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List of critics of Islam

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Criticism of Islam has existed since its formative stages. Early written disapproval came from Jews[1][2][3][4] and Christians,[5][6][7][8][9] before the ninth century, many of whom viewed Islam as a radical Christian heresy,[6][7][8][9] as well as by some former Muslim atheists and agnostics, such as Ibn al-Rawandi.[5] The September 11 attacks and other terrorist attacks in the early 21st century, reignited suspicion and criticism of all of Islam, with calls for moderates to condemn the terrorism of the fundamnatalists and help prevent radicilsation and islamophobia.[10]

Objects of criticism include the morality and authenticity of the Quran and the Hadiths,[11] along with the life of Muhammad, both in his public and personal life.[12][13] Other criticism concerns many aspects of human rights in the Islamic world (in both historical and present-day societies), including slavery,[14][15][16][17] treatment of women, LGBT groups, and religious and ethnic minorities in Islamic law and practice.[18][19] The issues when debating and questioning Islam are incredibly complex with each side having a different view on the morality, meaning, interpretation, and authenticity of each topic.

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Middle Ages

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Early Modern period

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19th century

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Frontispiece of the 1753 edition of Voltaire's play Le fanatisme, ou Mahomet le Prophète
  • Alexis de Tocqueville, French political thinker and historian, said about Islam: "I studied the Kuran a great deal ... I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammed."[30]
  • John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States (1825–1829), wrote: "In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar [i.e., Muhammad], the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth.[30][citation needed]
  • Hilaire Belloc, Anglo-French writer and historian.
  • G. K. Chesterton, English writer.
  • Dayanand Saraswati, in his book Satyarth Prakash, he criticized Islam.
  • Pandit Lekh Ram was an Arya Samaj Hindu leader and writer in India who was active in converting Muslims to Hinduism.
  • Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister through most of World War II, criticized what he alleged to be of the effects Islam had on its believers. In his 1899 book The River War he attributed to Muslims their fanatical frenzy combined with fatalistic apathy, enslavement of women, and militant prozelityzing.[31]

Contemporary critics

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Moderate Muslims

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Tarek Fatah

Former Muslims

There are also outspoken former Muslims who believe that Islam is the primary cause of what they see as the mistreatment of minority groups in Muslim countries and communities. Almost all of them now live in the West, many under assumed names as they have had death threats made against them by Islamic groups and individuals.[citation needed]

Converts to other religions

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Magdi Allam has criticised Islam since his conversion to Catholicism
  • Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian-American convert to Protestant Christianity who founded the pro-Israel web site Arabs for Israel and stated that "Islam is more than a religion, it is a totalitarian state".[44] She is also the author of Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror.
  • Magdi Allam, an outspoken Egyptian-born Italian journalist who describes Islam as intrinsically violent and characterised by "hate and intolerance".[45] He converted to Catholicism and was baptised by Pope Benedict XVI during an Easter Vigil service on March 23, 2008.
  • Zachariah Anani, a Baptist Christian and a former Sunni Muslim Lebanese militia fighter. Anani said that Islamic doctrine teaches nothing less than the "ambushing, seizing and slaying" of non-believers, especially Jews and Christians.[46]
  • Anwar Shaikh (1928–2006) was a Pakistani-British author who converted to Hinduism and wrote several books critical of Islam.[47]
  • Sabatina James (born 1982) is a Pakistani-Austrian author and convert to Roman Catholic Christianity who was meant to undergo an arranged marriage with her cousin but escaped and started a new life
  • Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a Hamas founder, a former Israeli spy, and a convert to Christianity. He has written Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices.
  • Majed el-Shafie is an Egyptian-Canadian convert to Christianity who was tortured and condemned to death for apostasy in his fatherland. He is the president and founder of One Free World International (OFWI), a human rights organization.
  • Ali Sina, pseudonym of the founder of several anti-Islam and anti-Muslim websites
  • Sarah Haider founded the organization Ex-Muslims of North America after she left Islam. Haider supports other ex-Muslims.
  • Rachid Hammami (born 1971) is a Moroccan Christian convert from Islam who hosts a weekly call-in show where he criticizes Islam.
  • Nabeel Qureshi, Ahmadiyya Muslim converted to Christianity. His book Seeking Allah and finding Jesus is famous among Christians and Muslims. He had debated with Muslim scholars.

Ex-Muslim irreligionists

  • Ahmad Kasravi was a pre-eminent Iranian linguist, nationalist, religious reformer, historian and former Shia cleric.[48]
  • Ali Dashti, Iranian senator and critic of Muhammad in "Twenty Three Years" in Persian.[49]
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Writer Salman Rushdie, a former Muslim, wrote The Satanic Verses
  • Salman Rushdie (born 1947), Indian-British novelist and essayist. His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), was the centre of a major controversy.
  • Taslima Nasrin, Bengali/Bangladeshi ex-physician turned feminist author. She is an atheist and a severe critic of Islam and of religion in general who describes herself as a secular humanist.[50][51]
  • Nyamko Sabuni, Burundian-Swedish atheist, served as the Minister of Integration and Gender Equality (Sweden, 2006–2013) and advocated to ban the veil, as well as establish compulsory gynecological examinations for schoolgirls to guard against female genital mutilation, stating, "I will never accept that women and girls are oppressed in the name of religion", and declaring it is not her intent to reform Islam but only to denounce "unacceptable" practices. She has received death threats, requiring 24-hour police protection, for her views.[52]
  • Maryam Namazie, Iranian-born human rights activist, communist, atheist, the leader of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, and a Central Committee member of the Worker-communist Party of Iran, wishing the overthrow of the current Iranian regime.[53]
  • Ibn Warraq, secularist British author born in India and raised in Pakistan, intellectual, scholar and founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society and a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry[54][55][56] specializing in Qur'anic criticism.[57][58]
  • Wafa Sultan, Syrian-American psychiatrist who has pointed out that Muhammad said: "I was ordered to fight the people until they believe in Allah and his Messenger." Sultan has called on Islamic teachers to review their writings and teachings and remove every call to fight people who do not believe as Muslims.[59] Dr. Sultan is now in hiding as she received threats after appearing on the al-Jazeera TV show.[60]
  • Turan Dursun (1934–4 September 1990), Turkish scholar and author. He worked as a Shi'a cleric before becoming an atheist during his study of the history of monotheistic religions. Dursun was assassinated outside his home in Istanbul.
  • Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–10 November 1938), Turkish field marshal, revolutionary statesman, author, and founder of the secular Republic of Turkey, serving as its first President from 1923 until his death in 1938. Sources point out that Atatürk was a religious skeptic and a freethinker. He was a non-doctrinaire deist[61][62] or an atheist,[63][64][65] who was antireligious and anti-Islamic in general.[66][67] According to Atatürk, the Turkish people do not know what Islam really is and do not read the Quran. People are influenced by Arabic sentences that they do not understand, and because of their customs they go to mosques. When the Turks read the Quran and think about it, they will leave Islam.[68] Atatürk described Islam as the religion of the Arabs in his own work titled Vatandaş için Medeni Bilgiler by his own critical and nationalist views.[69]
  • Yahya Hassan (born 1995), Danish poet of Palestinian background who has attracted attention and stirred debate about Islam's place in Denmark based on poetry he wrote which was critical of Islam.
  • Ehsan Jami (born 1985), Iranian-Dutch socialist politician.
  • Yasmine Mohammed, Canadian educator and human rights activist.
  • Majid Mohammadi, an Iranian-American sociologist who has published dozens of books on Shi`i Islamism, Islamist states, Islamist propaganda, and Islamist movements.
  • Luai Ahmed, a Yemeni-Swedish journalist, columnist and influencer considered as a controversial critic of the radical Islam and the anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel inherent in it.[70] He is affiliated with Sweden Democrats, a Swedish right-wing nationalist party.[71] Ahmed is openly gay and considers himself Zionist.[72][73]

Christians

Christians of Mideastern background

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Robert Spencer, Melkite Catholic author who has written on Islamic terrorism and jihad

This subsection does not include converts to Christianity from Islam, who are instead listed in the subsection "Former Muslims". There is a large diaspora of Middle Eastern Christians in the West, some of whom have fled persecution in their homelands. In fact, most Middle Easterners in the United States come from Christian families.[74] Most belong to specific ethnoreligious—rather than simply religious—groups, as religion and ethnicity are largely intertwined in the Middle East.

Christians of non-Mideastern background

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Baptist minister Jerry Falwell criticised Muhammad

Observant Jews

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Pamela Geller is a Jewish writer and critic of Islam

Members of Indian religions

Indian religions, also known as the Dharmic religions, include Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. This subsection does not include converts from Islam, who are instead listed in the subsection "Former Muslims". See also the List of converts to Hinduism from Islam.

Western irreligionists

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Atheist comedian Pat Condell criticises Islam in his YouTube videos

For irreligious former Muslims, see the above subsection "Former Muslims".

Practitioners of traditional African religions

The Traditional African religions are the traditional beliefs and practices of the African people. Some of these traditional beliefs includes the various ethnic religions of Africa.

  • Tamsier Joof (born 1973), British born dancer/choreographer, entrepreneur and radio personality of Senegalese and Gambian heritage expresses the view that: "neither Islam, nor Christianity are peaceful or Godly religions, but wicked and dangerous ideologies which have done nothing but destroyed Africa and her people since they landed on African shores." Tamsier, a devout follower of Serer religion (a ƭat Roog), regard Islam and Christianity as "foreign cults which have caused more damage to Africa and divided her people." He is a strong critic of the powerful Muslim brotherhoods of Senegal, whom he regard as greedy and selfish; and African Muslims and Christians who like to demonise the traditional religions of their forefathers, whom he regard as hypocrites and cowards. He holds strong anti-Arab and anti-Islamic sentiments, both of which he regard as a curse, and is a strong supporter of Zionism.[110][111]

Other

  • Alice Schwarzer (born 1942), a German feminist, has been criticizing political Islam for decades, particularly with regard to women's rights. Schwarzer also goes against contemporary feminists that, according to her, promote said Islam.
  • Bill Warner (born 1941), American writer and the founder of the Center for the Study of Political Islam International.
  • Howard Bloom (born 1943), American author, atheist, sociologist, and public relations professional in the music industry.
  • Sami Aldeeb (born 1949), Palestinian lawyer with Swiss citizenship, author of many books and articles on Arab and Islamic law.[112]
  • Salwan Momika (1986-2025), Iraqi Assyrian refugee and atheist activist, who burned the Quran numerous times in 2023 and has campaigned to ban the Quran in Sweden and classify Islam as a terrorist religion.
  • Alvin Tan (born 1988), Malaysian Chinese blogger, secularist and free-speech activist who has posted online content critical of Islam.[113]
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References

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