who are openly Muslim but are not, is, and I quote “Dramatic and large”.

Then there are also Muslims who are LGBT who he says “think they are attracted to the same-sex”.  That’s pretty funny. Did you ever wonder “oh am I really attracted to the opposite sex?  Maybe I’m not”  Gimme a break. 

But in regards to the apostasy, and the scale of it, Asadullah is not alone here. Sheikh Saeed Rageh, Dr. Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, Yasir Qadhi, and others have openly acknowledged this.  They’ve used words like “tsunami”.  So this is not a one-off. This is a pattern now.

The most important benefit from the growing number of apostates is that dissent will become normalized.  This is one of the most important goals of the exmuslim movement – to normalize apostasy. To allow freedom of religion.  Islam stands alone in that many Muslims still preach that the punishment for apostasy is death in an Islamic law.  Clowns like Ali Dawah squawk “We’re proud of that”. And he’s not alone. It’s very much agreed by Muslims that this applies to this day, alongside jihad and slavery.

Lastly, Asadullah got quite angry at my tweet about him deleting his video. I mistakenly assumed he took it down because he regretted posting it.  He wrote a long scathing post on Facebook accusing me of “stalking his page”, which is actually quite funny.  The reason I heard about this video is I have people regularly watch such content and ask me to respond to it.  This is exactly what happened. A friend of mine who still watches Asadullah saw the video and notified me that it was worth discussing.  Asadullah accused me of “capitalizing on trauma” because the video was actually about mending relationships between children and their elders and I apparently didn’t “care” about that.  

I will give credit to Asadullah here.  He is doing a good thing, to be honest. I don’t want to hear stories of Muslims kicked out of their homes or ostracized or abused over leaving Islam.  If he can normalize doubt, and help bring better relationships between Muslim children and their parents, that is a good thing. I don’t particularly believe that will stop the tsunami, but at the end of the day, I support this goal of parents getting a better understanding of the western Muslim kid mindset.  This is a lofty goal.  While he wants them to remain Muslim, and I don’t particularly care if they do and would probably prefer they don’t, we can still agree that parent-child relationships are important. 

If anything, this issue is about to get a whole lot bigger unless more people openly speak about apostasy in the community.  This gap is going to get worse.  Asadullah did a good thing being honest about this, and I hope more people do the same.  

What I care about is not whether people leave Islam or not, although I do think it is a good thing because Islam is false and it’s mental slavery to someone else’s false ideas, but really the point is can we help people to live the life they want.  Living a double life comes at a price. It sucks the life out of you.  

So this is reassuring.  This means that our work is not done but we’re doing something right. We have to continue fighting as change is happening. Sea level change is coming, maybe not within our lives but it’s happening. We are fighting for people’s rights to live their lives the way THEY want to.  There is nothing more important than freeing people from these shackles. Because piece by piece society will improve. We need to show people to leave behind the god that Muhammad invented for his own personal benefit.