Muslim Religious Freedom Movement Sparks Threats
An organized movement to allow Muslims to renounce their faith has prompted death threats and reportedly made its leader the most talked-about public figure in the Netherlands.
The campaign for religious freedom was launched yesterday, on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, by the Committee for Ex-Muslims. The committee’s founder, Ehsan Jami, a 22-year-old Dutch politician, has been forced into hiding by death threats and a recent attack, reports the London Times.
Similar groups have been created throughout Europe, and are perceived as leading a war on radical Islam, the Times writes. The movement has attracted interest from the British and German governments, which planned to send representatives to a planned launch event for the religious freedom campaign at The Hague yesterday.
“Sharia schools say that they will kill the ones who leave Islam. In the West people get threatened, thrown out of their family, beaten up,” Jami tells the newspaper. “In Islam you are born Muslim. You do not even choose to be Muslim. We want that to change, so that people are free to choose who they want to be and what they want to believe in.”
