A man is lashed by an Islamist cleric, under Sharia law in Mogadishu, Somalia. Many Muslims are opposed to Sharia, says Namazie, who has fought the movement in Great Britain. (Photo by/Reuters)

 

Imagine you are in Tehran, hunkered over a keyboard in an Internet cafe. You have lost your faith in Islam, and have found a website created by an organization of people who feel the same way, the Council of Ex-Muslims.

 

You could leave a message on the site, denouncing your religion. The consequences for your family might be dire. For you: possible death.

 

You are hunched over, trying to block the screen from the eyes of others in the cafe. Maybe the censors are already on to you.

 

But still you write:

 

“I’m from Iran. Thank you for understanding and for creating this great community. If I can exit Iran someday, then I will announce it proudly just like you, but for now I prefer to hide it because I will lost [sic] my job, my freedom and my life!”

 

Signed, Mim. A, Tehran. You hit “send.”

 

This is one of many messages from all over the world on the website of the Europe-based organization. Spokesperson Maryam Namazie explains that the group both lobbies for secular rights and provides a forum for so-called apostates to share their experiences.

 

Namazie herself is an ex-Muslim, an Iranian-born activist who has lived in Sudan, the U.S., and now Britain. Namazie fled Tehran with her family after the revolution. Her first job after college was working with Ethiopian refugees in Sudan. After the coup in 1989 established Islamic law in Sudan, Namazie fled Khartoum, too – beginning to wonder if Sharia law was following her around the world, she says.

 

Now Namazie is involved in many causes, fighting for the rights of Iranians, the safety for ex-Muslims. She is trying to rid Britain of Sharia courts – semi-official courts that dole out Islamic justice. The overarching theme, Namazie says, is that the West is using the wrong methods to deal with Islamists.

 

Passport: Can you explain what the Council of Ex-Muslims does?

 

Maryam Namazie: The council was founded in Germany and then spread to Britain, Scandinavia and Switzerland. The group is based on the idea of coming out in public. We provide support because apostasy is such a touchy issue and is punishable by death. It is sort of like gays coming out of the closet. Even though sexuality is a private matter, when you are threatened as a result of it, coming out in public is a form of resistance.

 

Passport: Your organization’s web site has testimonials of ex-Muslims and supporters from all over — from Sweden, Uganda, and Kuwait. How many of you are there out there?

 

Namazie: There are many more than we can even know about or count. There are so many who are ex-Muslims who wouldn’t even use a pseudonym and come out on our site, just because of the fear of being tracked. A lot of people may say they are Muslims when they are not just for safety reasons. If you look for example at the number of girls and women facing honor-related violence in Britain, that is 17,000 per year. And I would think that a lot of those people are either ex-Muslims or people who are considered not to be Muslims anymore by their families because they’ve broken social and religious norms.

 

Our organization hopes to decrease the fear and the stigma, and we hope that it is eventually such that people can actually come out and say who they are and what they think on a vast social scale.

 

Passport: You say that apostasy, leaving Islam, is punishable by death. How realistic is that? Honor killings are a slightly different threat, but what kind of danger do people who leave Islam in the West actually face?

 

Namazie: I know quite a number of people who are in hiding or under police protection. I have received a lot of death threats. It’s not just a threat from the Islamic regime of Iran, where the government has assassinated hundreds of opponents in the past few decades. And we continue to receive threats from that government even though we live in the West. Now that I’m working with the Council of Ex-Muslims and against Sharia law in Britain, the types of threats I’ve gotten have also changed. Now it is also Islamists from Britain who are calling and threatening me.

 

There are lots of people who leave Islam and are not threatened. For example, my family always supported me. But when we are talking about an issue on a large social scale, where Islamists have access to political power, it becomes a very different phenomenon and the threat is real. It’s like being an ex-Christian in the time of the Inquisition.

 

Passport: You’ve equated Islam with totalitarianism. What is so dangerous to your mind about linking religion to power?

 

Namazie: Religion is seen to be divine and people are not allowed to question or criticize it. It controls everything from what you say to what you eat to how you have sex and who you have sex with to what music you can listen to and so forth.

 

Political Islam is totalitarianism because it is not the desire and will of a large number of people, but rather it is imposed on them. I think any religion could be in that position if it had political power. But today it’s Islam that is of major concern. There is a lot of resistance to this totalitarianism in countries that are on the front lines – Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. People are standing up to it, particularly in Iran right now.

 

Passport: The Ex-Muslim Council seems named after the Muslim Council in Britain. How would you characterize your relationship with these kinds of groups?

 

Namazie: We work very closely with Muslims. Muslims are not the same as Islamists. My father is a Muslim. He hasn’t threatened to kill me. He doesn’t go burning effigies of Salmon Rushdie on the street. The vast majority of Muslims don’t want to see apostates killed and don’t want to be stoned to death for having sex outside of marriage. And there are lots of Muslims who do support the right to leave Islam and lead a life free from fear. And many are opposed to Sharia law. Very often Muslims are the first ones to be oppressed by Sharia law. So we are working with Muslim organizations, but not Islamist ones.

 

Passport: You are active in opposing Sharia in Britain, where the Islamic legal code has gained such unlikely supporters as the Archbishop of Canterbury. Why do you think a society like Britain would allow Sharia courts in their country?

 

Namazie: The problem is that multiculturalism has completely gone the wrong way. We need to make sure that people are integrated, but not necessarily all beliefs are equal or equally valid and need to be incorporated. Giving religion and culture higher ground than real life human beings is a mistaken policy. When you do give beliefs the upper hand it is to the detriment of certain people.

 

The courts have been around since the late ‘80s. More recently Islamists have been using the Arbitration Act of 1996 to increase legal standing. There are a lot of cases of women who have lost custody of their children, who’ve been denied divorces even though they live in violent situations, or are forced into marriages. We are putting together a survey to collect more evidence about women who have been to Sharia courts so we can fight them.

 

Part of the problem is cultural relativism. Part of the problem is post-colonial guilt. Part of the problem is that people feel it is racist to criticize Islam or the Islamists.

 

Passport: In your opinion, what should the West do?

 

Namazie: We have to remember that the West had a role in the rise of Islamic movement. If you recall, during the Cold War these regions were used as an Islamic belt against the Soviet Union. The U.S. actually founded, supported and trained the Mujahideen. A lot of Western governments still have close links with the Islamist movement – in Afghanistan and Iraq, where they have so-called liberated the people. Iraq has become more Islamic than ever in the past. They still have Sharia law there.

 

The West is only opposed to terrorists. But Sharia law and Islamic schools are terrorizing large populations in the East and now in the West. Since they are considered the political wing, the West says they are therefore not as important.

 

Passport: You are involved in so many different movements – the Council for Ex-Muslims, rights for Iranians, the One Law for All anti-Sharia movement, to name a few. Is there a common thread, one thing you are fighting for?

 

Namazie: The common thread is standing up to political Islam by mobilizing a vast social movement. Military intervention, bombing Iraq or Afghanistan, doesn’t work - as we can see from the increased power of political Islam in those two countries. What does work is supporting people who are engaged in this fight day in and day out.

 

http://www.globalpost.com/passport/foreign-desk/100105/maryam-namazie-protecting-islamic-apostates