Quotation

Heretic

Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now
After 9/11, I began to re-examine the world I had grown up in. I began to reflect that all over the world – in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Kenya, and even inside the Muslim immigrant community in Holland – Islam represented a barrier to progress, especially (but not only) for women. Besides, expressing my doubts about Islam meant that I had no spiritual home: in Islam you are either a believer or disbeliever. There is no cognitive room to be an agnostic. My family and some of my Muslim friends and acquaintances gave me that stark choice: you are either one of us, in which case you quit voicing your thoughts on Islam, or you are one of the infidels and you get out. And ultimately that was what I could not stay in the religion of my father, my mother, my brother, my sister, and my grandmother. P 47