[2] In response, ex-Muslims have formed literary and social movements, as well as mutual support networks and organizations, to address the difficulties associated with leaving Islam and to raise awareness of human rights issues they may face.
[5] Cottee outlines different phases on the way of leaving Islam: disavowal of self, relief, excitement, guilt, anger, residual anxiety, confusion, disclosure, and more.
[7] Khalil Bilici states that their study confirms earlier scholarly findings that some ex-Muslims commonly cite the experience of the 1971 Bangladesh genocide as an example of the oppressive nature of Muslims.
[7] For example, Khalil Bilici takes note of some individual narrations, such as one ex-Muslim who found it odd that the Quran got 'engrossed with trivial aspects' related to the private life of Muhammad.
A narration of another ex-Muslim asserted that life as a Muslim imposed socially restrictive choices and made one skip opportunities and responsibilities in order to fulfill mundane religious mandates; the same account found the status of women in Islam and condoning child marriage by the prophet to be problematic.
[4] According to Maria Vliek (2021), larger structures of secularity help the development of the relative need for and desire to express publicly to contest dominant discourses and also identify oneself as 'ex-Muslim'.
[10] According to Najma Al Zidjaly study in spite of high-risk restrictions and official obstructions, the Ex-Muslims in Arab societies could manage to form online communities and share challenging ideas which have been permeating throughout Arabia.
Ex Muslims on social media deploy humor, satire, facts, repair, rhetorical questions, At the beginnings of the Islamic religious deliberation by the masses during the early 2000s, the Quran itself did not come for criticism.
However, once they actually study and examine scripture, they stumble upon many questionable and disturbing inexplicable acts in the name of God, such as passages perceived to be violent, in which God throws unbelievers who were good human being by behavior in hell as well, or is peeling off the skin of the damned, or the slaughtering of the surrendered Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza in Muhammad's life, or even recent Islamist or terrorist events that were purportedly motivated or justified by Islamic scriptures.
[6] Khalil Bilici says leaving Islam is deeply influenced by various previous literary works and other events and interactions, including that of Taslima Nasrin and Salman Rushdie, as well as writings of philosophers and scientists such as Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, and Richard Dawkins.
The mental impact of this effort to hide one's true thoughts is heavy for many ex-Muslim individuals, making leaving Islam a long-term, arduous, and psychologically demanding process.
[19] According to Azweed Mohamad et al. (2017), it is very common in Muslim-majoritarian countries that conservative Muslim groups and governmental bodies actively work to constrain apostasy by keeping a religious taboo on the subject.
[20] According to Azweed Mohamad et al. conservative media in Muslim-majoritarian countries play an influential role with its higher followership by attempting to stall the rise of liberal practices and institutions.
If liberalism is in trouble, the stakes are increased by placing responsibilities across to the government or top national leaderships, and at the same time searching for supportive social soft corners.
[20] While pointing out usage of strategic ‘flagging’ i.e. 'mass misreporting' as a tool in low-intensity online culture war to dislodge inconvenient point of views on social media websites like Facebook and YouTube is used by many; in the chapter, 'Facebook and Google as Offices of Censorship' authors Stjernfelt and Lauritzen in their study 'Your Post Has Been Removed: Tech Giants and Freedom of Speech' say that, this tactic of misusing the flagging system seems to have been employed by Islamist groups (or even governments in the Middle East?
Suffering from stigmatization, activists reported cases of (verbal) violence by family members, investigations by authorities, and obstacles in professional, educational, and private life.
The awareness that it is not possible to criticize or joke about certain topics leads to (self-)censorship (Rahman 2012) and a try-and-see ethos that tests the limits of freedom of speech (Iddins 2020)".
[20][23] Another recent case being, In August 2021, an ex-Muslim from Kerala, Abdul Khader Puthiyandadi was arrested without bail and sentenced to prison for three years for criticising Quran and Hadith by United Arab Emirates on the grounds of blasphemy law.
[31] Al Qaeda's terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 (colloquially known as 9/11) on the World Trade Center (1973–2001) in New York City and The Pentagon in Washington, D.C. made a powerful impact on doubting and former Muslims.
For some, it (partially or temporarily) reversed their process of apostasy in the face of a generalised anti-Muslim backlash that (mistakenly) targeted them or their family and friends as "terrorists" in Western societies.
[32] For others, it accelerated their loss of faith, or in fact planted the first seed of doubt about their Islamic beliefs, that appeared to be based on the same religious texts that the 9/11 hijackers used to justify their terrorist attacks.
Meanwhile, Ibn Warraq compiled the first collection of stories from former Muslims: Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out (2003);[31] Seeing children of Muslim parents cheer at the 9/11 attacks, having checked that Osama bin Laden's justifications for it,and finally having read the Atheïstisch manifest of Dutch philosopher Herman Philipse, Dutch political scientist and former Somali asylum-seeker Ayaan Hirsi Ali renounced Islam in 2002 and became a prominent critic.
[34] Due to her open hostility towards Islam in public discourse in the Netherlands, where she became a Member of Parliament in 2003, she received numerous death threats for leaving and criticising her former faith, culminating in the assassination of Theo van Gogh on 2 November 2004, with whom she had co-produced the short film Submission.
[37][38]: 0:22 Its primary initiator was Mina Ahadi, an ex-Muslim refugee from Iran who escaped a death sentence that she received for criticising the Islamic regime; she settled in Cologne in 1996.
[51] In the early 21st century, an un-organised ex-Muslim movement started to emerge in India, typically among young (in their 20s and 30s) well-educated Muslim women and men in urban areas.
[61] In the Bangladesh Liberation War (March–December 1971), a significant number of Bangladeshis left Islam to join Christianity (because missionaries stood with them during their difficult times during the civil strife) or to atheism after 1971 due to their experience of oppression conducted by fellow Muslims from West Pakistan.
[63]: 16:15 In the small South Asian Muslim-majority island state of the Maldives, free thinker activists contested extremist narratives on social media, conducted silent protests and questioned some conservatives since 2010.
Another, the young air traffic controller Ismail Mohamed Didi, was found dead after getting exposed for his apostasy, and further multiple questionable deaths of ex-Muslims over the years were linked to international terrorist connections of the accused.
In June 2019, Rishvin Ismath decided to come forward as a spokesperson for the Council in order to denounce government-approved and distributed textbooks for Muslim students which stated that apostates from Islam should be killed.
[6][9][94][95] Ex-Muslim atheist author Ali Amjad Rizvi expresses his anguish at the 'liberal left in non-Muslim majority countries' contradictory attitude to treat non-Muslim far-right ideas as bad, but hesitating in extending the same level of criticism to questionable illiberal ideas and practices advocated in Islamic holy books like the Quran from misogyny, homophobia, extremist interpretations of jihad, harsh corporal punishments like hand amputation, severe legal penalties for blasphemy and apostasy and many more.