Adil Zeshan 

Ibn Warraq had the best quip of the evening:

The man is a gem.

Adil Zeshan 

ENGLAND. THE YEAR, 2007.

My name is Adil. I have been born and raised among dutiful and obedient Muslims, and I aim to misbehave.

Already I have fallen from grace. I am no longer one of them, a reason sufficient for their delicately-placed wrath to have me consigned, in this world and the next, to the most grievous of penalties; for what else should the reward be for those who behave like me, they would remark if they knew, but disgrace in this life? So no matter where I go in the realms of Islam, I am a hidden traitor to my people, a renegade without honour to be executed. For them to know of my apostasy is to know of their fear.

Still, I will not bow to their etiquette of madness. Now and again I silently walk among the Muslim flock, to observe their incessant bleating and guilty straying, and see how readily they run to the call of their watchful masters, appointees of God who oversee the enjoining of what is good and the forbidding of what is not. And they remind the herd that He is not unmindful of what they do.

Neither am I.

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This article has been adapted from a book that Adil is currently writing.

• reject Sharia law, fatwa courts, clerical rule, and state-sanctioned religion in all their forms; oppose all penalties for blasphemy and apostacy, in accordance with Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights;
• eliminate practices, such as female circumcision, honor killing, forced veiling, and forced marriage, that further the oppression of women; protect sexual and gender minorities from persecution and violence;
• reform sectarian education that teaches intolerance and bigotry towards non-Muslims;
• and foster an open public sphere in which all matters may be discussed without coercion or intimidation.

Adil Zeshan

EARLIER THIS YEAR, I took a train to London for an upcoming conference. As I walked out of Euston station, dusk was settling, and not very many people were about. As London tends to be an infrequent stop for me, I am not intimately familiar with some of its more recognisable locales. However, a friend, who had arrived a day earlier, was feeding me directions via mobile on how to get to my hotel.

I walked past the red buses in front of the station, and as I turned right onto a main road, I felt slightly odd, as if there was something unusually familiar about where I was. I carried walking straight on, as instructed, double-checking with my guide where I was meant to turn next. I let him know I would call him if I ran into any problems in getting there.

Despite the traffic, the atmosphere was relatively peaceful. The arching trees swung gracefully in the cool breeze, and I glanced over to a grand, polished building on my left. As I walked past, something stood out in particular: a circular plaque on the building. I looked closer to read the inscription.

And it was then I truly realised where I was.

The plaque honoured the building’s historic link with the great Charles Dickens, who had once lived within the expanses of the site. And it was this very same plaque that, only some months earlier, had been streaked with flesh and blood.

Memories of 7/7 instantly flooded my mind; I stood only a few feet away from where a crowded red double-decker bus had once been shredded apart in just a few seconds.

ON THE DAY when three planes ploughed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and when United Flight 93 crashed down in Pennsylvania, I experienced intense mortification, shame, and profound anger at my religion and most of its followers; as months went by, these feelings were aggravated further by Muslims’ ridiculous refusals in policing their own. But even though I eventually fell from grace and joined the ranks of unbelievers, my feelings of embarrassment and anger towards the religion and subculture in which I was born and raised have remained. On July 7, 2005, I experienced the same profound surges of shame and anguish, even though I was now an ex-Muslim.

As with 9/11, I am deeply disturbed at the bloodlust that was on display on the morning of 7/7. And I continue to be appalled by the systematic duplicity employed by most Muslims in condemning their own; to utter half-hearted words of outrage at terror attacks while refusing to do so against their perpetrators is the hallmark of moral degeneration. And I am disgusted at Muslims who engage in high condemnation of those non-Muslims calling attention to Muslim atrocities, while refusing to unleash their anger on the Muslim perpetrators of such barbarities. And it sickens me wholly that Muslims go to the indignity of playing upon many non-Muslims’ default ignorance of Islam, by generating an unrelenting barrage of lies, so as to keep the many unsavoury aspects of Islam out of public discussion.

Those Muslims who admire and sympathise with the totalitarian nature of their fellow strident jihadis must be made, nay, forced to learn that it will bring forth nothing but the ravages of personal misery. And the jihadi terrorists must be hunted down, persecuted, and killed without apology.

When I stood in front of that little plaque that day, such were my thoughts as I remembered the innocent community of the dead; I was, and continue to be, filled with shame and anger over what has come to be. I am fiercely proud of my precious England, and woe betides any unlucky Muslim who tries to persuade me I am wrong.

Adil Zeshan

ANTHONY DANIELS, a British doctor and famed writer, once wrote:

Whenever I enter someone’s house, I feel myself irresistibly (perhaps unresistingly would be a more honest way of putting it) drawn to his bookshelves. All flesh is grass, of course, but since Gutenberg at least, all mind is print. And absences from shelves are almost as telling as presences.

A few days ago, I clicked over to Martin Kramer's website, where I saw mention of a new tool called LibraryThing. LT is a rather savvy app that allows you to catalogue online what's on your bookshelves; each book can be assigned under multiple categories if needed, complete with ratings and commentary should one wish to add them.

It's also a tad addictive, surprisingly. I've much more to catalogue (nearly 450 books are online so far, which isn't a lot, really), as well as having to categorise and rate every item properly. Nonetheless, while logging each book, I've experienced the happy side-effect of physically re-organising my books in a much better fashion. I've also been able to identify, after having dredged up some considerable rubbish as well, what I really do need to get rid of once and for all.

What's also surprised me is how much I have of each category of book. I'd long assumed that the type of book I had most of fell under the rubric of evolutionary psychology. But it actually turns out that I have at least twice as many books on militant Islam - and I've not even finished cataloguing those particular shelves yet.

I'm confident that many in the blogosphere will take to LibraryThing quite easily, especially in view of the fact that LT identifies other folks who also catalogue similar books.

I've added a link to the sidebar. Meaning: I like it a lot.