Dear Ali Sina,

I have no intention of telling any family member about my apostasy at the moment but there will come a time in my life when I will have to. You state that your parents left Islam and I am going to assume you influenced them to do so. However, you also said in the forum that apostates should not tell their parents about their apostasy because filial relationships are more important. Aren’t you contradicting yourself here?

I am not trying to just point out what appear to me to be fallacies in your writings. The reason I bring this up is because I would like to convert my parents out of Islam. My parents are good people, no doubt no different from yours. They raised me well and quite frankly, I understood little about the sheer evil of Islam until I moved to the west. (I was raised in a relatively liberal Muslim country so I was shocked when I first learnt of what you and others accused Muslims of doing. I thought you were exaggerating a minority’s actions.) But how can I do it? I do not know. I feel it is too late for them, that they should pass away without knowing about the cancer that’s infected them. But even if that’s the right thing to do, I am not prepared to remain silent all my life to the public. I am very outspoken already although posing as a liberal ‘moderate’ Muslim. And I want to roar out to the world the truth when I am ready to. I don’t want to remain silent for any reason.

I suppose I have two questions here:

1. Why would you consider trying to convert parents out of Islam be a bad thing if you did it yourself?

2. How did you do it? How did you convert them out? I know it sounds very simple to show some Quranic verses that preach evil but we both know it is not sufficient for converting a Muslim overnight.

You may wonder why I never mentioned my siblings. My siblings are purely evil. They were brainwashed 100% by Islam. One of them told me that another apostate relative must be killed because she converted out of Islam decades ago. Objections of consciousness did not work with him. To him, it’s what Islam says. Period. And I could not object to that as a ‘pretend-Muslim’, of course. He was brainwashed by radicals in one of the Islamic Du'a spreading organisations.

Mind you, this is happening in the west too. Another relative of mine was the sweetest person you’d ever meet. One year in a university’s Islamic group here, and he turns into a monster. He was probably depressed and lonely in a new world and hence was fresh meat to those bastards. I see little hope in him now. He knows right from wrong. He had no excuse. In fact, he used to watch beheading videos from Iraq and simply say “It’s not about emotions. We should follow Islam exactly, even if it’s against our emotions.” In other words, he acknowledged the evil in it, but he decided to consciously brainwash himself into sanctioning it in the name of god. He’s married to a niqaabi who he treats like dirt.

In any case, they will not be heartbroken for me if I leave Islam like my parents would. They will just want to kill me with little mercy. I don’t fear them. They will fear my brain.

Truth Seeker

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Dear Truth Seeker:

No, there is no contradiction in what I said. I believe that filial piety and family ties, particularly the marital relationship are more important than making a public announcement of apostasy and alienating our loved ones. If this could put our lives in danger, then there is more reason to keep our mouths shut and play kitman.

At first when I told my parents who were visiting me, my father started crying and he said that he disowns me. Then I told him that I was not being serious and that I will revert. The old man hugged me and wanted to believe, but I don’t think he did. Since then several years have passed and even though my parents live in another country, we had a few chats every now and then when they visited or over the phone. My mother in particular is a freethinker on her own right. She read a couple of books I gave her in Persian, including the 23 years of Ali Dashti. Those books did it. Then I told them about FFI and they think that is great. But this did not happen overnight. It took several years. One day my mother called me on the phone and she was laughing her head off. She said she was reading a book about the stupidities in the Quran and she wanted to share them with me. I told her I know all about them. Then she suggested all I have to do to defeat Islam is to publish those passages and say nothing. Any sane person will see this book is stupid. I told her that that is exactly what I do and that there are even more stupid passages in the hadith that she has not read.

This is what I would advise to everyone who has a believing Muslim family: Go slow on them and be tactful. If you depend on them financially, don’t say anything. If you are independent and quite an adult and if you live in a non-Muslim country and you know that you are safe, then you can be a bit more open. It all depends on the relationship you have with your kin and each case is different. Only you can judge when it is safe to break the news.

As for your brothers, unfortunately they are brainwashed. As long as they think that Islam is a religion from God, they will not be unable to use their brains or think on their own. We saw he same attitude in Mr. Ghamidi and Dr. Zaheer. When cornered and could not explain the errors and the violence of the Quran, all they had to say was that, Islam is the true religion of God and if I have a problem with that I must address that problem first. However, when asked to give us evidence to this claim, they started beating around the bushes and had no evidence.

This is the trap that all Muslims have fallen it. They have come to believe that Muhammad was a prophet of God and after that they stop thinking. They have surrendered their thoughts and intelligence to him. That is why Islam cannot be reformed. We must eradicate it. We must prove that Muhammad was a liar and we must be very blunt about it.

If you are younger than your brothers and are still living with your parents, of course it would be foolhardy to say anything to anyone. Wait until you become independent and live on your own. Then you can start by saying that many Muslims are leaving Islam and the reason is that they think Muhammad was not a messenger of God. Then give them the URL of fafithfreedom.org and tell them that it would be good that they, who are much stronger Muslims than you are, prove us wrong. Don’t tell them you are no longer a believer. Instead tell them that the ex-Muslims are asking this and that question and that you’d like to know what is the correct Islamic answer. Don’t try to ask too many questions at once and never get into argument with them. One question, every once in a while, will have its effect. Eventually they will realize that truly Islam has no answers and that they are simply fooling themselves and are believing in a lie. Easy will do it. Give time a chance.

Wish you all the best

Ali Sina