Ever Heard About Hotel Islam?

You can check in, but you can never check out, not in Egypt, and not in that other bastion of "liberal" Islam called Malaysia either. I guess Egypt and Malaysia are "liberal" in that their governments simply refuse to officially acknowledge acts of apostasy, rather than actually carry out the punishment for the "offense" prescribed by Islam - so much for all the apologist talk about the Quran stipulating "no compulsion in religion" ...

Comments

[Jubril]

I checked out about three years ago. So far, no regrets. Just one little snag: Parents are afraid I'm going to hell. I love them quite much and even considered pretending just so they're a little happier, but that's just too painful. I could always lie about whether I had done my daily prayers, eat as much as I can when I'm not at home during Ramadan, but there's just no way I can get around being forced to sit for hours, chanting "Allah is great" along with loads of other useless phrases that supposedly shed Allah's mercy upon you. What pisses me off the most is the "holier than thou" attitude that is displayed towards "lost youths" like myself, and the ever persistent delusion that if they just chanted their rubbish long enough, Allah will open our hearts to the "truth" of Islam.

[Abiola Lapite]

Your experience sounds like the typical scenario faced by atheists with observant Christian parents, which is to say that sad though it is to have such a clash of viewpoints, along with the smothering, condescending "we will keep praying for you to see the light" attitude that accompanies it, this is still miles better than the whole "even though you are my child, if you leave my religion you deserve to be killed" mentality ...

[Abiola Lapite]

By the way, just to show that I'm not merely talking about hypotheticals, the following story is instructive.

http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi_arabia/10236558.html

["Saudi man kills daughter for converting to Christianity"

Riyadh: A Saudi man working with the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice recently killed his daughter for converting to Christianity.

According to sources close to the victim, the religious police member had cut the tongue of the girl and burned her to death following a heated debate on religion.

The death of the girl sent shockwaves and websites where the victim used to write with various nick names have allocated special space to mourn her, while some others closed temporarily in protest.

According to the Saudi Al Ukhdoud news website, the victim wrote an article on the blog of which she was a member under the nickname “Rania” a few days before her murder.

She wrote that her life became an ordeal after her family members grew suspicious about her after a religious discussion with them.

She said that her brother found some Christian articles written by her as well as a cross sign on her computer screen. Since then he started to insult her and blamed the internet for pushing her to change her religion.

The “Free Copts” website published a message which it received from a friend of the victim, revealing that the killer is in police custody and that he is being investigated for an honour related crime.

Saudi religious scholars have frequently warned against the dangers of Christian internet websites and satellite TV channels which attract Muslim youngsters to change their religion.

They decreed that watching these channels or browsing these websites which call for conversion to Christianity by various means is against the teachings of Islam.]