Abdullah Sameer

أَلَا يَعْلَمُ مَنْ خَلَقَ وَهُوَ اللَّطِيفُ الْخَبِيرُ Does He who created not know, while He is the Subtle, the Acquainted? (67:14)

Reflections on Religion and History 1 Year Later

Abdullah Sameer

1 Year after Leaving Islam here are my reflections….

I propose that the most likely explanation is not that all other religions except Islam are false, but rather all religions including Islam are false.
Mythical stories like the heavens and earth being split, Adam and Eve, Allah raising the heaven from the Earth , the idea of Shaytans are fair attempts at the ancients trying to understand the universe and answer the question of how we got here.
The reality is that these stories do not seem to be true or based on any real events or facts but rather just invented out of thin air.
How do we explain in Surah Qamar the stars falling to Earth, or in the hadith that discusses the sun coming near and the sweat increasing per person. Doesn’t actually match our understanding of reality and requires a lot more assumptions to make sense. In order to maintain this understanding of reality you have to hold a dual understanding of reality where you separate your reasoning into two parts. One for everything else and a special reasoning just for religion
When I got to the point where I realized this, I left Islam

Struggles of my gay Muslim friend Sohail

Abdullah Sameer

My friend Sohail is someone who grew up in a strict Salafi Muslim family.  Growing up he struggled to understand why he was attracted to men and felt a lot of self-hate for this.  He thought maybe God is punishing him for committing some sins and desperately wanted to change his sexuality.  This is his story.  If you want to understand a certain group of people, the best way is to talk to them.  Don’t go by hearsay or by what you might think.

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Hitler, Stalin and Atheism

Abdullah Sameer

It is an often heard refrain among less well informed Christians that Hitler and Stalin (those slightly more knowledgeable sometimes add Pol Pot and Mao Zedong) were atheists and that their atheism led them to commit atrocities resulting in the deaths of millions of people. These claims are demonstrably false.

  • Hitler was never an atheist. The available evidence points to the fact that he remained a theist throughout his whole life.
  • It is true that Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot, were all atheists. But the primary influences that led to their atrocities were not atheism per se but their dogmatic Marxism and communist ideas.

We see that in none of these cases could atheism be made to “take the blame” for the atrocities committed by these men.

Read more at Hitler, Stalin and Atheism

The Antagonism of Salafism and Wahhabism

Abdullah Sameer
Salafism is the most antagonistic and harmful interpretation of Islam towards others.
Across the globe, Wahhabism, which is an extremist interpretation of Islam, is spreading into Muslim communities and destroying dissent, diversity, and sanity. It is a fascist, oppressive, bigoted, antisemitic, misogynistic interpretation of Islam, and its clerics are all too often apologists for terrorism and other forms of ideologically-driven murder.

I remember attending an event for Rachel Corrie the girl who died trying to prevent Palestinian homes from being bulldozed and I had Salafi friends who were disgusted saying that

She’s a kafir (disbeliever), why are we honoring her? She’s just going to go to the hellfire

This, in a nutshell, is the problem with Salafism.

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