‘It’s like asking me how often I drink water. Antisemitism was everywhere.’ Apostates, former Islamists, and an almost-terrorist on how they changed their minds.
I did not know bigamy was legal in Canada, even for Muslims.
These short essays are powerful statements about the wickedness of Islamism. Why we have imported it into Western civilization and allow it to poison our children is one of those questions we can’t ask because it means we are Islamophobic but which desperately needs answering of we want to survive as free, humanist societies.
I’ve been reading a book that examines historically the story of Mohammad, the Koran, hadiths, suras. Lots there that is unverifiable. While documentation of Christianity in the early AD centuries was prolific, documentation of Mohammad doesn’t appear until 200 yrs after his death, which makes accuracy an issue. The hadiths--written by others, not Mohammad. No historical documents of their conquests. Why not?
The other interesting lost fact is just how Christian the ME was after about AD 100. Churches and monasteries were all over Syria, Egypt, Sinai, Ethiopia, and what are now Iraq and Iran. Mohammad’s Muslims were the real colonizers.
Muslims need to face the possibility that their whole religious foundation is nothing more than mythology, and that it teaches hate and glorifies death.
Imagine a world where there had never been a Mohammad.
“The Iranian people and the Israelis are victims of the same monster—Islamists.”
—————————————————
Yeah but they are also victims of the college-educated accusatory moralizing anti-west scumbags who said the Shah represented colonialist imperialism and we need a two-state solution because of diversity. So that would be Democrats.
Israelis and Iranians are victims of two diabolical groups of perverts: Islamists and Democrats.
This article was an excellent read as it gives testimony to true courage and people with whom I have solidarity, not because of their race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation but instead of our shared ideals. The main thread flowing through these posts is those who live free to think and act according to their own consciences. I can remember learning about Voltaire's Philosophical Letters and how he spoke of people in London in the 18th century who lived behind closed doors but were united by the market and commerce once in public. That secret sauce created the English economy, then its rebellious offspring, the US, to make this most incredible age we live in.
As I follow the Isreal/Hamas war - I see not a religion but rather people who want to create a world like Voltaire's explanation in England and those who don't. I am for people who wish to trade and live in a modern world, not the Palestinians who teach hate and backwardness. I want a prosperous world where these people can live their best lives, and those Enlightenment values of the West and Isreal are far superior to the backwardness of those who teach this hate and fear. Thanks for sharing these brave and noble voices.
As a Jewish woman it is so distressing to hear how much Jews and women are loathed by so many people. These vignettes are so incredibly important and powerful. Keep em coming.
Brave folks. I encounter this kind of brainwashed individual daily on social media. They repeat the same deeply antisemitic conspiracy theories and blood libels and bigoted tropes with zero self-reflection or shame. When it comes from radicalized Islamist countries, one can understand they don't have the resources or environment to perhaps know better. But when you see Americans, Irish, Australians, Brits, and Canadians spewing antisemitism, one has to wonder if these individuals will ever wake up to the fact that they sound like actual nazis and how is it that education and civility could have bypassed them so completely.
Wow. Heartbreaking confirmation of concerns I have had since the 198O’s when Muslim extremism first touched my world. I am impressed by the courage of these young people and the hope that there are many more like them. I grieve though, that each has rejected God as they have turned away from Islam. I pray that the Light of Christ will eventually touch each one so that they might live in perfect freedom. I know this statement will offend many who also reject God or His Son. However, during this season of Advent, I feel it is vital for Christians such as myself to speak up and offer the hope we share. May God bless and protect each one of these courageous people and their families and friends. I do think that we in the West have no real frame of reference for understanding what is happening in the Middle East. We must listen to these testimonies and make a sincere effort to grasp that which each has stated: the extremists do not fear death, they hate Jews and are willing and indeed ready to kill as many as possible. There is no respect for life as witnessed most horribly on Oct. 7 and in the weeks following. They delight in the deaths of innocents in Gaza because they are filled with cruelty and hatred and think it is an honor to die in the cause of Islam. This IS a religious story whether we chose to believe it or not. Politics alone will not resolve any of the problems. In addition, I will simply state here that I pray daily for the hostages taken by Hamas. May God miraculously protect them!
Perhaps Canada’s idiot prime minister, Justin Trudeau, should read these courageous testimonials. Instead, his greatest concern after the slaughter of Jews on 10/7 was “Islamophobia”, as if a fear and hatred of Islam was an irrational phobia, and not a perfectly normal response to decades of Islamic terror in every country that has a significant Muslim population. To paraphrase one of the brave dissidents in this article, liberalism is the manure in which Islamism thrives and grows. Bari Weiss’s former employer, The New York Times, would never have allowed such testimonials even as they published Jew-hating cartoons and editorials that would have been right at home in the NAZI’s Der Sturmer. Thank you Bari!
Google “Surah 2:193” & “Matthew 5:44-45.” Fight your enemies v. Love your enemies. The Quran’s god and Bible’s God are separate, not “the same God of Abraham.” The Quran teaches to only allow peace when non-Muslims submit to Allah: jihad. Only martyrs are guaranteed forever in paradise with women, which is a powerful military recruitment message especially for young unemployed males of which there are many. Unrest isn’t going away and will likely worsen. Christmas is an important time to stop and ponder theology especially knowing this life is fragile and brief. Thanks, Free Press, for your excellence.
These testimonies beg many questions, some sarcastic and some deadly serious. What sayest the UN and the leaders of UNRWA? Or the vocal ceasefire interns and state dept signatories? What are they doing to combat this or are they facilitating the teaching of hate? How about CAIR and Rep. Tlaib( and others)?. How was she brought up and what was she taught? Does she condemn all such teaching and indoctrination? How do you get millions of people to give up the hate that has been ingrained in them? Will the elite colleges who now proclaim their commitment to free speech allow voices like these ( start with Hirsch Ali) to speak on their campuses and make clear they will not act as they have in the past to allow their mobs to shut down dialogue? Or will this be swept under the rug as always once the noise dies down?
What an incredible series. Much love and respect to you all for having the courage to do this.
Everytime I read something like this I vacillate between how fortunate we are to have an outlet like the FP, and how tragic it is that our mainstream press would consider this too controversial or "problematic"
“They believe in something so much that they are willing to die as a martyr for it. There’s just no frame of reference for that in the West.”
——————————————————-
The transvestite activists are like that. And also elite Democrats are like that. The climate change people are like that. Abortion enthusiasts are definitely like that. So we have some frame of reference.
Are there peaceful Muslims? Only to the extent that they are isolated and have little power. But even then, there is always the lone actor, such as the young man in London, who will attempt to act out the poison that is endemic in Islam. What can we in the west do? Limit the immigration of those who exhibit a tendency to act on this poisonous religion. But in the USA, this is not possible.
I thank the brave young people who came forward to speak out.
I like discussing theology and think it’s important that young people are informed on the origins of different faith traditions. I knew nothing of Islam until I was in my early twenties and worked with a couple guys who were Muslim. I was surprised to hear what they had to say and told my mother about it when I got home. She only said Islam is bad news. I didn’t know what she meant but soon thereafter Iran had a major melt down, theocrats took over and the s**t hit the fan.
Raised Catholic I could not have been any more detached from faith. No offense to Catholics, it just didn’t inspire me much. I had become a wild child hippy. It was the ‘70’s. My parents were always devout yet didn’t pressure us as kids. I’m sure it bothered them. As a parent now and remarkably, a born again Christian, I tried to raise our kids in faith. They have strayed. I hope they find God again someday.
I found Yeshua through a messianic congregation. When Jews preach the gospels it has an authority and unity of both old and new scripture that makes sense.
My parents were great people in that they instilled the idea that all humans are acceptable and created equal.
I am happy for these young people who have freed themselves from the oppressive dogma of hate that is pervasive in Islam. I hope they can ultimately reconnect with God, faith is helpful in life. I don’t have perfect faith, I have my moments but then I am reminded of times when I’ve been certain and that I made the choice to believe.
Anyway, this has been eye opening and I hope that those who might be inclined to refuse what they deeply feel isn’t right have the fortitude to discover more. I know it’s risky to detach from zealot groups.
I don’t hate Muslims but I do hate the hate/violence and think terrorists need stopping period.
All these people are characteristic of one of two classes of people from Islamic countries whom I met in 40+ years of working as a civil engineer in the US and Islamic countries: devoted Muslims and former Muslim atheists. These people belong to the latter class.
Based on my personal experience, ONLY these two classes exist in the Islamic world; there is NO intermediate class. There is no such thing as a "Moderate Muslim", as there is "Cafeteria Catholic".
I worked with people of both classes for 40+ years. All were engineers, many with advanced degrees from the best US and European universities, and excellent engineers. But, culturally, they lived in the 6th century.
They believed that Muslims had a duty to convert, subjugate, or eliminate infidels. They believed that it was legitimate to lie to infidels to advance Islam. They believed in engaging in truces when wesk, until strong enough to resume the jihad. These are DANGEROUS people.
Your Iskamic neighbor in your urban high rise or suburban community supports Jihad and Hamas. Recent polling in the US and Europe confirms this. He or she would be unmoved by the murder, torture or rape of you and the rest of your family. It is Allah's just punishment of the infidel. If you believe otherwise, you are deluding yourself. Their existence in your immediate neighborhood is a threat to your life
Very brave testimonies, respect!
I did not know bigamy was legal in Canada, even for Muslims.
These short essays are powerful statements about the wickedness of Islamism. Why we have imported it into Western civilization and allow it to poison our children is one of those questions we can’t ask because it means we are Islamophobic but which desperately needs answering of we want to survive as free, humanist societies.
I’ve been reading a book that examines historically the story of Mohammad, the Koran, hadiths, suras. Lots there that is unverifiable. While documentation of Christianity in the early AD centuries was prolific, documentation of Mohammad doesn’t appear until 200 yrs after his death, which makes accuracy an issue. The hadiths--written by others, not Mohammad. No historical documents of their conquests. Why not?
The other interesting lost fact is just how Christian the ME was after about AD 100. Churches and monasteries were all over Syria, Egypt, Sinai, Ethiopia, and what are now Iraq and Iran. Mohammad’s Muslims were the real colonizers.
Muslims need to face the possibility that their whole religious foundation is nothing more than mythology, and that it teaches hate and glorifies death.
Imagine a world where there had never been a Mohammad.
“The Iranian people and the Israelis are victims of the same monster—Islamists.”
—————————————————
Yeah but they are also victims of the college-educated accusatory moralizing anti-west scumbags who said the Shah represented colonialist imperialism and we need a two-state solution because of diversity. So that would be Democrats.
Israelis and Iranians are victims of two diabolical groups of perverts: Islamists and Democrats.
This article was an excellent read as it gives testimony to true courage and people with whom I have solidarity, not because of their race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation but instead of our shared ideals. The main thread flowing through these posts is those who live free to think and act according to their own consciences. I can remember learning about Voltaire's Philosophical Letters and how he spoke of people in London in the 18th century who lived behind closed doors but were united by the market and commerce once in public. That secret sauce created the English economy, then its rebellious offspring, the US, to make this most incredible age we live in.
As I follow the Isreal/Hamas war - I see not a religion but rather people who want to create a world like Voltaire's explanation in England and those who don't. I am for people who wish to trade and live in a modern world, not the Palestinians who teach hate and backwardness. I want a prosperous world where these people can live their best lives, and those Enlightenment values of the West and Isreal are far superior to the backwardness of those who teach this hate and fear. Thanks for sharing these brave and noble voices.
As a Jewish woman it is so distressing to hear how much Jews and women are loathed by so many people. These vignettes are so incredibly important and powerful. Keep em coming.
Brave folks. I encounter this kind of brainwashed individual daily on social media. They repeat the same deeply antisemitic conspiracy theories and blood libels and bigoted tropes with zero self-reflection or shame. When it comes from radicalized Islamist countries, one can understand they don't have the resources or environment to perhaps know better. But when you see Americans, Irish, Australians, Brits, and Canadians spewing antisemitism, one has to wonder if these individuals will ever wake up to the fact that they sound like actual nazis and how is it that education and civility could have bypassed them so completely.
Wow. Heartbreaking confirmation of concerns I have had since the 198O’s when Muslim extremism first touched my world. I am impressed by the courage of these young people and the hope that there are many more like them. I grieve though, that each has rejected God as they have turned away from Islam. I pray that the Light of Christ will eventually touch each one so that they might live in perfect freedom. I know this statement will offend many who also reject God or His Son. However, during this season of Advent, I feel it is vital for Christians such as myself to speak up and offer the hope we share. May God bless and protect each one of these courageous people and their families and friends. I do think that we in the West have no real frame of reference for understanding what is happening in the Middle East. We must listen to these testimonies and make a sincere effort to grasp that which each has stated: the extremists do not fear death, they hate Jews and are willing and indeed ready to kill as many as possible. There is no respect for life as witnessed most horribly on Oct. 7 and in the weeks following. They delight in the deaths of innocents in Gaza because they are filled with cruelty and hatred and think it is an honor to die in the cause of Islam. This IS a religious story whether we chose to believe it or not. Politics alone will not resolve any of the problems. In addition, I will simply state here that I pray daily for the hostages taken by Hamas. May God miraculously protect them!
Perhaps Canada’s idiot prime minister, Justin Trudeau, should read these courageous testimonials. Instead, his greatest concern after the slaughter of Jews on 10/7 was “Islamophobia”, as if a fear and hatred of Islam was an irrational phobia, and not a perfectly normal response to decades of Islamic terror in every country that has a significant Muslim population. To paraphrase one of the brave dissidents in this article, liberalism is the manure in which Islamism thrives and grows. Bari Weiss’s former employer, The New York Times, would never have allowed such testimonials even as they published Jew-hating cartoons and editorials that would have been right at home in the NAZI’s Der Sturmer. Thank you Bari!
Google “Surah 2:193” & “Matthew 5:44-45.” Fight your enemies v. Love your enemies. The Quran’s god and Bible’s God are separate, not “the same God of Abraham.” The Quran teaches to only allow peace when non-Muslims submit to Allah: jihad. Only martyrs are guaranteed forever in paradise with women, which is a powerful military recruitment message especially for young unemployed males of which there are many. Unrest isn’t going away and will likely worsen. Christmas is an important time to stop and ponder theology especially knowing this life is fragile and brief. Thanks, Free Press, for your excellence.
These testimonies beg many questions, some sarcastic and some deadly serious. What sayest the UN and the leaders of UNRWA? Or the vocal ceasefire interns and state dept signatories? What are they doing to combat this or are they facilitating the teaching of hate? How about CAIR and Rep. Tlaib( and others)?. How was she brought up and what was she taught? Does she condemn all such teaching and indoctrination? How do you get millions of people to give up the hate that has been ingrained in them? Will the elite colleges who now proclaim their commitment to free speech allow voices like these ( start with Hirsch Ali) to speak on their campuses and make clear they will not act as they have in the past to allow their mobs to shut down dialogue? Or will this be swept under the rug as always once the noise dies down?
What an incredible series. Much love and respect to you all for having the courage to do this.
Everytime I read something like this I vacillate between how fortunate we are to have an outlet like the FP, and how tragic it is that our mainstream press would consider this too controversial or "problematic"
“They believe in something so much that they are willing to die as a martyr for it. There’s just no frame of reference for that in the West.”
——————————————————-
The transvestite activists are like that. And also elite Democrats are like that. The climate change people are like that. Abortion enthusiasts are definitely like that. So we have some frame of reference.
Are there peaceful Muslims? Only to the extent that they are isolated and have little power. But even then, there is always the lone actor, such as the young man in London, who will attempt to act out the poison that is endemic in Islam. What can we in the west do? Limit the immigration of those who exhibit a tendency to act on this poisonous religion. But in the USA, this is not possible.
I thank the brave young people who came forward to speak out.
I like discussing theology and think it’s important that young people are informed on the origins of different faith traditions. I knew nothing of Islam until I was in my early twenties and worked with a couple guys who were Muslim. I was surprised to hear what they had to say and told my mother about it when I got home. She only said Islam is bad news. I didn’t know what she meant but soon thereafter Iran had a major melt down, theocrats took over and the s**t hit the fan.
Raised Catholic I could not have been any more detached from faith. No offense to Catholics, it just didn’t inspire me much. I had become a wild child hippy. It was the ‘70’s. My parents were always devout yet didn’t pressure us as kids. I’m sure it bothered them. As a parent now and remarkably, a born again Christian, I tried to raise our kids in faith. They have strayed. I hope they find God again someday.
I found Yeshua through a messianic congregation. When Jews preach the gospels it has an authority and unity of both old and new scripture that makes sense.
My parents were great people in that they instilled the idea that all humans are acceptable and created equal.
I am happy for these young people who have freed themselves from the oppressive dogma of hate that is pervasive in Islam. I hope they can ultimately reconnect with God, faith is helpful in life. I don’t have perfect faith, I have my moments but then I am reminded of times when I’ve been certain and that I made the choice to believe.
Anyway, this has been eye opening and I hope that those who might be inclined to refuse what they deeply feel isn’t right have the fortitude to discover more. I know it’s risky to detach from zealot groups.
I don’t hate Muslims but I do hate the hate/violence and think terrorists need stopping period.
All these people are characteristic of one of two classes of people from Islamic countries whom I met in 40+ years of working as a civil engineer in the US and Islamic countries: devoted Muslims and former Muslim atheists. These people belong to the latter class.
Based on my personal experience, ONLY these two classes exist in the Islamic world; there is NO intermediate class. There is no such thing as a "Moderate Muslim", as there is "Cafeteria Catholic".
I worked with people of both classes for 40+ years. All were engineers, many with advanced degrees from the best US and European universities, and excellent engineers. But, culturally, they lived in the 6th century.
They believed that Muslims had a duty to convert, subjugate, or eliminate infidels. They believed that it was legitimate to lie to infidels to advance Islam. They believed in engaging in truces when wesk, until strong enough to resume the jihad. These are DANGEROUS people.
Your Iskamic neighbor in your urban high rise or suburban community supports Jihad and Hamas. Recent polling in the US and Europe confirms this. He or she would be unmoved by the murder, torture or rape of you and the rest of your family. It is Allah's just punishment of the infidel. If you believe otherwise, you are deluding yourself. Their existence in your immediate neighborhood is a threat to your life