The author of this is editor of a blog featuring posts of ex muslims and some infidel scholars that question sources and texts of Islam and point out the cruelty, the illogic and/or the absurdity of such texts and sources. One might expect such an editor to overvalue his impact on the world but his opinion is still important.
First, to the question of helping Muslim leave Islam or increasing the pool of Muslim apostates, when islam-watch was launched, one could only hear the names of Salman Rushdie, Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi, Taslima Nasrin, Anwar Shaikh, Nonie Darwish, Ali Sina, Abul Kasem, Sher Khan, Syed Kamran Mirza, Ayesha Ahmed and a few such apostates. But today, there are hundreds of testimonies of ex-Muslims floating on the internet. There are dozens of blogs, critical of Islam, started by ex-Muslims. There are former teachers of madrassas and imams of mosques, who have left Islam and writing actively or running anti-Islam blogs.
My belief is: suppression of Islamic radicalism through means other than the critical examination of the Islamic core, i.e. without true enlightenment about Islam, would not offer us a lasting solution to Islam's scourge on humanity. And the razor-sharp criticism of the Islamic core in Website like ours will play the decisive role in subverting the Islamic design, if we ever win this battle. Islam-watch.org, I believe, has made a contribution to that end in some measure. Enlightenment about Islam and consequent abandonment of it, silently or otherwise, is occurring on a scale never seen in history. |