On being a Muslim apostate and writing on apostasy

Published in Turkish Daily News, 29 April 2008

Download the report: No Place to Call Home; Experiences of Apostates from Islam and Failures of the International Community




I have always been amused by which dimensions of my identity are picked up on by presenters, chairpersons and journalists when introducing me. If the talk or the article is on Turkish-Armenian issues, my “Turkishness” assumes center stage. If it is for an intellectual audience, my academic credentials, particularly the fact that I have studied a wide range of issues on three different continents, are emphasized. Whenever I speak to or write for a Christian audience, the “miracle” that I am a Turkish Christian becomes my main source of credibility. It seems that the Christian world, just like my fellow Turkish citizens, sees the phrase “Turkish Christian” as an oxymoron. There is one more element of who I am that never sits comfortably with me but seems to draw increasing attention; I am a Muslim apostate.

Bashing Islam and Muslims?:

The word creates instant interest and disgust. In both cases, everyone assumes what you will say next. It creates feelings of sympathy and comradeship in those who tend to have a negative, black and white view of Muslim societies. Most non-Muslims expect you to show, or help them to prove, the “true face of Islam” and want to know how you have come to “realize the higher culture” of the religion you converted to. The word also creates strong emotions among Muslims who live in a negative, black and white view of the world. Most Muslims assume that you will sing the common tune of apostates who seem to be driven a sense of purpose, or a sense of revenge, in life by bashing Islam and the Muslim world.

I have often struggled while telling people that I am an apostate. In the Muslim world, it was more a fear of serious repercussions and in the West because of these preconceived glasses that people use to view me. I simply do not fit to these categories. I find myself culturally at home in the Muslim world and often defend Islam when it is being reduced to terrorism and violence. I also continue to speak up for Muslims when they face racist attacks, renditions and indefinite detentions. This shocks Westerners. Yet, I also shock Muslims, when I criticize them with the truth that Muslim societies rank at the top of human rights abuses lists.

Continue Reading "On being a Muslim apostate'"
One current example of this is a report I was commissioned to write on the experiences of apostates from Islam by a British human rights organization. I spent an entire year conducting interviews in Iran, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Turkey and the U.K. with apostates and spent most of my time surveying the legal situation in the world’s 44 Muslim-majority countries, as well as Islamic theology and jurisprudence and international law. The report, “No Place to Call Home: Experiences of Apostates from Islam and Failures of the International Community,” has created both great interest and great disgust, all in one go.

Findings of the report:

During the writing of the report, I had to face the sad fact that apostasy is not a mere theoretical debate on whether or not the Koran and the Hadith prescribe the death penalty, but that it is an overlooked human rights concern. Apostates are subjected to gross and wide-ranging human rights abuses, including extra-judicial killings by state-related agents or mobs; honor killings by family members; detention, imprisonment, torture, physical and psychological intimidation by security forces; the denial of access to judicial services and social services; the denial of equal employment or education opportunities; social pressure resulting in the loss of housing and employment; and day-to-day discrimination and ostracism in educational, financial and social activities.

For some Muslims, writing a report that shows this and provides a legal, theological and socio-political framework to analyze the problem is already proof that I am an Islam-hating, lying, defaming apostate. For others, I seem to be fulfilling my role as an Islam-hating whistle blower. For my concerned friends, I am a fool who is taking a high personal risk of being persecuted by my own state or the countries I travel in, of being attacked physically by Islamists, purists or just irrational nationalists. For my family, all of whom are still Muslims, I am continuing to bring shame on them and becoming famous for all the wrong reasons. That is why my wise friends regularly advise me to write under a pseudonym, but I will never do so. Why? Why am I writing on this issue if I am not an Islam-hater or an ally of Western right-wing politics?

For the tears of others:

It is because I have looked into the eyes of people in a wide range of Muslim countries, including Turkey, who are subjected to the most grotesque persecution just because they have sought to exercise their most fundamental right to choose a religion or belief and live accordingly. One apostate who was subjected to torture and solitary confinement in a Middle Eastern country told me that his torturers mockingly told him to scream as loud as he could because no one would hear him and run to his aid. The apostate said that this was what broke him down, not the physical damage: To realize that he was in fact all alone in a small and cold cell.

I owe it to people like him and many others who are in vulnerable and fragile conditions. That is why I write on apostasy, even though I have no interest whatsoever in attacking or defending Islam or in capitalizing on my own apostasy. I write, because perhaps my words may serve as the voice that has been taken away from these people by their communities and that has been muted by the international community. Perhaps… I write for myself… so that it is no longer just me who has to witness and carry the tears of others.