“On the one hand I want to de-escalate, but on the other hand it annoys me that it’s impossible to criticize Islam without it being considered an insult.”
Welcome to my world, Mr. Sherwan. This is true the world over. And the worst part is that the non-Muslim world accepts this claim uncritically.
“Ex-Muslim in Neukölln threatened: ‘What are you thinking of, insulting the prophet?,” translated from “Ex-Moslem in Neukölln bedroht: „Was fällt dir ein, den Propheten zu beleidigen!,” by Sören Kittel, Berliner Zeitung, July 21, 2022 (thanks to Medforth):
Amed Sherwan starts to run when the traffic light at Hermannplatz turns red. It’s 12:30 p.m., Tuesday afternoon, he’s walking south on Kottbusser Damm, before that he ate rice with okra pods at his favorite Kurdish restaurant and now he wants to continue towards Sonnenallee, drinking Arabic coffee with cardamom. As he runs through the traffic light, a man overtakes him and immediately starts yelling at him: “I saw you in the documentary on Arte, how dare you insult the Prophet!” This is what Sherwan says on the phone the next day.
Sherwan’s life story is well known, he wrote it down in a book: Kafir: Thank Allah I’m an atheist. At the age of 15, the Iraqi Kurd wrote on Facebook that he would like to live as an atheist when he was still living in the capital Erbil. His father reported him, Amed Sherwan was imprisoned, tortured, convicted of blasphemy – and finally fled to Flensburg via detours. He has lived there since 2014 and also comes to Berlin from time to time.
For him, the capital is usually a place where he gets lost in the crowd. “I’m one of many here,” he says. “I never thought that anyone could recognize me here.” He likes to drink Arabic coffee in Sonnenallee, but that’s over for now. “The man accused me of inciting hatred against Muslims,” says Sherwan. “I was in shock and couldn’t say anything.” He began to react as he was used to from his torture prison: “I apologized.”
At the CSD he wore the T-shirt: “Allah is gay”
For a while, Sherwan was a frequent guest on stage and talk shows, and he held his own there for a 23-year-old who doesn’t even speak German as his first language. But in the past few months he has noticed that after these performances, he could not shake off the memories as easily as he would have liked. That’s why he wrote a month ago that he wanted to withdraw from the public eye for a while.“Situations like the one on Sonnenallee always make me very sad,” he said the day after the incident. “On the one hand I want to de-escalate, but on the other hand it annoys me that it’s impossible to criticize Islam without it being considered an insult.” The man also spoke of a knife. “I apologized to him and hoped that no more people would recognize me and join in.” He felt afraid.
Sherwan knows Berlin. Four years ago he walked across the CSD with a T-shirt that said: “Allah is gay.” He himself lives in a relationship with a woman, but shows solidarity with the LGBT community’s fight for tolerance. After the CSD, he had to endure a lot of hostility from conservative groups, both online and offline, he says. It happened that cars drove slower next to him, rolled down the windows and threatened him.
The situation at Herrmannplatz only lasted five minutes. “I put on a mask and then got on the next bus that just stopped there and drove away.” He will avoid Neukölln in the coming days, the district that actually reminds him so much of his homeland. “That was my last day in the Sonnenallee.” He visits friends in the north of the city and soon returns to Flensburg. A life without public awaits him there. “I want to move to another city and then start an apprenticeship.”
somehistory says
He should have gotten a big clue of how it was to be from his father. Way to go, dad. Have your own son tortured for making a different choice, to climb out of the pigsty mire and think for himself.
mortimer says
Mohammed said, “So, kill the apostates wherever you find them, because whoever does so will be rewarded on Judgment Day.” -Sahih Bukhari 9,84,64
Apostates from Islam sometimes have to move to another big city where they will be unknown and then change their name to further hide from persecution. They abandon their former friends and family and don’t let people know much about their past just to be safe. A lonely life.
If you know a former Muslim, you should befriend them and invite them into your home for dinner, because no one else will. That would be a good deed.
somehistory says
somehistory says, I don’t give a fig for what the filthy mass-murderer said, thought or did and I don’t care to read any more of it or your misguided and *****wrong******directives for what I should do.
Jesus said don’t give what is holy to dogs or throw pearls before swine. Jesus said a lot of ***good*** and holy things. I care about what He said….and not what your so-called prophet said.
You should leave somehistory alone. that would be a good deed.
mortimer says
Our ability to discuss and share information is what this forum is about.
If you don’t know Mohammed, you don’t understand Islam.
Islam is dualistic, so there is always more than one answer. A person who reaches a unitary conclusion about Islam will always be wrong.
A person who doesn’t know the inmost details of Islam, is unequipped to discuss it.
Learning about Islam is too challenging for most people.
Robert Spencer has certainly put in the effort, but even he can still learn more.
Christian Prince understands Islam expertly. Highly recommended.
mortimer says
The phrase “speak the truth in love” comes from Ephesians 4:15. To understand that verse’s context, please read Ephesians 4:11-16.
Speaking the truth in love is speaking that which is doctrinally correct and that which proceeds from a biblically committed life to a person who is in need of correction. It is done in love for the benefit of one who needs some adjustment to their attitudes or their actions.
Jesus asked his followers to be ‘good Samaritans’ towards the ‘other’ … that is what I am doing … asking people to be good Samaritans to Muslims.
somehistory says
Jesus said to those who opposed Him, :serpents, offspring of vipers, how are you to flee the Judgment of Gehenna.”
I don’t have to associate with those who call me names…and have for years, but you just can’t stop yourself from commenting on what I write….because I don’t laud you for your knowledge of the garbage from the fake prophet. So, you harass me with his filth and repeat over and over what he ruled was the way his fellow snakes should kill and rape others;
and then want to *school* me on the Bible. some nerve. Much like the mozlum who broke my video equip.
the Bible has a verse that asks, “what right do you have to enumerate my regulations?” You should ask yourself that question.
James Lincoln says
mortimer says,
“A person who doesn’t know the inmost details of Islam, is unequipped to discuss it.”
There is another way to look at it:
As long as someone has an accurate / solid basic knowledge of islam, one can discuss / comment about it intelligently.
We can count on very astute experts like Robert Spencer to fill in the finer details.
somehistory says
thank you, James Lincoln.
If people only discuss the things with which they have intimate knowledge, there would be a whole lot less talk and very few discussions. I know enough about the actions and the ‘why” of those actions by mozlums, to know they are not the “sort” to be invited in to my home. Per the Apostle John. Enough to “not mix in company with,’ per the Apostle Paul. Not “eat their table” where they serve up their *rules* per the Apostle Paul.
Mr. Spencer includes info from the ‘book” they rely on for their direction and directives at the beginning of each thread. that’s enough, I think. Esp after reading Mr. Spencer’s well-written book on islam many years ago.
Infidel says
Mortimer
If one knows that islam, via the quran and sunna, wants to:
‣ Convert us
‣ Subjugate us
‣ Kill us
What else really is there to know? Somehistory is by no means worse off by not knowing what’s in their books: she can follow what muslims actually do in real life, and then accept what RS says about their doctrines
Shema says
If you know a former Muslim, you should befriend them and invite them into your home for dinner, because no one else will. That would be a good deed.
This sounds like advice given on a jihadist website ironically.
somehistory says
More and more, I believe *mortimer* is mozlum. He has stated “I know a lot’ ‘of mozlums and he stated that he ‘talks to the local moola’ about what mozlums are doing.
And he defends them against whatever I write about them.
mortimer says
“Ex-Muslim in Neukölln threatened: ‘What are you thinking of, insulting the prophet?”
In fact, the normal conclusion to reading about Mohammed for the first time would be revulsion.
This repulsiveness was perhaps best expressed by the brilliant editor and translator of Arabic works, Rev. Dr. David Samuel Margoliouth, who wrote the following description of Mohammed’s amoral and opportunistic character:
“The character attributed to Mohammed in the biography of Ibn Ishaq is exceedingly unfavorable. In order to gain his ends, he recoils from no expedient, and he approves of similar unscrupulousness on the part of his adherents, when exercised in his interest. He profits to the utmost from the chivalry of the Meccans, but rarely requites it with the like. He organizes assassinations and whole-sale massacres. His career as tyrant of Medina is that of a robber chief, whose political economy consists in securing and dividing plunder, the distribution of the latter being at times carried out on principles which fail to satisfy his followers’ ideas of justice. He is himself an unbridled libertine and encourages the same passion in his followers. For whatever he does he is prepared to plead the express authorization of the deity. It is, however, impossible to find any doctrine which he is not prepared to abandon in order to secure a political end. At different points in his career he abandons the unity of God and his claim to the title of Prophet. This is a disagreeable picture for the founder of a religion, and it cannot be pleaded that it is a picture drawn by an enemy; and though Ibn Ishaq’s name was for some reason held in low esteem by the classical traditionalists of the third Islamic century, they make no attempt to discredit those portions of the biography which bear hardest on the character of their Prophet.”
(Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, volume 8, p. 878.Dr. Margiolouth)
Muslims from birth grow up in an environment in which everyone expresses admiration of Mohammed, but generally, Muslims do not examine the hadiths and Sira in detail in order to understand the viciousness, promiscuity and brutality of this most repugnant figure, the founder of the Death Cult.
Andrew Blackadder says
islam is 100% a Fascist Religious Cult, as you cannot say anything against it… they speak about god… a lot… You cannot leave it once you are in it…thats a Cult…
So when I hear muslims speak about islam being a religion of peace I laugh as they cant even take a joke and my opinion of their faith is so important to THEM that they wish to cut my head off just to prove how peaceful islam really is.
I dont give a rats ass what they think of me or my beliefs, they do not matter to me as I am not inside their heads but they sure get their wee knickers in a twist when I mention what I think of their sexually uptight oppressive nonsense.
mortimer says
Mostly agree: ‘fascist cult’.
Islam calls itself a ‘deen’ meaning a ‘system of governance’. Islam is structured as a top-down dictatorship.
Information is controlled in the Islamic state by the mullahs who decide what speech is ‘permissible’ (halal) and what speech is ‘forbidden’ (haram).
Sharia law authorizes the mullahs to control ALL SPEECH in a Muslim-dominated society, so that is what all Muslims want. Only the mullahs, ultimately, can say whatever they want … even lies … without being challenged.
That is what Muslims really want … complete censorship controlled by the mullahs … that is Sharia law.
bushan mehra says
it is a gang, where you can come in but you can’t go out.i am sure
it will go down by its own weight.
tim gallagher says
It’s a strange way to put things. You are insulting Muhammad. Totally idiotic. If I left Christianity, because I didn’t believe in its basic beliefs anymore, I would not be insulting the God of that religion, or the preachers in that religion or its prophets. I might still have a very high opinion of them but have lost faith in the tenets of the religion. Anyway, I don’t believe that this vile creature, Muhammad, ever existed (made up later on) and so it is nonsense to think he is deserving of such respect. If he ever existed the creature was a murderer, a pedophile and deserves to be insulted not respected. But how dare anyone wake up and leave islam behind, eh. Good luck to this man for leaving and I hope they don’t kill him. All people should be free to sincerely follow their conscience and leave any religion they no longer believe in. Trying to leave islam does seem to be like trying to leave the mafia or some such criminal gang rather than a respectable religion.
James Lincoln says
Interestingly, an apostate from islam is treated much more harshly (death sentence) then, say, an atheist who was never a muslim.
Seems like the apostate should “get off the hook” just by paying the jizya – like the atheist.
If logic ruled…
tim gallagher says
As you say, James, if logic ruled, that would make sense. This accusation leveled at this man, of insulting Muhammad, shows that logic doesn’t come into it, more like just some over the top anger, but the extraordinary idea that a person deciding to up and leave islam behind deserves a death sentence shows how insane and barbaric islam is.
Infidel says
James
As you probably know, logic is anathema to both islam and communism
James Lincoln says
Unfortunately very true, Infidel.