This is something that I’ve been giving some thought to recently. It’s a big question, how to protect those who are exercising their basic rights to choose their own spiritual path when they may be faced with violence for doing so?

With nearly all faiths there is a social and sometimes familial disturbance caused by a person leaving a faith, whether it is one they were born into or one that they’ve chosen later in life. In most faiths there will be sometimes the cutting off of ties from the person’s ex co-religionists and, as all religions, mine included, sometimes have extremes, there can be pressure, including undue pressure, to keep the apostate within the fold. Leaving or changing a religion can be stressful for a person and it does split families and does cause apostates to feel isolated. But, and this is very important, the need to protect those who leave Christianity or Judaism or any one of a number of religions, does not often need to be considered.

Those who leave Abrahamic faiths such as Christianity or Judaism can experience some psychological trauma or have their lives turned upside down for a while, but these people would rarely have to consider whether violence would be used in order to keep them in the faith. This is not the case with those leaving Islam. Sure, ex Muslims from open minded or even mostly secular families may not have any issue with a brother, daughter, wife or cousin leaving Islam, and the apostate may even be able to leave Islam safely. But, that shouldn’t blind us to the plight of others who wish to leave Islam who may not be so lucky the ones for whom leaving Islam will invite violence from the community. I’ve seen and read about a number of cases of British subjects who want to exercise their rights to choose their own spiritual path and leave Islam for atheism, or for another faith, who have faced violence, intimidation and exile from the towns or cities that they grew up in. This should not be acceptable in Britain today.

The hounding of ex Muslims by those still adherent to Islam and what seems the State’s tacit acceptance that this sort of hounding will go on, is a stain on our country’s conscience. The way ex Muslims are sometimes pushed from pillar to post, living in hiding and fearful of violence from believing Muslims who take the Quranic instruction to ‘kill the apostate’ far too seriously, shows us that we are a nation governed and administered by people who are failing to take on religious bullies.

The result of the Government failing to stand up to Islamic religious bullies is that we have innocent people placed in danger. The moral thing for government, any government, to do when faced with a minority that is engaging in physical violence or intimidation of those who wish to leave is put the apostate under the protection of the law. This is not being done, at least not to my satisfaction. What little that is being done is reactive rather than proactive, such as using armed police to remove an ex Muslim family from their home in Bradford to somewhere slightly safer. It would have been better and more just, in my opinion, if the police could have dealt with the criminal Islamic believers who were allegedly causing or threatening violence, as harshly as they damn well need to be, rather than merely caving in to ‘community’ pressure and removing the apostate.

I don’t like the idea of Britain’s ex Muslim subjects being treated as second class by the authorities, but this is what seems to be happening too often from what I can see, and the example of removing the apostate rather than dealing with those who are in the wrong, shows that. It seems the apostate’s right to choose his own belief system didn’t matter to the authorities, all that appeared to matter in that case was that the situation was cooled down. Justice be damned as long as the streets are quiet even though it gave the religious bullies and easy win.

Now, I’m normally one these days to want the government to do less, but when it comes to something as basic as protecting the individual subject and their rights to choose their belief system or abandon an old one, then I would like to see the government do more for those leaving Islam. I don’t ask this for those leaving Christianity or Judaism or even neo-Paganism, because none of those paths, outside of the genuinely tiny minority of extremists that these paths contain, would sanction the murder of an unbeliever or an apostate, Islam as we all well know, does call for that.

There is also a greater chance that a Muslim would engage in violence against an apostate precisely because this rule of ‘killing the apostate’ is so forcefully highlighted in some Islamic communities, than similar sorts exhortations to do violence than would be the case in other faiths. By contrast, I don’t know of any Jew who believes that stoning adulterers is in any way acceptable in the modern world even though this is clearly stated as a law in the book of Leviticus. Because of the extra danger that ex Muslims face, we as a nation should think about providing extra protection for ex Muslims, this should include, if the case required the State providing a safe house for the apostate and some form of support. For a fraction of what HMG wastes on overseas aid, steps could be taken to ensure the safety of ex Muslims and bring the religious bullies to justice. It would be vital however that any special help given to ex Muslims should be coupled with more robust policing of Muslim communities in order to both enforce UK law without fear or favour and protect the rights of individuals in that community.

Ideally I’d like to see the religious bullies in the Islamic community slapped down a bit by the State and maybe if this had been done earlier these bullies would not have been able to accrue the power and influence that they have acquired. We should never have reached the situation where those who leave Islam face the threat of violence. I believe that in a free society there should be certain religious accommodations made for minority religions in areas like diet, schooling or for example substituting a Sikh turban for a motorcycle crash helmet, but dishing out violence to those who leave a religion should never be accommodated. But it seems to be being accomodated. It is a disgrace that the State has allowed anti apostate violence from Muslims to continue for as long as it has and it is time that it stopped. Britain is really not looking after its ex Muslim subjects as well as we should be. It angers me to think that fellow Britons of the ex Muslim kind are too often being denied their rights to spiritual freedom because of religious bullying, a type of bullying which the State has not properly tackled, and this whole issue makes me somewhat ashamed of successive British governments for not acting when they should and protecting those in danger.