Famous non-western critics of Islam
The most ridiculous attack on people who criticize Islam is the usual "racism". If you don't like Islam, you obviously just hate "brown people". You're a xenophobe. A "white nationalist", a "Nazi".
The last one is particularly hilarious, given that the Nazis were and still are allied with Muslims and openly admire Islam.
All those accusations are total nonsense, given that the most vocal critics of Islam are ... ex-Muslims or people who lived as minorities in Islamic countries. As they are typically of the same race or ethnicity as the Muslims of their home country, it's simply grotesque to call them "racist" for opposing the ideology of Islam.
List of famous critics of Islam
Just a reminder: this list is about critics of Islam who are either ex-Muslims or who have ethnic or cultural roots in majority-Muslim countries.
Dr.Sami Aldeeb
Palestinian/Swiss, Christian, Academic expert on Sharia law
Dr. Sami Aldeeb lived and worked in Italy and Switzerland; in his last job before his retirement, he was the head of the Islam department of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
He is an internationally recognized expert on Sharia law and is often consulted about conflicts between Shia and Sunni Muslims, as he is seen as neutral expert between them.
He published 40 academic books on Islam. He shocked journalists on Swiss radio and TV emissions with some of his statements about Islam , e.g. when he told a radio journalist: "To convert to Islam is like voluntarily enter a prison for life".
He is a native Arabic speaker and masters Italian, French and English, fluently. He translated the Quran himself to French, Italian and English. He also created the first academic, chronologically correct, heavily annotated edition of the Quran, which you can either buy as translation or download for free in Arabic. He published it in ancient, classic and modern Arabic as well as French, Italian and English.
Why a chronologically correct Quran? Because the official version is published in order of verse length, which makes absolutely no sense.
Dr. Aldeeb's goal was to show the progression in the Quran from Mohammed's rather lenient discourse in which he mostly demanded "tolerance" for his new cult during his days in Mecca ("your religion for you, my religion for me"), when he was weak and had barely 100 followers, to his extremely violent stance after he gained power in Medina and had become a war lord. More recent verses always take precedence over older verses when there is a conflict - that's the abrogation principle of Islam.
Every time an apologist for Islam quotes a Mecca verse to illustrate how "peaceful" Islam is, he lies, as those verses were all abrogated by the far less peaceful Medina verses.
This is his web site:
http://www.sami-aldeeb.com
I had the immense pleasure of being his neighbor for several years and having enjoyed his company many times. He is immensely knowledgeable about all things concerning Islam and the Middle East. I learned from him, among others, that Egypt based its modern constitution on ... the Swiss constitution, with added Sharia elements. Syria followed and copied the Egyptian constitution, but added more Sharia law. So did many other Muslim countries.
He always worked with the most ancient available texts of Islam. When we first met, when I heard that he was working on a translation of the Quran, I asked him right away - and before knowing who he was: "So are there really multiple versions of the Quran?" (I knew already that faithful Muslims must answer that the Quran is perfect and unique). He immediately replied: "Oh yes, there's a large number of variants". That settled it. I knew that I could trust his word.
Dr. Wafa Sultan
Syrian, ex-Muslim, psychiatrist, former refugee living in the US.
She is an incredibly courageous woman who dared telling Muslims very inconvenient truths on TV - she was allowed to speak on Al Jazeera, Egyptian TV etc. and she could even debate some of the most radical Islamic preachers. She was also invited by CNN and Fox News, among others.
In May 2006, Dr. Sultan was named one of Time magazine's "100 People Who Shape Our World", which is now completely unthinkable.
Dr. Sultan sees her mission as exposing and fighting radical Islam and defending human rights in the Islamic world. Her worldview was shaken when a group of terrorists entered her university auditorium in Damascus and gunned down the professor before all the students because he was deemed to not be a good Muslim for some reason.
She obviously received endless death threats and withdrew from public appearances, but kept publishing books.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/biography/Wafa+Sultan
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Somali, ex-Muslim, former Dutch member of parliament
Ayaan became famous when her friend and ally Theo van Gogh (grandson of Vincent van Gogh's brother), a Dutch journalist and movie director, was assassinated in broad daylight by a Moroccan Muslim terrorist because Theo and Ayaan had produced a short movie that criticized the oppression of women under Islam:
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/03/world/europe/dutch-filmmaker-an-islam-critic-is-killed.html
Ayaan had personally experienced that oppression herself, including genital mutilation and the attempt to force her to marry a man chosen by her father.
Yes, genital mutilation is an integral part of Islam, not some "African tradition". It is mentioned in the hadiths and is considered either as "recommended" or "mandatory", but there is no reading that would oppose it.
Ayaan finally had to leave Europe, as she no longer felt safe. Instead of being a poster child for the left - a black woman from Somalia who escaped from an authentically patriarchal society to fight for women's rights - they shunned and censored her wherever they could. Tells you everything you need to know about the hypocrisy of the left... they don't care about actual people or their alleged causes, only about power.
She recently discussed the issues with Islam and integration on Prof.Peterson's YouTube channel, who expressed great concern about the risk that this interview might get his channel to be shut down:
Aquila
French, Algerian of origin, ex-Muslim
Aquila is of course her pseudonym to protect her identity. I met Aquila online about 15 years ago. We chatted for years until I finally met her in Geneva. She taught me so much about the reality of life under Islam.
In 2016, she published a book under the title "For a world without Islam" in which she described her life under Islam in Algeria from her birth until the age of 32 when she finally managed to move to France where she married a Christian man. She left Europe before the book was released, as she knew that they would come for her.
https://www.amazon.fr/Pour-monde-sans-islam-Alg%C3%A9rienne/dp/2371530301
Mosab Hassan Yousef
Palestinian, ex-Muslim, son to a Hamas co-founder
This man is outstanding, as he could have had an easy life. As son of one of the leading figures of Hamas, he could have lived in luxury. Instead, he decided to come clear and denounce the criminal enterprise of Hamas, their endless lies against Israel and their abuse of the citizens of Gaza - all in the name of more profits via international aid.
This is his book on Amazon, "Son of Hamas" - his entry provides an extensive biography:
https://www.amazon.com/Mosab-Hassan-Yousef/e/B002VPW2BM%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share
Sabatina James
Pakistani, ex-Muslim, converted to Christianity, lives in Austria
Sabatina James is the author of several books in which she wans against the creeping sharia and the gradual islamic take-over of Europe. She had to move 16 times, since 2001, due to death threats against her, and she lives under constant police protection. Because Islam is a religion of peace...
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/904805.Sabatina_James
As she explains in this interview, her parents wanted to force her into a marriage. She refused. Her family pronounced a death penalty against her. She fled to Austria.
Majid Oukacha
Algerian/French, ex-Muslim
Author of the book: "Il était une fois l'Islam" ("Once upon a time there was Islam").
www.enquete-debat.fr/archives/majid-oukacha-ex-musulman-jai-voulu-faire-le-meilleur-livre-possible-sur-lislam-65985
I met him in Geneva for an event that was kept strictly secret. I only received the notification with the location of the meeting 2 hours before it took place. Because Islam is a religion of peace.
Ali A. Rizvi
Pakistani, ex-Muslim, Atheist
I first became aware of his work through this article in the Huffington Post, of all places - I don't think they would publish such an article now, as the far left started to totally submit to Islam.
Ali Rizvi exposes the fact that nothing of the modern Islamic terrorism is new, that they simply continue what Muslims had always been doing, i.e. that none of this terrorism is motivated by political grievances, but only by the teachings of Islam itself.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/an-atheist-muslims-perspective-on-the-root-causes-of-islamist-jihadism-and-the-politics-of-islamophobia_b_3159286
Bosch Fawstin
Albanian/American, ex-Muslim, Artist, Atheist
Bosch Fawstin was raised as Muslim by his Albanian family in the US before he left Islam and became Atheist. He creates comic books in which he denounces Islam. He denounced Marvel for promoting Islam.
https://www.amazon.com/Bosch-Fawstin/e/B00J7JD5W0%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share
This is his summary on Amazon:
"Bosch Fawstin is an Eisner Award nominated cartoonist who's currently writing and drawing a graphic novel that he's serializing in digital comic book form called The Infidel, featuring Pigman. The Infidel is a story about twin brothers whose Muslim background comes to the forefront of their lives on 9/11. One responds by creating a counter-jihad superhero comic book called PIGMAN, as the other surrenders to Islam. Pigman's battle against his archenemy SuperJihad is echoed by the escalating conflict between the twins. Chapters 1, 2 & 3 are now available as digital comic books on Kindle and ComiXology.
In May of 2015, Fawstin won the AFDI Mohammad Cartoon Contest. Not long after he was announced the winner at the contest event in Garland, Texas, jihadists attacked. If they had their way, many there that night might not be alive today, but a policeman shot dead the would-be mass murderers. The attack brought great attention to Fawstin's work, both good and bad, but despite continued threats, he continues writing and drawing The Infidel, featuring Pigman. Fawstin recently signed a contract with a major book publisher for a book that will be announced in 2016. Stay tuned."
Articles he published on FrontPageMag
Must-see video:
Former Muslim Bosch Fawstin, cautions Jews, Christians against cowing to jihad
Karim Akouche
Algeria, Kabyle, ex-Muslim
Karim is an Kabyle writer from Algeria who defends the populations of North African countries that were displaced by Arabs during the Islamic wars of conquest - the Amzaghy in Morocco, the Kabyles in Algeria, the Copts in Egypt, the Assyrians and many others in Syria etc.
Like other critics of Islam, he is systematically threatened and censored, even in western countries. In France, a "feminist" movie producer excluded him from a debate in Avignon about the "feminist resistance" during the civil war in Algeria under the pretext that he is a man, Algerian and Kabyle. As he says in this article, instead of statist, censorship is now based on identity politics:
Here is a collection of his articles in the French "Marianne": KARIM AKOUCHE
He wrote among others about the exploitation of blacks slaves by Muslims which is started well before Mohammed, who kept and traded black slaves himself, which is obviously a very touchy subject, as the Islamic "Nation of Islam" is one of the most active black supremacist groups in the US, demanding "reparations". The fact that Muslims exploited black as well as white slaves in far greater numbers than the entire Transatlantic slave trade and sold most of the slaves Europeans bought in Africa raises a lot of questions.
The most shocking part, as he says, is that Arab Muslims still sell black slaves on open markets in Libya right now - a black slave cost about $400 in 2017.
Boualem Sansal
Algeria, ex-Muslim
Algerian writer who warned western countries - and France in particular - to stop the expansion of political Islam. As he says: "Religion must be practiced in private and has no place in the public space".
http://www.leprogres.fr/lyon/2015/01/29/la-france-doit-se-reveiller-face-a-la-propagation-de-l-islamisme
Salem Benammar
Tunisian, writer, ex-Muslim
Salem Benammar has been a very vocal opponent of any further Muslim immigration to Europe - in 2020, he explained that Europe should urgently close its borders.
He openly criticizes the government of Algeria for its corruption, mocking the fact that they have money for mosques, but not for schools, hospitals, roads etc.
Some of his blog titles:
"Everything for Allah, nothing for the people"
ON A PAS À DÉTESTER L’ISLAM ON DOIT DÉNONCER SA HAUTE TOXICITÉ
(One must not hate Islam, one must denounce its extreme toxicity)
NI ISLAM DE FRANCE, NI IMAMS DE FRANCE, L’ISLAM N’A PAS SA PLACE EN FRANCE
(Neither Islam of France nor Imams of France, Islam has no place in France)
L’ISLAM EST LE PIRE ENNEMI DES DROITS DE LA FEMME
(Islam is the worst enemy of the rights of women)
LA CONSANGUINITÉ EST LA PREMIÈRE CAUSE DES RETARDS ABYSSAUX DES PAYS MUSULMANS
(Incest is the primary cause of the catastrophic lack of development of Islamic countries)
https://salembenammar.wordpress.com/category/islam/
Mufassil Islam
Bangladeshi/British, Muslim, Human rights lawyer
Mufassil spoke out vehemently against Islamic terrorism, upon which he received death threats from young UK born Muslims. He warned that it was extremely urgent to fight the expansion of fundamentalist Islam or it would be too late:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3328723/Muslim-scholar-posted-YouTube-speech-condemning-Paris-atrocities-reveals-received-death-threats-British-born-children-support-ISIS-supporters.html
Unsurprisingly, Facebook refused to delete any of the Muslim users who sent death threats to Mr.Islam (!), but instead blocked his account. Because according to Facebook, criticizing Islam is bad, but sending death threats to human rights lawyers is just dandy...
https://krw-law.ie/mufassil-islam/
Mona Walter
Somali, ex-Muslim, lives in Sweden
She said had been raised under Islam without ever actually reading the Quran. One day, she decided to catch up and read it and she didn't like what she read at all.
This is true for a very large number of Muslims, who are often taught to read the Quran in Arabic without actually understanding Arabic - they just recite a text without having the slightest clue what it means.
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2015/April/Ex-Muslim-Koran-Revealed-a-Religion-I-Did-Not-Like/
Waleed Al-Husseini
Palestinian, writer, ex-Muslim
Waleed Al-Husseini was arrested and imprisoned in the West Bank for rejecting Islam where he was tortured physically and psychologically. He was finally freed thanks to a strong international support movement and was given asylum in France. He published the book "Blasphémateur !"
He denounces the corruption in the Palestinian territories, which he sees as totally paralyzed by internal conflicts, collusions and the predominance of Islam.
https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/224685461X/ref=cm_cr_dpvoterdr
Here is the French summary for his book:
"A 25 ans, Waleed Al-Husseini est un homme libre, et cette liberté, il en a payé le prix.
En 2010, il est le premier Palestinien d’origine musulmane incarcéré en Cisjordanie pour avoir rejeté l’Islam. Sur internet, seul espace de liberté, l’adolescent dénonçait les ressorts rétrogrades, violents et misogynes des textes coraniques et la pratique des religieux.
Mais on ne quitte pas l’Islam. L’Autorité palestinienne, qui se déclare pourtant laïque, en fait son ennemi public numéro un et l’arrête pour outrage à la religion. Commence alors un long et douloureux séjour dans les prisons palestiniennes, où il subit des tortures psychologiques et physiques. Il parviendra finalement à en sortir grâce à des soutiens internationaux, et trouvera asile en France.
Témoignage poignant, Blasphémateur ! offre le regard inédit d’un citoyen palestinien sur son propre Etat, paralysé selon lui par les conflits internes, la collusion des pouvoirs, la prégnance du religieux. C’est aussi le plaidoyer enflammé d’un homme déterminé à se battre pour la liberté de penser. Un homme des Lumières."
Hamed Abdel-Samad
Egyptian/German, writer, ex-Muslim
Hamed Abdel-Samad is of Egyptian origin, now living in Germany, who explained how difficult it was for him to integrate German society as long as he was a Muslim. He said that as he started to adapt to German values, Islam would pull him back like a rubber band, making him feeling guilty for having violated the principles of Islam.
It was only when he decided to leave Islam that he was able to fully enjoy life in the culture of Europe, which he considers as vastly superior to Islamic culture. He basically says that it is impossible for a Muslim to integrate into a western culture without giving up all the core values of Islam. Radicalization of young Muslims is the result of the enormous discrepancy between Islamic and western values.
As was to be expected, he received death threats after he participated in a conference critical of Islam. Apostasy implies a death sentence, under Islam.
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/mursi-verbuendeter-mordaufruf-gegen-publizist-abdel-samad-a-904619.html
Laleh Hadjimohamadvali
Iran/Germany, ex-Muslim, politician for AfD
Laleh Hadjimohamadvali is a refugee from Iran and speaks openly about Islam and the massive hypocrisy in Iran. Unfortunately, I do not have an English translation of her brilliant speech.
Her party is the AfD, which is decried in German Merkel-media as "racist", which is ridiculous: the AfD is simply the only party that openly criticizes Merkel and her policies, especially the mass immigration from Islamic and African countries and it gathers absolutely all voices that disagree with this policy. They have the largest number of voters who have an immigrant background of all German parties.
They even have an explicitly Jewish faction - when this faction was created, the party leadership stated clearly that they would not tolerate antisemitism. Are there party members who are antisemitic or even national socialist? Probably, although neo-Nazis have their own party, the NPD.
The real hypocrisy? There are innumerable openly antisemitic members in all the German parties, in the CDU, the SPD and especially the "Green" (Marxist) party, which has become an openly pro-Islam party, but that doesn't matter, they just want to destroy the AfD:
Imam Tawhidi
Iran/Australia, Shia Imam
Imam Tawhidi used to be a fanatical Muslim until he experienced the brutal terror of ISIS first-hand. This got him to re-think his perception of Islam.
He still considers himself as Muslim and Imam, but he is an extremely outspoken critic of political Islam, which he totally rejects. He calls himself "Imam of peace" and in his case, that label is totally accurate.
He created a video in which he read from Khomeini's book, translating the text page by page, denouncing the absolutely horrifying statements that explain how Muslims may use babies for sexual pleasure.
He openly supports and defends Israel and wishes for peace with Islamic countries.
He has his own web site:
https://imamtawhidi.com/
and was published on HuffPost:
https://www.huffpost.com/author/imam-tawhidi
As could be expected, he is often viciously attacked as "helping Islamophobes" (because fearing a cult that wants to murder you is a "phobia"...) and "xenophobes" - the AfD in Australia is "Reclaim Australia", also a party that includes innumerable former immigrants who all wish that the country they adopted should not be turned into the kind of nightmare they fled in the first place - and this pro-Islamic propaganda is uncritically printed in ABC news:
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/welcome-to-the-weird-world-of-australias-fake-sheikh-mohammad-ta/10095874
Brigitte Gabriel
Lebanon/USA, Journalist
Brigitte Gabriel is an Arab Lebanese woman who experienced the massive difference between the treatment she and her family got from fellow Arab Muslims and Israeli Jews - she realized that Israelis were kind, supportive and not corrupt when she had to bring her mother to an Israeli hospital. It was a total eye-opener.
She moved to Israel in 1984 and became news anchor for “World News,” an evening Arabic news broadcast for Middle East Television seen throughout Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. Her work is of international scope having brought her in contact with world figures such as Margaret Thatcher, George H. Bush, Queen Nour El. Hussein, Itzhak Rabine, and Shimon Perez.
https://brigittegabriel.com/
She is extremely well versed on the history of Islam, as you can see in this brief summary she provides in this video:
Majid Rafizadeh
Muslim, Harvard professor. Fights Sharia law, oppressive Islamic dictatorships and western censorship that attacks critics of Islam as "Islamophobes" etc.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12944/islam-criticism
Conclusion
This list could be turned into a book - the list of ex-Muslims and non-Muslims who were oppressed in Islamic countries who finally started speaking out is huge and keeps growing.
The simple fact is that criticism of Islam has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with "racism" or "xenophobia", which is a ridiculous accusation: some of the worst apologists and propagandists for a fundamentalist Islam are western converts, e.g. Pierre Vogel in Germany:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/762943/German-Islamists-fight-radical-salafist-muslim-vogel-abu-hamza
And Nicholas Blancho in Switzerland who was condemned in Switzerland for the terrorist propaganda, unfortunately he got only a suspended sentence:
https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/islamischer-zentralrat-bedingte-haftstrafen-fuer-nicholas-blancho-und-quaasim-illi
The far-left publication Nau.ch offers a platform to these extremists to criticize the democratic decision of Swiss people to prohibit Islamic niqabs, burkas etc.
https://www.nau.ch/news/schweiz/islamischer-zentralrat-islamophobie-in-der-verfassung-verankert-65883520
This should surprise no one, as the far left as well as the Nazis naturally ally with Islam - and they never learn from past mistakes! In Iran, the communists supported the Mullahs against the Shah - because the USSR wanted them to. But the second the Mullahs took control, they prosecuted their former communist allies, imprisoned, tortured and executed them. Their party was prohibited and it is still prohibited to even name them.
https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1156969/-on-ne-pensait-pas-que-la-revolution-allait-se-transformer-en-cauchemar-islamiste-.html
French communists - including the psychopathic cultural Marxist Foucault - praised the Islamic dictatorship and never even acknowledged their error, although their communist allies in Iran were brutally decimated:
https://www.lepoint.fr/invites-du-point/daniel-salvatore-schiffer/iran-quand-les-intellectuels-francais-encensaient-les-fous-d-allah-12-02-2013-1626554_1446.php
In short, Islam is clearly a fascist, supremacist ideology that must be criticized openly. Pretending that criticism of Islam is "racist" is just a red herring.