Young Muslim adults who abandon their islamic faith risk experiencing violent retaliation and stigma from their relatives and friends, says the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain.
According to the support group, individuals born into Islam are often very scared of expressing their honest thoughts and those who succeed in speaking out face the dangers of being attacked.
The council cited the example of a member who said she was warned by her own mother that she would lose her life if she no longer believed in Islam.
Concerns over violent attacks directed towards apostates were raised. The campaigners highlighted the risks to Muslims who renounce their faith in an ITV documentary, Exposure: Islam's Non-Believers, expected to be broadcasted on the 13th of October.
Leader of the council, Maryam Namazie said apostates were judged by Muslims to be mischief makers, outcasts and blasphemers, emphasizing that there was nothing more intolerant that Islam.
She reminisced on how she informed her mom that she didn't believe in God anymore and her mom telling never to tell anyone because Muslims would be obliged to kill her.
Young Muslim adults who abandon their religion, according to the campaigners risked being discriminated upon, ostracized, with the potential of being psychologically abused and violently attacked.
Many said they had endured abuse by relatives leading them to consider suicide or self-harm. Most Islamic countries disapprove of Apostasy and some prescribe the death penalty as punishment.
It is alleged that critics of Islam have been killed in Bangladesh and Pakistan where atheists are threatened by both the government and Islamist gangs.
The Council of Ex-Muslims revealed that radical and fundamentalist Islamist groups had attempted to halt their meetings and events in the UK.
Council leader, Miss Namazie, a secularist atheist born in Iran said that the internet and social media was tackling Islam what the print media did to Christianity in the past.
She was of the opinion that social media was a way in which large numbers of people connected with each other sharing ideas on certain taboos and forbidden acts.
One issue that has successfully raised alot of concern is the issue of honor killings, where Muslims women have been brutally killed by family members for marrying men of other beliefs.
0 comments: