Freethinkers and ex-Muslims

The assault on Islam by people like the Dutch politician Geert Wilders is obscuring, not helping the debates raging within the communities with islamic heritages and beliefs.
Fitna Remade is one of many answers to Geert Wilders’ notorious Islam movie. Reza Moradi, member of the British Council of ex-Muslims (CEMB), made this video. He thinks of Wilders’ Fitna as a propagandistic picture against migrants in the first place, not against Islam. Moradi’s message is that people should decide for themselves how they want to deal with religion and political Islam in particular.
CEMB is based on Secularism and opposition to Islam as a totalitarian movement. In search of funds to support their campaign against Sharia Courts in Great Britain, these British ex-Muslims turned to the British Charity Commission to apply for an official registration as a charity organization. ‘Because it is unclear if defending secularism – under the present day Charities Act – is really a contribution to society, we have rejected their application to the charity statute for now,’ thus Joanna Saunders of the Charity Commission.
In general, the ex-Muslims are not prospering.
In The Netherlands, Ehsan Jami, ex-Muslim and ex-member of PvdA, lost all his credibility with moderate and leftish voters when he called on the company of Islam phobic, neoconservative minds as Geert Wilders, Efshan Ellian and Paul Cliteur. This makes Jami diametrically opposed to the British - leftish - Maryam Namazie, figurehead of CEMB. She is a member of the Iranian communistic labor party. She is an advocate of equal rights for women and a pioneer in the International Federation of Iranian Refugees.

All these ex-Muslims are born in Iran. ‘That could be explained in many ways,’ says Reza Gholamalizad. She is of Iranian origin too and works at the Belgian Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism. ‘It probably concerns people who fled the country after the Islamic Revolution. This group is miscellaneous: followers of the Marxist Muhjahadeen-e-Kalq, monarchists, communists, western-minded people, etc. Their aversion to the regime, which some of them identify with the political Islam, is huge. They are often frustrated.
Moreover, Iran is going through an identity crisis as a result of the historical mix in society: Shiite Muslims, Sunnite Kurds, Jews, Christians, Zoroaster, etc. Often people, who don’t really fit in, cry loudest. After all, the Iranian population appears to be a little xenophobic, racist: there has always been a latent dislike of everything Arabic. Especially the western-minded youngsters, as members of a Persian country that is relatively doing well, feel superior to Arab states, which are unstable. They want to distinguish themselves.

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