USA TODAY
By Toby Sterling, Associated Press
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands Ehsan Jami knew he was making
himself a target for radical Islamists when he decided
to launch a Dutch organization for Muslims who
renounce their religion.
Five months and three physical assaults later, his
"Committee for Ex-Muslims" is being launched Tuesday,
joining similar groups that have sprung up around
Europe.
These groups hope to add a new voice to the debate
about and within Europe's Muslim communities,
presenting themselves as diametrically different to
the disenchanted and sometimes violent youth who grab
headlines, or to immigrants who live cloistered among
their own.
Instead, they seek recognition from the Muslim
mainstream for "freethinkers," empowered Muslim women,
homosexuals and those who want to renounce their
religion without fear.
Under some fundamentalist interpretations of Islam,
apostasy is forbidden, or is a heresy punishable by
death.
"We want to support people who want to change their
religion, but their parents, their society have them
clasped in it and won't let them out," Jami, 22, said
in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday.
"They would realize that they are not standing alone."
The latest attack on Jami last month, when he was
struck and pushed to the ground at a shopping center
by three youths, was widely publicized in the
Netherlands. The assailants were arrested, but Jami
was forced into hiding, and receives police
protection.
He said an earlier attack was even more dangerous,
when he was surrounded by a large group of youths at
night and had a knife held to his throat.
He had anticipated death threats, he said, but had not
fully appreciated what they meant.
"It's like the death of family," Jami said. "You know
it will come, but you don't know how much pain it will
bring."
Leaders of ex-Muslim groups from Germany and England
plan to attend Tuesday's launch, before meeting the
European Commission in Brussels on Wednesday.
"Very clearly our intent is to break the taboo" within
Islam against renouncing religion, said Maryam
Namazie, who in June founded The British Council of
Ex-Muslims.
"The first step is making it easier to do that. You
could compare it to when the first gays came out of
the closet," she said.
Other groups have formed in the Scandinavian
countries. Altogether, the European groups have total
membership of no more than several hundred.
But the ex-Muslims say they are determined to show
that "not all people from Muslim countries are
religious," said Arzu Toker, vice president of
Germany's Council of Ex Muslims, the first and largest
of the organizations.
"If we don't show it, many people (in the West) will
think 'all these people are just the same,' and that's
simply not true," she said.
Toker, a Turkish-born journalist, says membership in
Germany has grown to more than 100 from 18 founders in
January. Hundreds more have written to show their
support, but are unwilling, unable or afraid to join.
Akbar Ahmed, who chairs the Islamic Studies department
at American University in Washington, said the advent
of such groups is not surprising.
"Expatriates may be intellectually questioning, given
the freedom they have from being abroad," he said. "A
few may decide they are fed up with Islam others
become much more vigorously Islamic."
He gave the example of Muslim girls living in the West
who wear veils, but never would have done so in the
country they immigrated from.
He said it is wrong to say Islam endorses killing
apostates, though some of the Hadith, or sayings
attributed to Mohammed, appear to endorse it when
taken out of context, he said.
Salima Belhaj, who is not a member of Jami's group,
says she has been branded as an apostate because of
her modern lifestyle.
"It's others who decide that I'm an ex-Muslim, because
I wear short skirts or don't go the mosque and drink a
glass of wine" now and then, she told the newspaper
Trouw.
She said she still considers herself a Muslim, "but I
don't think that others should decide how I live my
life. As I see it, Islam is something between you and
God."
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Dutch lawmaker who
abandoned Islam and lived under threat for years for
her provocative criticism of fundamentalism, said she
was "shocked" by the attack on Jami.
"The rule of law, the basis of a state with civil
liberties, is hollow if it becomes dangerous to do
your shopping," Hirsi Ali said in a statement from the
United States, where she took up residence last year
after quitting the parliament.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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---------------
Jusfiq Hadjar gelar Sutan Maradjo Lelo
Allah yang disembah orang Islam tipikal dan yang digambarkan oleh al-Mushaf itu
dungu, buas, kejam, keji, ganas, zalim lagi biadab hanyalah Allah fiktif.
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