“Fire is hot, water cold,
refreshingly cool is the breeze of morning;
By whom came this variety?
They were born of their own nature.

This also has been said by Brhaspati:
There is no heaven, no final liberation,
nor any soul in another world,
Nor do the actions of the four castes,
orders, or priesthoods produce any real effect.

If a beast slain as an offering to the dead
will itself go to heaven,
why does the sacrificer not straightway offer his father?

If offerings to the dead produce gratification
to those who have reached the land of the dead,
why the need to set out provisions
for travelers starting on this journey?
If our offering sacrifices here gratify beings in heaven,
why not make food offerings down below
to gratify those standing on housetops?

While life remains, let a man live happily,
let him feed on butter though he runs in debt;
When once the body becomes ashes,
how can it ever return again?

If he who departs from the body goes to another world,
why does he not come back again,
restless for love of his kinfolk?
It is only as a means of livelihood
that brahmins have established here
abundant ceremonies for the dead—
there is no other fruit anywhere.” = Charvaka Philosophy of India

I really am loathe to say this, but I feel I should distance myself from Ex-Muslims of the West for a bit. Now, I don’t mean to say that I’m going to ignore them or not fund them in the future for human rights causes, but the charm and euphoria of their social movement’s advancements on the grounds of Enlightenment values and Human Rights has not been consistent with their behavior and I have to also accept the fact that it really is my own fault and not theirs that I am distancing myself. I don’t put any blame on them; it was my own gullibility – probably inherited from my parents – that led me to take certain statements they made in the normalizing dissent tour to heart which I realize now was more talk than action. Please note that this doesn’t mean that I don’t support them or that I am calling them liars. I think it is more that . . . I had loftier expectations and wrongfully applied it to their social movement. It was not fair for me to do that to them. They don’t live to serve my expectations; they have their own goals. My own support for them has led me to conclude several dreadful facts. It is difficult to humanize Muslims and it is all their own fault; Ex-Muslims have triple the work ahead of them when trying to keep the humanizing aspect of their narrative since they obviously don’t want their own families to be harmed out of genuine compassion for Muslims. The recent case with China was just a string in a long line of examples of Muslims dehumanizing themselves on a global scale; 22 Countries opposed China’s concentration camps on Uyghur Muslims. Nearly all Western, except I think Turkey was among them. 33 supported China’s concentration camps and called it a benevolent humanitarian act. Nearly all of the countries supporting China’s concentration camps are Islamic countries. I really wanted so badly to believe that Ex-Muslims of the West arguing that dialogue is effective would be beneficial in changing the minds of Muslims in the West. Usually, unfortunately, the conversation from my own experience turns to why they think it is moral for adult men to have sex with 9-year olds because the Pedophile Prophet of Islam did it. To be fair, many who are confronted with the info I give them do almost immediately change their mind, so I guess they’re just not as vivid in my memory as the very arrogant ones who honestly believe their death cult is the truth of the universe. But still, there’s enough that it’s doubtful dialogue can make any meaningful headway to changing minds for a long-term game if people continue to ask neutral or softer questions. However, there is a pernicious reason within the Western Ex-Muslim crowd for why their movement against Islamism might honestly fail, even in the West but almost definitely globally except for people who are specifically seeking to leave foreign countries for their own safety.

This is probably going to be one of my harshest criticisms. I’m not even sure if I should broach it, to be honest. But, I am under the opinion, and I hope that I am wrong, that the Ex-Muslim movement is either in the process of failing or is spectacularly failing against Islamism and that, if anything, Islamism has either won or is in the process of winning. Moreover, it is entirely the fault of Western Ex-Muslims albeit with the exception of Ridvan Aydemir, the Apostate Prophet. He’s had the biggest impact on changing minds and I think I know why. Other Western Ex-Muslims aren’t as prominent and don’t make as much of an impact at all for a few compelling reasons.

1. Ridvan sticks to Islam as his critique. He doesn’t care about other religions and is completely fine with all other religions. He sees them as peaceful.

Now, other Western Ex-Muslims should reasonably expect this, but the level of difference in fanbase is shockingly high even accounting for that. It isn’t just Ridvan’s support for any religion besides Islam and it isn’t purely because of the position of Anti-Theism by most other Western Ex-Muslims. This is going be a gut punch but… I honestly wouldn’t be saying this if I didn’t try for months to connect, give the credible sources, and speak on this issue for months only to be ignored by the Western Ex-Muslim crowd. And to be clear, the Eastern Ex-Muslim crowd whom I’ve spoken with in private does seem to agree with me on this….

2. Western Ex-Muslims aren’t as sincere about defending human rights for all people as they seem to believe about themselves.

To be clear, they defend contemporary human rights abuses happening now, but historic human rights abuses are categorically ignored. The only ones they oppose are the ones highlighted and supported by Western news media and Western social norms and this is a death sentence for their movement. So for example, they will condemn the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide, because that follows the Cultural imperialist script as to what must be condemned as far as historic abuses. They also feel adamant about condemning it because of their own cultural backgrounds in order to rectify abuses that were part of the culture they come from. That’s fine, of course. and it is wonderful that they work to do that but when it comes to Western Imperialist genocides of the Middle East, India, and probably others…. They laugh it off as unimportant.

To be sure, many of them come from foreign backgrounds and became naturalized citizens of Western countries, perhaps they feel grateful as an immigrant turned citizen to the country that let them be who they are and don’t want to appear as if they despise the countries they recognize as homes and who treat them incredibly well. But categorically ignoring this issue is a death sentence because the Islamists know about this history too and know exactly how to convincingly change minds in those countries for people who don’t share the same gratitude and have no reason for such gratitude. This is the same target audience and Ridvan is able to make more headway, because he’s not trivializing Western imperialist genocides like they largely are. There’s enough intelligent scholars in their own countries supportive of a nationalist image who can point to credible sources that make it unambiguously clear that the era of Western Imperialism was a mass death toll for all other countries in the world that were under their control.

Western Ex-Muslims go through a lot. They fear being killed by their families, they don’t want to be converted after just going through possibly being nearly murdered, tortured, or ex-communicated from their families because of fairytale bullshit which is why people shouldn’t even bother trying to convert them. It’s just adding salt to the wound of having been born into the worst religious cult in human history. Armin Navabi, for instance, couldn’t even visit his own mother when she was getting a breast cancer therapy because Iran’s government would hang him for apostasy and so he’ll probably never be able to see his mother face-to-face again in his lifetime. He had to flee Iran or he would have surely been hanged and he devotes himself to various human rights causes for atheism out of compassion for fellow atheists. He really does work hard towards helping others. When listening to his commentary when the topic of Iran is brought up, it is clear that he doesn’t expect to ever be able to set foot their again until – at best- when he is of very old age in his 70s or 80s, but he’s skeptical of even that. Many people from Ex-Muslims of North America have their own harrowing stories that are undoubtedly similar even in the context of living in the United States and fearing their own families will kill them. They really do need help and they have every reason to hate all religions. It’s obvious that they need help and it is unfair to demand they conform to the opinions of Conservative Christians, or any Hindus, or any neutral opinion on Islam when their own lives have already been put in danger due to religion. They live with it and know every day that there could honestly be someone, even in the West, out to target and murder them, especially if Islamism becomes normalized in the West. The struggle against Islam is literally the struggle for their right to exist.

Nonetheless, this doesn’t excuse Western Ex-Muslim activists behavior towards Hindus or for trivializing the genocides perpetuated by the countries they feel grateful to live in. Ali Rizvi and Armin Navabi are feeding into the Islamist narrative in India, categorically ignoring Islamic violence against Hindus unless Hindus are killed, and treating Hindus like shit by ignoring temple destructions or when “Jai Shri Ram” narratives are disproven after one anecdotal account. I’ve distanced myself since then. I tried for 7 months to give them credible sources of counter information on various topics related to violence against Hindus. However, they honestly only target and retweet-to-respond to the dumbest comments and not the most intelligent counterarguments. The same goes for Ex-Muslims of North America. Now, to be fair, Sarah Haider and Muhammad Syed, the Co-founders of Ex-MNA, do respond to me when they can, and I’m sure it is under the pressure of their approximately 80 thousand and 20 thousand fans respectively, tweeting them every day. But when their organization’s Twitter account keeps posting misinformation from Pakistan about Indian intellectual history despite my taking the time to rebut the arguments for 7 months, never receiving a dialogue of exchange about the topic on either Facebook or Twitter (the only time the organization’s account ever tried a rebuttal was over India’s treatment of Rohingya Muslims which I countered with the Rohingya Muslim militants committing genocide against Hindus in Myanmar); I honestly feel like I’ve just been talking to a brickwall for 7 months and that their message of being willing to change their views was a complete lie. Their actions show that they’ve set their views on the Western context of science and the cultural hegemony of the West. This might also be why I haven’t seen Hiba Khrist being active since she seemed to oppose the idea of cultural hegemony in her portion of the discussion in the first ever Ex-MNA video on Youtube. When Armin began espousing that Hindu intellectual traditions weren’t valid, I let it go because of his background and I understood that his perspective may not ever allow him to accept the founding principle of Sanatana Dharma. When he began stating that “Hindu nationalists” were “whining” and the general negative news articles on Dharmic intellectual traditions also seemed to be continuing from Ex-MNA without ever engaging in any criticism, it became obvious to me that they were either insincere to Hindus or to themselves about engaging in honest dialogue over issues and being willing to change their minds. They never once checked out the sources that I specifically shared with them and I was honestly one of Ex-MNA’s most consistent financial backers. I gave $50 a month or more over the process of 10 months by their account. I understand that Armin is only a speaker and I wouldn’t hold Ex-MNA to account if it was just his opinion, but neither him nor Ex-MNA seemed to be honest about engaging in dialogue and being open to changing their views. When Armin said that some cultures are superior to others and Ex-MNA continued trucking along with anti-Hindu bigotry and not criticism of Hindu theology, I decided I had the wrong impression of them all along. I asked Eastern Ex-Muslims and their friends about this and they basically told me that I expected too much; I expected purely rational people without flaws when ascertaining facts about the world and that I wasn’t being realistic. Eastern Ex-Muslims are correct and I accepted their answer as the truth after reflecting on what they told me. For instance, Armin and Ali Rizvi didn’t respond to my fact-checks, to my asking Rizvi about why the idea of Hindu Atheists is ridiculous when he calls himself an Atheist Muslim, and it is clear Armin doesn’t do research into the British genocides of India. He doesn’t even seem to know that the genocides are recognized by both major political parties and not solely the BJP as he seems to imply; in fact, it was argued in a debate with the British parliament by Shashi Tharoor, a politician from the Indian National Congress Party who was publicly supported by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his debate. Tharoor did his own fact-finding research which has been backed-up by US academic scholars who did their own independent research on the same topic. For Armin to laugh it off as BJP supporters whining is sheer ignorance. Most importantly, how can Ex-Muslims of the West claim to be about Human Rights and Enlightenment Values… while ignoring the historic human rights abuses by the West on the rest of the world? In China alone, the death toll of Western squabbling was approximately 29.2 million, during the Boxer rebellion the Western soldiers slaughtered men and raped women and little girls, and the West has never formally recognized or apologized for these horrific abuses while synonymously highlighting Japan’s historic abuses for the Rape of Nanking which Japan has at least admitted in their textbooks unlike the West.

I have a counterview to Armin’s support for cultural hegemony. Each culture has problems which the Western mainstream news media repeatedly spreads information about in support of xenophobia and hatred of others, but they work to improve themselves even if slowly and such improvements never get any attention in the Western mainstream media. To give a few examples of the cultures in India, rapists who take advantage of the weak police force in India are arrested and jailed under the BJP government, the Modi government has run a program for children to call a special number if they ever feel they’re in danger of violence including sexual violence, and the Modi government has worked to stamp out corruption more thoroughly than the Indian National Congress party ever has in recent history, but all the Western mainstream media portrays is an attempt to conflate all right-leaning politicians of other countries to the theatrics of Donald Trump which might be why they were completely wrong in their claims about the Modi government being close to losing the election in 2019 since Modi’s government was so favorable by the Indian people because of all the positives he was doing which the Western mainstream media steadfastly refused to report, it ended-up destroying the Western mainstream media’s credibility internationally. This shouldn’t come as a surprise; the Western mainstream media has an incestuous relationship with despotic, Islamist countries like Saudi Arabia and not even the death of Jamal Khashoggi has changed that since the Western mainstream media doesn’t care that he was killed so long as they get generous donations and grants from despotic Islamic regimes.

Comparing Islam to anything inevitably leads to using the contrast principle to argue how our culture is superior to the hateful ideology of a 7th century pedophilic and illiterate warlord by emphasizing the positive attributes of our own culture, but this is used to justify violence because Islamic “culture” is a total failure filled with violence and idiocy that only creates negative reciprocal conditions in response to its own Islamic barbarity. To put it simply, when any culture is contrasted with Islam, that culture will look superior and often this contrast is utilized to curtail positive components of their own culture and to further ignore reciprocal violence between Islamist activists and people purporting to protect their own culture by dismantling its positives to “fight” Islamism; it degrades the intellectual and cultural progress to compare any other culture to Islamic “culture” because it is a cult of death and not a culture. Whether it is Dharmic culture, Chinese culture, Iranian culture, Japanese culture, South Korean culture, the culture of enlightenment values in the West, or Jewish and Christian culture; when you make comparisons in support of the superiority of your own culture to justify reciprocal violence by dismantling positive qualities such as freedoms or practices that are distinct from Islam then you run the risk of degrading your culture and fomenting the rise of Islamism. The only way to truly dismantle Islamism is by directly criticizing it and explicitly explaining why Islam is false. Focusing on comparing beautiful, multifaceted, and intellectual cultures with the barbaric ideology of Islam, which is quite honestly just a glorified cult of personality for a pedophilic warlord that has vandalized minds for 1400 years, is to do a monumental disservice to all cultures. Each of these other cultures, and quite frankly all non-Islamic cultures, have beautiful poetry, music, intriguing mythical stories, unique forms of artistic endeavors, and interesting cultural customs that are absent misogynistic and other discriminatory practices that can be shared to all who have a genuine interest and for which the people of those cultures can be proud of. Indeed, despite what some readers may think due to the purpose of the book I’ve been writing and my arguments in favor of Anti-theism, I have come to enjoy reading the ancient stories from the stories of Gilgamesh to Zoroastrian tales, listening to wonderful ancient and contemporary music of different cultures from ancient Ireland to ancient Native American tunes to listening to modern Japanese rock music and anime overtures, and reading ancient intellectual works like the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, Samkhya-Karika by an unknown disciple of the Samkhya branch of Vedic thought in Hinduism after Kapila wrote the earlier portion, and Machiavelli’s The Prince. All of these works are as fascinating and valuable to me as the modern psychology books I’m an avid reader of and my enjoyment of all these different intellectual and artistic histories is just a natural result of living in the wonderful Secular Republic of the US with a culture that supports Free Speech more than any other culture in the world. I get to enjoy all of it because of that. There’s intelligence, compassion, and beauty in all of them but people just don’t care or they are too incurious to even look. No other culture is as bad as Islam, for every terrible thing, there’s millions of positive points to them.

So please, stop comparing all of these wondrous societies and cultures to the cesspit that is Islam and Islamic civilizations. It honestly isn’t the same; it isn’t merely the West that is intellectually superior to Islam. It is every culture that is intellectually superior to Islam. To think it is only the West and to compare other cultures to Islamic cultures is Western hubris.