RSS FeedJust over a year ago I wrote a blog post about atheism in the Middle East and invited Arab non-believers to come forward with their stories. Several of them did.
I felt at the time that this would be a good topic for a book, so I embarked on further research and began seeking out more Arab atheists. The book, which I have called Arabs Without God, is now complete and will be published by Amazon, initially as an e-book, on 12 September (though you can pre-order it from today).
Read an extract from the book here
The main reason for starting it off as an e-book – apart from the fact that it costs less to buy – is that I want it to be available to as many readers as possible in the Middle East. Taking the e-book route overcomes many of the problems of distribution and censorship that print books face in the region. Also, because of the "sensitive" subject matter, it is likely that some Arab readers may not want to have a physical copy on their bookshelf.
As some readers may know, becoming an atheist is one of the most shocking things that an Arab can do: it is often regarded as the worst form of religious heresy. Saudi Arabia's new anti-terrorism law treats "calling for atheist thought in any form" as a terrorist act, and the Sisi regime has announced plans to "eliminate" atheism from Egypt.
The aim of Arabs Without God is not to make a case for atheism but to argue for the right of Arab atheists to be treated as normal human beings. The first half, based on interviews with non-believers, looks at how and why some Arabs choose to abandon religion. Chapters in this section also explore the history of Arab atheism, arguments about the divine origin of the Qur'an, and the way atheism relates to gender and sexuality.
One of the more unexpected discoveries was that Arab atheism is somewhat different from atheism in the west: "scientific" arguments about the origin of the universe are much less prominent. In interviews, the issue most often cited by Arabs as their first step on the road to disbelief was the apparent unfairness of divine justice. The picture they had acquired was of an irascible and sometimes irrational Deity who behaves in much the same way as an Arab dictator or an old-fashioned family patriarch – an anthropomorphic figure who makes arbitrary decisions and seems eager to punish people at the slightest opportunity.
This also links in with the question of why an omniscient God would create flawed human beings and then subject them to a test for which He allegedly already knows the outcome.
One factor that seems to drive Arabs away from religion is the difficulty of having a rational discussion about these questions with religious scholars, families, or friends. A common response is to say that such questions should not be asked, that doubters should stop worrying and trust God or, in some cases, should seek psychiatric help.
This prompts doubters to search elsewhere for answers, often in the sincere hope of better understanding their faith – only to find that the more they investigate the less they believe.
The second half of the book looks in detail at restrictions on freedom of thought in the Arab countries – laws against apostasy and blasphemy, "official" state religions, etc. This is where non-believers turn into law-breakers, but it also affects religious people too. Most of the cases that come to court involve believers who happen not to follow the local religious orthodoxy – and many of the trials are more about score-settling than religion itself.
Although some of the more recent Arab constitutions pay lip-service to freedom of belief, the principle that people can choose their own religion, or decide not to have any religion at all, is still not widely accepted. Religious diversity is recognised up to a point, at least where monotheistic religions are concerned, but atheists are still generally regarded as beyond the pale, and the mentality that leads to the persecution of atheists is the same mentality that gives rise to groups like ISIS.
The final chapter discusses atheism in the context of Islamophobia – the problems that Arab atheists, and particularly ex-Muslims, face in arguing for their rights without feeding racist and Islamophobic prejudice.
