Short description:

This book offers a contemporary, cross-cultural look at non-belief and non-religion in Islam. Providing historical, conceptual, statistical, and ethnographic data on non-believers from Morocco to Egypt, Turkey, and Bangladesh, it explores the unique nature and challenges of non-religion for Muslims.

Long description:

Nonbelievers, Apostates, and Atheists in the Muslim World offers a contemporary, cross-cultural look at nonbelief and nonreligion in Islam. Providing historical, conceptual, statistical, and ethnographic data on nonbelievers from Morocco to Egypt, Turkey, and Bangladesh, it explores the unique nature and challenges of nonreligion for Muslims.

It includes 11 chapters by experts on nonbelief, nonreligion, and atheism in an array of Muslim-majority countries. The book features multiple disciplines and offers both ethnographic and statistical information on this important, growing, but neglected population. It explores the unique nature of nonreligion in Islam, illustrating that nonbelief is specific to a particular religious tradition. It also examines how ex-Muslims navigate complexities and dangers of their societies?especially for women?and how nonbelief and nonreligion do not equate to atheism or the total repudiation of religion or of Muslim identity.

This book is an outstanding resource for scholars and students of nonbelief, atheism, secularism, religion, and contemporary Islam.

Chapters 4 and 5 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license

Table of Contents:

Introduction: On Being a Nonbeliever in a Muslim Society Jack David Eller  1. Patterns of Disbelief: Anti-Religious Discourse in the Heartlands of Islam, Past and Present Brian Whitaker  2. Mapping the Landscape of Non-belief, Freethinking and Secular Muslimness in the Arab World Sebastian Elsässer  3. Once a Muslim, always a Muslim? Lena Richter  4. A Critical Juncture? Atheism in Bangladesh and its (Dis)connections Mascha Schulz  5. The Secular-Religious Divide in Iran: An Analysis of GAMAAN?s Online Surveys Pooyan Tamimi Arab and Ammar Maleki  6. The Cognitive Landslide: Pathways of Egyptian Atheists Anthon Jackson  7. Impious Camouflage: Egyptian Atheists Posing as Negligent Muslims Wael Al-Soukkary  8. Impoliteness and Religionormativity: Arab Atheists on Talk Shows Natalie Khazaal  9. Shoe-ing the Atheist: Emotional Responses towards Nonreligion in Egypt Karin van Nieuwkerk  10. Leaving a Home that Won?t Leave Her: A M?tic Understanding of Ex-Muslim Women?s Experiences  Dania Ammar  11. Did Political Islam Fail? The Discursive Construction of Atheism and Nonreligion in Turkey  Pierre Hecker  Conclusion Natalie Khazaal  Index