Unoffocial Ibn Warraq site

"Ibn Warraq has no website
That is why I decided to group everything that Ibn Warraq has ever written together. Given his status as the most intelligent critic of Islam in the world, I can certainly understand why he stays anonymous. He has been a bit more visible in public in recent times. He is always extremely thorough on everything. I do not want his works to be ignored, so I collated all his online works here."

The Unofficial Ibn Warraq Site

Go have a look!

Facebook's unholy war of words troubles young Muslims

"It was the first thing she did in the morning. After joining the social network ing Web site Facebook in April, Essma Bargewee spent hours on the site daily. But the 21-year-old Montclair University student re cently deleted her account. Bargewee, a practicing Muslim, soured on the Facebook phenomenon after getting embroiled in a controversy over Facebook groups denouncing Islam and other religions. In July, a self-described atheist created a group with a name that explicitly curses Islam, angering many Facebook users."[I couldn't read pages 2 and 3]

The Star-Ledger, November 13, 2007

Now let's imagine for a second that Essma Bargwee did not sign off, but for some reason she thought the people attacking Islam made some sense. Let's say she in fact became an Atheist herself - an Apostate.
This could easily have been a lot more dangerous than merely browsing through bigoted rants at Facebook. (Touch wood.) .

So, without having seen the Facebook rants(not being a member), I think that her own religion is more dangerous. This probably explains why people start groups that are offensive to Islam. We don't like to hear that we should be killed, for various reasons. It troubles young and old Atheists, and in particular Apostates - former Muslims. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for one, can't just sign off Facebook. In fact, the internet is probably the only place she can roam freely these days. Who of all the offended Muslims at Facebook want to swap lives with Ayaan Hirsi Ali?

In the end, I have to say that I'm not in favour of blunt attacks where expletives are the most important thing. They're often accompanied with racist slurs too. My experience, however, is that most of them come from right wing Christians. In any case, making people sign off can't be the best way to make them understand?

Apostasy is a right, not a crime

""There is no compulsion in religion" declares a famous verse (2:256).
[...]

How then came the ban on apostasy? Well, it was a political, not religious, verdict that soon became a part of the religious canon. David Forte, professor of Law at Cleveland State University, explains this fact very briefly and vividly in his article titled "Islam's Trajectory."
"The primary justification for the execution of the apostate is," he notes: "That in the early days of Islam, apostasy and treason were in fact synonymous. War was perennial in Arabia. It never stopped. To reject the leader of another tribe, to give up on a coalition, was in effect to go to war against him. There was no such thing as neutrality. There were truces, but there was never permanent neutrality. It is reported, for example, that immediately after the death of Mohammed, many tribes apostatized. They said in effect, "the leader whom we were following is gone, so let's go back to our own leaders.' And they rebelled against Muslim rule. The first caliph, Abu Bakr, ordered such rebels to be killed.
Many scholars argue that the tradition that all apostates had to be killed had its origin during these wars of rebellion and not during Mohammed's time. In fact, many argue that these traditions in which Mohammed affirmed the killing of apostates were apocryphal, made up later to justify what the empire had been doing."

[...]

The second thing that the origin of the apostasy ban shows is that Islamic sources need a serious reconsideration. What most Muslims attach themselves to as divine commandments are actually the political and cultural codes of the early centuries of Islam, which were, to be sure, man-made facts. The divine principles of a religion should remain eternally valid, but not its historical context."

Turkish Daily News, November 3, 2007

Higher criticism would be needed indeed.

"Ex-Muslim" group launches in Britain

""Ex-Muslims" hoping to change the terms of debate about Islam in Europe will launch a British group in London on Thursday.
The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain will be the latest addition to groupings that began in Germany in February and spread to Scandinavia in May. A Dutch group will hold its launch in September."

Reuters, Jun 20, 2007

They are setting up a homepage at ex-muslim.org.uk. and there's also Maryam Namazie's blog and homepage.
Incidentally, her blog had a good speech on the use of veils. What's all the fuss about the veil?:

"Adult women may have the ‘right’ to veil though that right is in no way absolute as many rights aren’t and a completely different matter for children – which I will come to later. But having the right to do something is very different from defending the ‘freely chosen’ veil or the ‘right to veil’. There may be women who ‘freely choose’ to genitally mutilate their daughters or immolate themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre but that does not mean that we must then defend the right of women to do so or defend the practice of Suttee or FGM. The defence of rights is not about making everyone agree as you will always find people who will defend and commit the indefensible – and that is what religion is in my opinion. It is about protecting human beings sometimes even from themselves."