The Apostates: When Muslims Leave Islam

231 Pages·2015·1.39 MB·English

by  Simon Cottee

SIMON COTTEE
The Apostates
When Muslims Leave Islam
HURST & COMPANY, LONDON
THE APOSTATES
First published in the United Kingdom in 2015 by C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.,
41 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3PL
© Simon Cottee, 2015
All rights reserved.
Distributed in the United States, Canada and Latin America by Oxford University Press, 198 Madison
Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
The right of Simon Cottee to be identified as the author of this publication is asserted by him in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
A Cataloguing-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1849044691
epub ISBN: 978-1-84904-602-2
www.hurstpublishers.com
In memory of Irtaza Hussain—ex-Muslim, sceptic and freethinker 1991–2013
Change only the name and this story is about you.
Horace
CONTENTS
Preface
Principal Characters
Glossary of Arabic and Islamic Terms
1. Introduction
The Sociological Unimagination
Politics and Theology
A Methodological Note
A Cautionary Note
2. Aspects of Apostasy
The Offence of Apostasy
Apostasy and Related Concepts
Dimensions of Apostasy
Apostasy as a Label
Apostasy and Social Control
Apostate Narratives and Anti-Apostate Narratives
Bringing Reality Back In
3. Becoming an Apostate: From Islam to Unbelief
The How of Apostasy
The Pre-Apostasy Phase
The Apostasy Phase
4. Coming Out: Disclosing Apostasy
Who, When and How?
The Catch-22 of Disclosure: Outed and Ostracized or Closeted and Crazy
Recipients of Disclosure
Motives for Disclosure
Methods of Disclosure
The Impact of Disclosure
Taking It Back: Regret and Recantation
The Paradoxes of Disclosure
5. Staying In: Concealing Apostasy
The Deceivers and the Deceived
Motives for Concealment
Methods of Concealment
Exposure
The Costs of Concealment
The Paradox of Concealment
6. Hanging On: Managing Apostasy
The Post-Apostasy Phase: The Ex-Muslim Jihad
Exit Wounds
Reclaiming the Self
The Jihad of the Heart
7. Beyond Islam?
The Never-Ending Story
What the Apostate Knows
Religion and Religious Freedom
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
PREFACE
Irtaza Hussain was just 22 when he died. His body was found in Hainault Forest
in Chigwell, Essex, at 4.20pm on Wednesday, 11 September 2013. He had
hanged himself. And he wanted the whole world to know it, posting a picture of
himself on Facebook only moments before. The picture was entitled ‘Just a
Jump Away’ and shows Irtaza sitting in a tree. The camera lens is pointing
downward, rope ominously in view.
I first met Irtaza in March 2012. He had agreed to be interviewed for the
research study on which this book is based.1 It wasn’t an easy interview. Not
because Irtaza was reticent—on the contrary, he was talkative, vocal and often
trenchant in his opinions—but because he was initially emotionally distant and
ill at ease discussing his personal life. He talked extensively about what he saw
as the dangers of Islamism and passionately defended the principles of
secularism, religious tolerance and science, describing himself as ‘a staunch
atheist’. But I had to repeatedly press him about his family life. It was obviously
a difficult subject for him.
My interview with Irtaza runs to just over two hours. And for most of that
time Irtaza is cool and detached. Except for when he touches on his first suicide
attempt, which he does only once and towards the end of our interview. Here his
voice is raw and throbbing with emotion. It is hard to listen to.
In the months after our interview I stayed in contact with Irtaza, mainly
through email, but we gradually lost touch. The last time I saw him was at a
Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) lunch in November 2012. Most of us
went to the pub afterwards, but Irtaza didn’t join us. He seemed distant and left
soon after the meal.
Born in Islamabad in 1991, Irtaza moved to Britain with his family in 2008,
when he was sixteen, first to Cardiff and then to Dagenham in east London.
Moving to Britain had a profound impact on him. By the time he began his A-
levels, in Cardiff, Irtaza was having ‘strong doubts’ about Islam.
On 21 October 2010, Irtaza made his first post on the CEMB forum,
announcing that he had recently left Islam ‘because of its inability to justify the
restrictions it imposes on me’, elaborating that ‘I had a lot of trouble trying to
make sense of what my parents had enforced upon me and I had quite a lot of
difficulty trying to find out why it would be a good thing to call myself a
Muslim’.
Unlike many ex-Muslims I have interviewed, Irtaza was open about his
apostasy and had told his family about his atheism. He said that the relationship
with his father was especially turbulent and that leaving Islam made it all the
more so. Indeed, according to Irtaza, his father had threatened to disown him
over the matter.2 Despite this, they had reached an agreement: they were not to
talk about faith.
Irtaza also had difficulties at college. Despite his intelligence, he had
performed poorly in his A-levels in Cardiff and was unable to secure a place at
university. This made him despondent. That his brother, Ijtaba, was
academically very successful would only have amplified Irtaza’s crushing sense
of underachievement: he had to settle for working at his father’s furniture store
in Romford.
To read the scores of condolences on his Facebook page, Irtaza was well-liked
and admired. ‘You were a caring, sensitive soul with a brilliant mind,’ said one
acquaintance, echoing a common sentiment. Andrew Copson, chief executive of
the British Humanist Association, described him as ‘an intelligent and thoughtful
young man’.
Irtaza had 290 friends on Facebook, yet he was profoundly lonely. He had few
friends outside the virtual world of the internet. As he remarked on the CEMB
forum, ‘I hate not having physical company’ and ‘I hate how I’m completely
alienated from society and will never find a way to fit in’. In one post Irtaza
alluded to the ‘minor heckling or snarky comments’ he would encounter on the
street in Dagenham. It is not difficult to imagine the tenor of these.
Irtaza especially wanted relationships with women. It pains me to know that
these never went anywhere. Recalling one particular rejection in a forum post in
January 2013, Irtaza said that ‘I cried my eyes out’. It was over the cancellation
of a second date—a second date. It is heartbreaking now to think just how
vulnerable Irtaza was and how deeply he felt every disappointment and setback.
Reading his online postings, which became progressively more desperate
towards the end, it is clear that Irtaza’s problems started to crowd in on him and
that he couldn’t see a way out. In one of his last CEMB forum posts Irtaza said
he felt ‘detached from reality…Life just seems incredibly difficult and I don’t
want to spend the rest of my life like this’.
In another post Irtaza said that he hated ‘how people just ignore me even when
I have something useful to say’. This was a persistent theme in our interview.
And it was a theme in Irtaza’s suicide note, which he posted on Facebook. It was
addressed to all his friends and family. In the note, Irtaza speaks of his pain and