A Muslim’s Memoir of Apostasy, and His Call for Reforming Islam

As a child of Shiites growing up in Saudi Arabia, Ali Rizvi remembers being constantly told that violence and bloodshed in the Muslim world “had nothing to do with Islam.” He became skeptical of this explanation when he finally read the Quran—in English translation—at age twelve, beginning a journey away from the religion of his birth that supplies the foundation of his recent book, The Atheist Muslim. Oren Kessler writes in his review:

When [Rizvi] presented the offending verses to community elders, they merely offered further excuses, dismissing famed translator N.J. Dawood as an Iraqi “Yahoodi” (Jew) who was not to be trusted. . . . [Rizvi] became convinced that most of the Muslims in his life were good people not because of their creed, but despite it.

Thus persuaded, he soon ran up against one of the more curious markers of our age: the charge of prejudice or even racism that attends any effort to scrutinize faith—particularly Islam. . . . Western elites, he laments, are crippled by the fear of being labeled bigots (a condition he terms “Islamophobia-phobia”). Here, Rizvi [underlines] the contrast between “Islamophobia” and anti-Semitism—the former being a judgment passed on ideas, the latter on a people. . . .

Letting go of faith isn’t easy. It is the relinquishment not only of one’s moral mooring but of one’s friends, community, and, often, family. Rizvi exemplifies the pro-science, pro-Enlightenment “atheist Muslim” of the book’s title, but he acknowledges that many others can’t and won’t make that leap. . . .

[F]or a more flexible, modern Islam to succeed, he argues, one obstacle looms largest: the doctrine of scriptural inerrancy. . . . [But] Islam, he believes, can survive a rejection of inerrancy and remain intact.

Read more at Commentary

More about: Islam, Quran, Religion & Holidays, Saudi Arabia

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society