Probably, the spread of atheism among these people would be a good thing for the world

Losing their religion: the hidden crisis of faith among Britain’s young Muslims

Though it's risky for us, too, coming out as an atheist is more dangerous for a Muslim than for a Christian or Jew, even in the Occident.

And the danger is notably greater still in Muslim countries.

More dangerous yet is to publicly advocate secularism in specific and clear opposition to Islamism, the violence that supports it and the violence it sanctions, or to engage as an activist in support of apostasy per se.

Raif Badawi

And there is this.

As real as the potential for violence might be, it’s not what keeps many doubting British Muslims from leaving their religion. 

As Simon Cottee, author of a new book The Apostates: When Muslims Leave Islam, says: “In the western context, the biggest risk ex-Muslims face is not the baying mob, but the loneliness and isolation of ostracism from loved ones. 

"It is stigma and rejection that causes so many ex-Muslims to conceal their apostasy.”

Like the gay liberation movement of a previous generation, Muslim apostates have to fight for the right to be recognised while knowing that recognition brings shame, rejection, intimidation and, very often, family expulsion.

The author of the Observer article, Andrew Anthony, is perhaps too young, too British, or too post-Christian to know that American Christians and Jews often feel just the same, and keep their apostasy secret from their own families.

But at the end of the piece comes reference to something new in the experience of atheists since I first became one in my teens, back in the 1960s.

It certainly seems perverse that while there is no taboo on the discussion of Islamic radicalisation, the mention of Islamic apostates still occasions widespread discomfort. 

We can publicly accept that there are Muslims that are so estranged from western society that they prefer to live as fundamentalists, but have far more trouble recognising that there are Muslims who are so estranged from their religion that they prefer to live as freethinkers.

Nasreen, Vali and Shams all agreed that it will only be by bringing greater attention to Muslim apostates in British society that their predicament will improve. 

It would also help, they say, if they could rely on the progressive support that was once the right of freethinkers in this country.

“Attitudes need to change,” says Cottee. 

“There has to be a greater openness around the whole issue. 

"And the demonisation of apostates as ‘sell outs’ and ‘native informants’, which can be heard among both liberal-leftists and reactionary Muslims, needs to stop. 

"People leave Islam. 

"They have reasons for this, good, bad or whatever. 

"It is a human right to change your mind. 

"Deal with it.”

At various places in AA's piece, you can see that young Muslim apostates who actually do come out for secularism or in defense of apostasy face the same hostility and demonization that has faced the New Atheists since the earliest, post-9/11 days of Hitchens, Maher, and Harris.

We all face the new fact that while atheist criticisms of Christianity are shielded and even endorsed by a liberal culture that for centuries has supported free thought and expression in opposition to the myths, the doctrines, and the worldly power of that religion, atheist criticisms of Islam are brutally and cruelly damned by liberals as racist, xenophobic, and bigoted.

And that is true whether the atheist who makes the case is, so to speak, a Christian atheist, a Jewish atheist, or a Muslim atheist.

Not likely to change for a long, long time to come, either.