Where Are the Ex-Muslims?

In 1990, there were about 10-12 million Muslims in Western countries.

Today, that number is more than 35 million. That’s almost as big as the population of Saudi Arabia. In some countries, like France and Germany, Muslims make up about 10 percent and 6 percent of the population respectively.

Needless to say, this is a very young population. Most of them are the first generation of Muslims to be born into the West, attend schools in the West, and to start their adult lives in the West.

Now here’s a question to ponder: how many of these 35+ million Muslims actually practice Islam? How many believe in its tenets? How many — to use the appropriate term — actually are Mu’min?

This kind of thing is hard to measure. Pew says that the “retention rate” among Muslims in the U.S. to be 77 percent, meaning that about 3 in 4 people raised as Muslims remain Muslims. That means that 1 in 4 don’t consider themselves Muslims any more. If true, that’s huge. How many children of Muslim households in Sweden, or France, or the UK, think that the whole business of revelation doesn’t make much sense?1 How many think it, but can’t act on it? This is important, because mainstream Islam is far more strict about this stuff than the mainstream in Christianity and Judaism.

It’s only if you’re lucky, as I am, that it doesn’t matter. I was raised Muslim, went through a few existential phases in my late teens and mid-20s, and eventually lapsed entirely. My extended family is fairly religious, but they respect me and I respect them, and it’s fine. Islam’s moral authority is also waning in my native Turkey, so it’s much less of an issue compared to when I was younger. This means that, like many Jews and Christians, I can hang on to the cultural aspects of my heritage without having it run my life.

For many people though, it’s not that easy. If — for whatever reason — they find that the faith isn’t for them, there are serious consequences. When they skip prayers, find excuses to avoid fasting during Ramadan, and it’s becoming clear that their focus is shifting to the outside world, their relatives notice. Their friends and community elders step in. It can turn into a major crisis.

I thought of all this as I read The Apostates: When Muslims Leave Islam, by Simon Cottee, who talks to some three dozen “Ex-Muslims,” mostly in the UK. The book came out in 2015, and most of the people he talks to struggled with their faith in the 2000s, so right in the middle of the “New Atheists” and the “War on Terror” years. They are mostly second generation kids with roots in the Indian Subcontinent or the Maghreb. There are a lot of great quotes dispersed throughout the text.

Farhad, for example, ponders the Quranic concept of predestination:

The very first thing that got me thinking was, why do I get to go to heaven for simply being born a Muslim? Why does a mere accident of birth dictate one’s destiny? Why do people not ‘lucky’ enough to have been born Muslim deserve to go to hell simply because they were not born Muslim? I always thought that was really unjust.

I always wondered about that too. It’s really the abstract concept of justice, derived from the Abrahamic tradition, applied back on itself.

Or there are a few priceless pages of Aisha, an 18-year old, writing long email dispatches from Hajj (the obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca) just as she’s starting to doubt the entire religion. I read it with a London accent in my head:

wa alaykum as salaam ……remember when i said either i come back better or more astray…being here has had no effect on my heart i didn’t even cry when i saw the ka’bah like most people do my Nafs [the ‘self’ in Islamic self-control] has been attacking me soooo much since i got here and ive been having all kinds of thoughts about wearing abaya and stuff, taking photos, i don’t know what i want anymore. one min i wannna do sin but i remember the hereafter only have 2 choices dnt think im strong enough as a person. im soo jealous of my stepmum she is always cryin!!!!!!!! 24/7 she has been taking advantage of this trip soo much she does have the upper hand of being a native arabic speaker tho ……

It goes on like that for quite some time. I actually did Umrah during my doubting phase, took similarly hilarious notes into my notebook at the time.

Almost all of the people Cottee interviews have severe doubts about telling their families, and if they do, it’s rough. Some of them tell one or both parents, then take back their apostasy and pretend to have returned to the “true path” until they’re able to move away. One kid gets flown to Pakistan and made to sit through an exorcism. It turns out that terms from the gay community, like being “in the closet” and “coming out” are used pretty regularly in these circles.

So where do “closeted” “ex-Muslims” gather? Where do they let it all out?

Online of course.

There is a deep history of various online forums, but for simplicity’s sake, I’m going to focus on Reddit, because that’s the most recent incarnation of the ex-Muslim meeting spot, and the one I’ve been stalking for the better part of a year now.2 The r/exmuslim subreddit has 140K weekly visitors and 9.8K weekly contributors. It was created in 2010, and is pretty well maintained, with links to resources (including to suicide hotlines), arrange meetups, and a megathread called “Exmuslim Guide to living in the closet and out” that offers some practical information and advice.

I thought it was telling that the “check out our friends” section includes links to the subreddit for ex-Mormons and ex-Jehova’s Witnesses, both of which are also pretty sizable. Apparently these are called “high-control religious environments” (HCREs).

There are two points I want to make about this.

First, note the categories involved. In Christianity, HCREs are around the fringes (your JWs, Old Order Amish, LDS). In Judaism, I’d guess that the HCREs are more prevalent and growing (Hassidic Jews, etc.), but still fairly fringe. With Muslims in the West, the “high-control” environment isn’t just the orthodox groups and cults on the edges of the religion, but arguably the mainstream. So are most Muslim communities in the West properly HCREs? Probably not. Is it very common for Muslim communities to be “high control”? Probably.

Second, mainstream liberal culture valorizes people who make it out of HCREs, but it focuses on Christianity and Judaism, and ignores ex-Muslims entirely.

If you look at the series and documentaries that Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Apple TV, etc. have produced in the last 15 years, Christian-adjacent HCREs easily lead with 12-15 major titles, like The Family (Netflix), Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey (FLDS), Escaping Twin Flames, Dancing for the Devil, Shiny Happy People (Amazon — IBLP/Duggars), Waco: American Apocalypse, The Way Down (HBO), Pray Away (Netflix, ex-gay ministries), Jesus Camp (which came out 2006, but is still being streamed). Jewish (Haredi/Hasidic) are a second, with 4-5 major titles, including One of Us (Netflix, 2017), Unorthodox (Netflix, 2020), My Unorthodox Life (Netflix, 2021, two seasons), Shtisel (Netflix-distributed, sympathetic insider view, and actually very interesting to Muslims, I find).

Productions about Muslim-adjacent HCREs? Zero.

There are a handful of low-budget documentaries about ex-Muslims, like Islam’s Non-Believers (ITV Exposure, 2016), which was directed by Deeyah Khan, and follows Maryam Namazie’s Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB). In the same year, VICE News did Rescuing Ex-Muslims: Leaving Islam (2016), a short following Imtiaz Shams of Faith to Faithless, the UK group that runs “coming out” events on campuses. Beyond that, Ex-Muslims of North America produces its own mini-documentaries, but that’s self-representation on their YouTube channel (a jolly guy in his car going “I had bacon today. It was good. You should try it!” Bless you jolly guy.)

There are some high-budget shows that get close to depicting ex-Muslims. Hala (Apple TV, 2019) is the story of a Pakistani-American teenager who goes through a crisis of faith. The protagonist in Ramy (Hulu, 2019) goes through doubt, but manages to stay in. I loved Netflix’s Mo (2022-2025) but there’s no doubt there, and certainly no HCRE dimension.3 Disgraced is a play that premiered in 2012, and has an apostate protagonist, and got the Pulitzer prize in 2013. But that’s theater, not mass culture, and though I haven’t seen it, I consider Ayad Akhtar’s work to be post-9/11, War-on-terror culture. I read his American Dervish and did not find the characters convincing.

So to sum up, it’s not like there isn’t Muslim representation in mainstream Western culture. There is. And it’s no longer just terrorists. There is genuine complexity, and that’s great, but it doesn’t get into the high-control aspects of the religion, especially not in a way that has a cultural impact. Unorthodox was Netflix's most-watched limited series in several countries, while Satmar Hasidim — the sect it portrays — number maybe 100K worldwide. Western Muslims (let’s be modest) number 35 million+, and there’s zero equivalent. We could also go into “representation” of the LGBT community in high-level productions of this kind, and the picture would be even starker.

Why is there so little love for ex-Muslims? Part of it is because this population is very new. It takes a substantial group of liberal, middle class, “creative” types who can relate to the plight of the people who remain in the “high control” environment. Jews famously have many generations of that, while for Muslims, it’s still relatively thin.

Another part of it is because the politics is very difficult on both sides. We live in polarized times, and most ex-Muslims are wandering in the no-man’s land in between the poles.

On the political right, ex-Muslims are treated as vindication for the argument that Islam is inherently evil and dilutes the civilizational purity of the West. It also doesn’t help that many popular “Apostates” carry the banner of the political right. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, perhaps the best-known ex-Muslim, has long fought in the trenches of the European and American culture wars. Rıdvan Aydemir, a Germany-born Turk who goes by the name of “Apostate Prophet,” recently broke into the mainstream when he spoke at Turning Point USA, the political organization founded by the late Charlie Kirk. Both are culture warriors who were so fierce in their anti-Islamic stance that atheism just didn’t cut it for them, and they eventually converted to Christianity.

I should also be clear that there is a lot of reactionary, anti-Muslim stuff on the ex-Muslim internet. As Cottee also points out in his book, a lot of people who leave Islam go through a phase in which they feel the need to insult and belittle the religion. As far as I can see — and Cottee’s book substantiates this to some extent — most of them grow out of it and develop a more balanced approach. The ex-Muslim subreddit, for example, specifically states “All are welcome but if you're here because of your hate for Muslims as a people then this is NOT the subreddit for you.” Still, being an “ex-Muslim” is always going to lean a bit anti-Islam, which is useful to right-wing agitators in the West.

Among liberals and the left in Western countries, meanwhile, the issue just doesn’t exist. They code Muslims as victims, an embattled religious minority, and anything that doesn’t neatly slot into that narrative just falls away from their agenda. If you went to elite politicians or TV producers with the stories of ex-Muslims, they might acknowledge that it’s an issue, but my guess is that they wouldn’t like the politics of it. This is probably why there isn’t any high-level cultural production on ex-Muslims.

Ironically, many of the ex-Muslim institutions were founded from the left. Maryam Namazie, who founded CEMB in 2007, was a longtime activist in the Worker-communist Party of Iran. Imtiaz Shams and Aliyah Saleem, who co-founded Faith to Faithless in 2015, are part of Humanists UK, and also help JWs, Haredim, and other Christian and Jewish-adjacent groups. Muhammad Syed and Sarah Haider of Ex-Muslims of North America are also clearly left/liberal leaning, though they have been let down by the left repeatedly. On a recent podcast, Muhammed Syed cited someone who said that “Republicans are wrong about Muslims and Democrats are wrong about Islam.” That sounds right to me.

So while the right has captured the loudest “Apostates” (who tend to reach for Christianity), the movement was really built by leftist Humanists.

I’ll leave things here for now.

I’ll be thinking more about the topic, and writing about it here. If you’d like to support my work, please consider taking out a paid subscription.