Former Muslims or ex-Muslims are people who were Muslims, but subsequently left Islam.
Although their numbers have increased, ex-Muslims still face ostracism or retaliation from their families and communities due to beliefs about apostasy in Islam. [1]
In 23 countries apostasy is a punishable crime and in 13 of those it carries the death penalty. [2]
These were mostly people who were followers of the Bahá'u'lláh at the time he founded the Baháʼí Faith. They were formerly Muslims.
Religious conversion is the adoption of a set of beliefs identified with one particular religious denomination to the exclusion of others. Thus "religious conversion" would describe the abandoning of adherence to one denomination and affiliating with another. This might be from one to another denomination within the same religion, for example, from Protestant Christianity to Roman Catholicism or from Shi'a Islam to Sunni Islam. In some cases, religious conversion "marks a transformation of religious identity and is symbolized by special rituals".
Proselytism is the policy of attempting to convert people's religious or political beliefs. Carrying out attempts to instill beliefs can be called proselytization.
Religion in Africa is multifaceted and has been a major influence on art, culture and philosophy. Today, the continent's various populations and individuals are mostly adherents of Christianity, Islam, and to a lesser extent several traditional African religions. In Christian or Islamic communities, religious beliefs are also sometimes characterized with syncretism with the beliefs and practices of traditional religions.
The persecution of Christians from 1989 to the present is part of a global pattern of religious persecution. In this era, the persecution of Christians is taking place in Africa, the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Reza Aslan is an Iranian-American scholar of sociality, writer, and television host. A convert to evangelical Christianity from Shia Islam as a youth, Aslan eventually reverted to Islam but continued to write about Christianity. He has written four books on religion: No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, God: A Human History and in 2022 An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville.
Religion in Egypt controls many aspects of social life and is endorsed by law. The state religion of Egypt is Islam, although estimates vary greatly in the absence of official statistics. Since the 2006 census, religion has been excluded, and thus available statistics are estimates made by religious and non-governmental agencies. The country is majority Sunni Muslim, with the next largest religious group being Coptic Orthodox Christians. The exact numbers are subject to controversy, with Christians alleging that they have been systemically under-counted in existing censuses.
Asia is the largest and most populous continent and the birthplace of many religions including Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto, Sikhism, Taoism, and Zoroastrianism. All major religious traditions are practiced in the region and new forms are constantly emerging. Asia is noted for its diversity of culture. Islam and Hinduisms are the largest religion in Asia with approximately 1.2-1.3 billion adherents each.
Forced conversion is the adoption of a religion or irreligion under duress. Someone who has been forced to convert to a different religion or irreligion may continue, covertly, to adhere to the beliefs and practices which were originally held, while outwardly behaving as a convert. Crypto-Jews, Crypto-Christians, Crypto-Muslims and Crypto-Pagans are historical examples of the latter.
Discrimination against atheists, sometimes called atheophobia, atheistophobia, or anti-atheism, both at present and historically, includes persecution of and discrimination against people who are identified as atheists. Discrimination against atheists may be manifested by negative attitudes, prejudice, hostility, hatred, fear, or intolerance towards atheists and atheism or even the complete denial of atheists' existence. It is often expressed in distrust regardless of its manifestation. Perceived atheist prevalence seems to be correlated with reduction in prejudice. There is global prevalence of mistrust in moral perceptions of atheists found in even secular countries and among atheists.
Growth of religion involves the spread of individual religions and the increase in the numbers of religious adherents around the world. In sociology, desecularization is the proliferation or growth of religion, most commonly after a period of previous secularization. Statistics commonly measure the absolute number of adherents, the percentage of the absolute growth per-year, and the growth of converts in the world.
For approximately a millennium, the Abrahamic religions have been predominant throughout all of the Middle East. The Abrahamic tradition itself and the three best-known Abrahamic religions originate from the Middle East: Judaism and Christianity emerged in the Levant in the 6th century BCE and the 1st century CE, respectively, while Islam emerged in Arabia in the 7th century CE.
Christian population growth is the population growth of the global Christian community. According to a 2011 Pew Research Center survey, there were more than 2.2 billion Christians around the world in 2010, more than three times as many as the 600 million recorded in 1910. However, this rate of growth is slower than the overall population growth over the same time period. In 2020, Pew estimated the number of Christians worldwide to be around 2.38 billion. According to various scholars and sources, high birth rates and conversions in the Global South were cited as the reasons for the Christian population growth. In 2023, it was reported: "There will be over 2.6 billion Christians worldwide by the middle of 2023 and around 3.3 billion by 2050, according to a report published in early January by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary."
Irreligion in Egypt is controversial due to the prominence of conservative social traditions and the persecution by the religious institutions in the country. It is difficult to quantify the number of atheists or agnostics in Egypt, as the stigma attached to being one makes it hard for irreligious Egyptians to publicly profess their views and beliefs.
Irreligion in the Middle East is the lack of religion in the Middle East. Though atheists in the Middle East are rarely public about their lack of belief, as they are persecuted in many countries where they are classified as terrorists, there are some atheist organizations in the Middle East. Islam dominates public and private life in most Middle East countries. Nonetheless, there reside small numbers of irreligious individuals within those countries who often face serious formal and, in some cases, informal legal and social consequences.
Ex-Muslims are individuals who were raised as Muslims or converted to Islam and later chose to leave the religion. These individuals may encounter challenges related to the conditions and history of Islam, Islamic culture and jurisprudence, as well as local Muslim culture. In response, ex-Muslims have formed literary and social movements, as well as mutual support networks and organizations, to address the difficulties associated with leaving Islam and to raise awareness of human rights issues they may face.
The situation for apostates from Islam varies markedly between Muslim-minority and Muslim-majority regions. In Muslim-minority countries, "any violence against those who abandon Islam is already illegal". But in some Muslim-majority countries, religious violence is "institutionalised", and "hundreds and thousands of closet apostates" live in fear of violence and are compelled to live lives of "extreme duplicity and mental stress."
Even before accepting the religion of the Arabs, the Turks were a great nation. After accepting the religion of the Arabs, this religion, didn't effect to combine the Arabs, the Persians and Egyptians with the Turks to constitute a nation. (This religion) rather, loosened the national nexus of Turkish nation, got national excitement numb. This was very natural. Because the purpose of the religion founded by Muhammad, over all nations, was to drag to an including Arab national politics.
I don't believe in any religion. But I believe in God. I am of the opinion that belief in God and belief in religion are two different things....My strength is my art and practicing my art is my puja... Just before we perform, we touch the stage in obeisance. That's because the stage is our temple and what we perform is our God. ...If I am going to dance in a temple, before every performance I pray to the deity from outside and prostrate in front of Him.
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: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)My father was almost entirely absent from my childhood, having been divorced from my mother when I was 2 years old; in any event, although my father had been raised a Muslim, by the time he met my mother he was a confirmed atheist, thinking religion to be so much superstition.
Five years after her interview with the Iranian leader [Ebrahim Raisi], Perez-Shakdam has become an atheist and reconnected with her long-discarded Jewish identity.
A homosexual, an atheist, and a militant anti-apartheid campaigner whose political ideas were forged on an intense reading of Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky...
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: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)the charismatic Mr Ashimolowo, a Nigerian-born convert from Islam
He was absolved by the Pope for his conversion, which he reversed
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Media related to Former Muslims at Wikimedia Commons