The Case for Criticizing Islam Without Hating Muslims

Why liberal societies must protect people, not ideas, from criticism

Every tradition begins somewhere. Every religion, moral code, legal system, and political identity emerges from a particular language, place, history, memory, fear, victory, defeat, and symbolic world. There is nothing wrong with that. Human beings do not begin from nowhere. We begin from families, cultures, stories, rituals, and inherited explanations.

A local rule may once have helped a community solve a problem. A taboo may once have organized social life. A religious command may once have made sense inside a particular historical world. But when such rules are declared final, sacred, universal, and beyond criticism, they become something else entirely.

It can happen in any ideology, political movement, or national myth. It happens whenever a system begins to say: “You may ask questions inside the framework, but you may not question the framework itself.” In some political movements, disagreement is dismissed as false consciousness. In some nationalist movements, criticism is treated as treason. In some religious systems, doubt is treated not as a normal human experience but as sin, corruption, temptation, or rebellion. The common feature here is not the content of the belief, but rather the protection of the belief from correction.

The philosopher Karl Popper argued that knowledge grows through “conjecture and refutation.” We make guesses about the world, test them, find errors, and replace weaker explanations with better ones. A healthy society is one that allows this process to happen peacefully. Bad laws can be changed, failed policies can be reversed, cruel customs can be improved, scientific theories can be revised, leaders can be replaced, and sacred claims can be challenged. Such societies are not perfect, but they have a way to notice and correct their errors.

Among people concerned about Islamism, jihadism, blasphemy and apostasy laws, women’s rights, and free speech, a difficult debate has emerged.

Among people concerned about Islamism, jihadism, blasphemy and apostasy laws, women’s rights, and free speech, a difficult debate has emerged. Some argue that the problem is Islam itself and that liberal societies must become much more confrontational toward Muslim communities. Others insist that any serious criticism of Islam is dangerous, bigoted, or socially irresponsible, and that the safest approach is to avoid the subject except in the most cautious language. I think both positions are mistaken.

The first risks confusing people with doctrines. That is morally wrong and intellectually lazy. A Muslim is a human being, not a walking embodiment of every doctrine, ruling, historical crime, or political movement associated with Islam. Muslims are individuals: believers, doubters, reformers, secular people, mystics, liberals, conservatives, feminists, dissidents, ex-Muslims, immigrants, citizens, neighbors, colleagues, parents, and children. No person should be treated as if he or she were identical with a religious system.

A liberal society must be able to do two things at once: protect Muslims from hatred and discrimination, and protect criticism of Islam from intimidation.

The second position makes a different mistake. It confuses compassion for people with immunity for ideas. It assumes that, because Muslims are often sensitive to prejudice and discrimination, Islam as a doctrine or political force must be protected from serious criticism. This is also wrong. In fact, it is dangerous. Liberal societies exist precisely because powerful ideas—religious, political, academic, nationalist, or moral—can be criticized without people being persecuted.

The problem, then, is not whether Muslims should be protected. They should be. The problem is whether Islamic doctrines, institutions, and political movements should be protected from criticism. They should not be.

A liberal society must be able to do two things at once: protect Muslims from hatred and discrimination, and protect criticism of Islam from intimidation, censorship, and accusations of bigotry when the criticism is legitimate. Indeed, some systems of ideas survive by making criticism of themselves dangerous.

The Difference Between a Person and a Doctrine

A Muslim is a person. Islam is a religion. Islamism is a political project. Islamic law is a legal tradition. Jihadism is a militant interpretation and movement. These concepts overlap historically and doctrinally, but they are not the same thing.

A Muslim child in Birmingham, Erbil, Cairo, Malmö, Lahore, or Dearborn is not responsible for the classical law of apostasy. A Muslim woman wearing a headscarf is not responsible for the Islamic State. A Muslim doctor, taxi driver, teacher, student, refugee, shopkeeper, or neighbor is not a representative sample of every doctrine ever defended in Islamic history. People are not doctrines.

Ideas may be criticized, mocked, tested, historicized, rejected, reformed, or abandoned. They do not have rights, feelings, nor do they deserve dignity.

At the same time, doctrines are not people. People have rights. Ideas have consequences. Ideas may be criticized, mocked, tested, historicized, rejected, reformed, or abandoned. They do not have rights, feelings, nor do they deserve dignity.

This distinction is the only way to discuss the issue honestly. That means protecting Muslims from discrimination, violence, collective suspicion, and dehumanization. It also means protecting ex-Muslims, reformers, dissidents, secular Muslims, women, gay people, artists, writers, and ordinary believers who wish to question inherited authority. And, it also means unequivocally rejecting blasphemy laws, community and family intimidation, or state power deciding what may or may not be said.

How Ideas Protect Themselves

Why do some bad ideas survive for centuries? An easy answer is that people are ignorant. I do not think this is adequate.

Many closed systems of thought or belief are intellectually sophisticated.

Many closed systems of thought or belief are intellectually sophisticated. They can produce scholarship, law, poetry, architecture, ritual, administration, and moral seriousness. In an open system of thought, the human intellect can be used to find errors, while in a closed system, intelligence is deployed to protect the inherited pattern. This is why closed systems of thought and societies where they operate do produce clever lawyers, theologians, scholars, officials, and apologists. But the cleverness is directed toward preservation rather than correction of falsity or negative consequences. People may argue endlessly about details while the foundations remain untouchable.

That is exactly why the survival of a certain idea or mythology does not prove its truth. A belief may survive because it explains reality well. But it may also survive because it controls law, family honor, social belonging, education, punishment, or fear. A system may continue because it made criticism dangerous, rather than because it actually stands up to scrutiny.

Islam as a Test Case

Islam is not the only closed system of thought, but it is followed by nearly two billion people and so it is a major test case because some of its classical and contemporary forms contain powerful mechanisms for protecting doctrine from criticism.

Consider apostasy. In liberal society, leaving a religion is now a basic right. A person may convert from Christianity to Judaism, or from atheism to Christianity, or from Judaism to Christianity, or from Hinduism to Buddhism, or, even, from belief to lack of belief.

Yet apostasy remains criminalized in a number of Muslim-majority countries and socially dangerous in many communities even where it is not legally punished. Pew Research Center found that, as of 2019, twenty-two countries and territories had laws against apostasy. Humanists International lists Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen among countries where apostasy may be punishable by death in law or under sharia-based provisions. The Library of Congress has also documented apostasy provisions in selected jurisdictions, including Mauritania, Qatar, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Brunei, and others.

The Qur’an contains passages that reformers often cite against religious coercion, including “there is no compulsion in religion.” But classical apostasy law did not rest only on Qur’anic passages. It also drew heavily on hadith, juristic reasoning, and the fusion of religion with political order. A widely cited hadith found in Sahih al-Bukhari states: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.” Similar directives appear elsewhere in the hadiths. Islamic jurists historically debated conditions, procedure, repentance, gender, political rebellion, and the relation between apostasy and treason against the religious-political order. Modern reformers rightly argue that coercion in religion contradicts other Islamic materials and should be rejected. But the existence of such reformist arguments proves the point: the tradition contains a real contest over whether exit is protected conscience or punishable betrayal.¹

Nor is the danger confined to states that formally criminalize apostasy. In liberal democracies, leaving Islam is legal, yet ex-Muslims and public critics can still face family pressure, ostracism, threats, or violence. Ayaan Hirsi Ali lived under threat after her criticism of Islamic doctrine and her collaboration with Theo van Gogh, who himself was assassinated, and she has had to live with personal security issues ever since. Ex-Muslim organizations in Britain and elsewhere have long documented intimidation faced by apostates and dissenters. Dutch writer Lale Gül, who wrote about breaking away from a strict Muslim family environment, reportedly fled to a safe house after public backlash and has continued to face threats. While these cases do not represent all Muslims, they show that apostasy taboos can operate socially even when the law formally protects exit.²

Many Muslims reject coercion in religion. Good. That is exactly the kind of criticism and reform that open societies should protect.

Some modern reformers dispute apostasy punishment, and many Muslims reject coercion in religion. Good. That is exactly the kind of criticism and reform that open societies should protect. But the existence of humane and flexible Muslims does not remove the problem of doctrines that make criticism dangerous.

We should not pretend the problem is imaginary. A doctrine that threatens people for leaving protects itself from correction. It makes the cost of disagreement existential. The same is true of blasphemy norms. If criticism, satire, or irreverent discussion of sacred figures can lead to violence, imprisonment, censorship, or social intimidation, the doctrine has acquired a shield against criticism.

Salman Rushdie’s case is the most famous modern example. After the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988, the following year Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie and those involved in publishing the book to be killed. The perceived offense was literary blasphemy against Islamic sacred history. The result was decades of hiding, threats against translators and publishers, and finally the 2022 attack in New York in which Rushdie was gravely wounded and lost his eye.

Theo van Gogh was murdered in Amsterdam in 2004 after making Submission, a short film written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali that criticized the treatment of women under Islamic doctrine and depicted Qur’anic verses on women’s bodies. His killer, Mohammed Bouyeri, shot and stabbed him in public and left a letter pinned to his body threatening Hirsi Ali and invoking jihad against unbelievers. The perceived offense was not ordinary political disagreement; it was public criticism of Islam, sexuality, women, and scriptural authority.

Charlie Hebdo was attacked in Paris in January 2015 after years of publishing satirical cartoons, including cartoons of Muhammad. Two gunmen killed twelve people and wounded others at the magazine’s office. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility, and the attackers themselves linked the murders to punishment for insulting the Prophet. The perceived wrongdoing was satire; the punishment was mass murder.

The perceived offense was pedagogical discussion of blasphemy and free expression; the result was murder.

Samuel Paty, a French teacher, was beheaded in 2020 after showing Muhammad cartoons during a lesson on freedom of expression. An inflammatory online campaign helped identify him as a target. His killer was an Islamist extremist, and later trials examined the role of people who helped generate the climate that led to the attack. Again, the perceived offense was pedagogical discussion of blasphemy and free expression; the result was murder.

These events are not representative of all Muslims. They are not evidence that Muslims as people are dangerous. But they are evidence that blasphemy norms can operate as extremely dangerous anti-criticism devices. Do all Muslims enforce these norms? Again, they do not. Rather, the central question is: What happens to criticism and open debate when enough people believe such norms are sacred?

The doctrine does not need unanimous support. All it needs to sustain is enough fear to change people’s behavior.

The answer is obvious. People become afraid. Publishers hesitate. Teachers self-censor. Artists avoid certain subjects. Police advise caution. Politicians speak in euphemisms. Journalists become careful not only because of law but because of risk. The doctrine does not need unanimous support. All it needs to sustain is enough fear to change people’s behavior.

Most Politicians and Analysts Get Islamist Violence Wrong

Many secular analysts try to explain Islamist violence or religious extremism entirely through poverty, racism, colonialism, foreign policy, humiliation, alienation, or social exclusion. These factors can matter a great deal. A young man who feels lost, angry, humiliated, or excluded may become more vulnerable to recruitment. Wars and failed states create openings for extremist movements. Discrimination can fuel resentment. Foreign policy disasters can radicalize people. But material conditions do not explain the specific content of the ideology.

Poverty does not by itself explain punishment for apostasy. Alienation does not by itself explain martyrdom theology. Colonialism does not by itself explain blasphemy violence. Racism does not by itself explain why some preachers describe offensive jihad as a standing religious category. Geopolitical grievance does not explain why doubt may be described as satanic whispering or why paradise may be used as a reward for dying in battle. Material conditions may explain why someone is vulnerable to a totalizing message, but they don’t explain why that message has this particular shape.

Secular people are sometimes very good at understanding economics, trauma, discrimination, and politics, but very bad at believing that theology can move people.

Imagine a lonely teenager in a European city. He may be alienated, angry, or searching for meaning. But alienation alone does not tell him that the world is divided between belief and unbelief, that martyrdom brings paradise, that apostates deserve punishment, that women must be controlled, or that restoring a caliphate is a sacred duty. Those ideas come from somewhere. They are transmitted by texts, preachers, networks, online videos, institutions, family expectations, and political movements. They have a history and very specific content, and to ignore their content is not compassionate. It is bad analysis.

Secular people are sometimes very good at understanding economics, trauma, discrimination, and politics, but very bad at believing that theology can move people. When a jihadist says he is acting for God, paradise, the ummah, or sharia, the secular analyst often translates this into something more familiar: unemployment, Western foreign policy, masculinity crisis, or social alienation. But ideas matter. Bad ideas matter, too, and sacred bad ideas matter even more.

Jihad as a Transmission Engine

One of my most controversial arguments concerns jihad. The word has many meanings. Many Muslims understand jihad as personal striving, moral discipline, self-defense, or spiritual struggle. Those meanings exist and should not be erased.

But it is also historically false to pretend that jihad has only ever meant inward spiritual effort. In classical Islamic law and political history, military jihad was a recognized category. It was debated, regulated, limited and expanded, interpreted, and sometimes suspended, but it is not a modern extremist invention. Modern jihadists do not create their entire worldview from nothing. They reactivate categories available within the tradition, often in brutal and selective ways.

Jihad classifies the world, defines enemies, promises reward, and lowers the fear of death.

Such doctrines become especially powerful when they turn belief into a movement. Jihad classifies the world, defines enemies, promises reward, and lowers the fear of death. This is what I call a transmission engine: the mechanism by which an idea moves from private belief into public action.

If the jihadi fighter survives, he may gain status, victory, belonging, or material reward. If he dies, he is promised paradise. Death, which should be understood as the loss of a human life capable of love, learning, responsibility, and creation, is redescribed as passage into compensation. This does not make the fighter less human. It means that real human longings—meaning, courage, honor, brotherhood, transcendence—have been captured by a bad ideology.

The Islamic State’s treatment of Yazidis and Christians in Iraq and Syria made this structure visible in modern form. When ISIS captured territory, it revived and enforced categories of conquest, enslavement, jizya, sexual captivity, apostasy, and sectarian purification. In other words, it did not behave as a random criminal gang with some Islamic decoration. Human Rights Watch reported in 2014 that ISIS had seized members of minority communities and ordered Christians in Mosul to convert to Islam, pay tribute, or leave. Amnesty International documented torture, rape, and sexual slavery of Yazidi women and girls abducted by ISIS. The UN Commission of Inquiry concluded that ISIS sought to destroy the Yazidis through killings, sexual slavery, enslavement, torture, forced transfer, forced conversion, separation of families, and the transfer of Yazidi children away from their community.

The doctrinal categories matter because ISIS repeatedly presented its actions not merely as criminal opportunity but as religiously authorized order. Yazidis were classified outside the protected scriptural communities and subjected to enslavement, forced conversion, and sexual captivity. Christians in Mosul were pushed into the old sequence of conversion, jizya, expulsion, or death. Shia Muslims and other minorities were treated as heretics or enemies to be purified from the community. Apostates and dissenting Sunnis were also targeted. The violence was extreme, but the categories were not invented from nothing. They were reactivated from a doctrinal and legal archive, then enforced with modern brutality.³

Many Muslims fought ISIS. But the fact that Muslims opposed ISIS does not mean ISIS had no relationship to Islamic texts and traditions. It means those texts and traditions are contested.

Again, this is not an accusation against all Muslims. Many Muslims fought ISIS. Tens of thousands of Muslims were murdered by ISIS. Many Islamic scholars condemned ISIS. Kurdish Muslims, Arab Muslims, and others fought bravely against it. But the fact that Muslims opposed ISIS does not mean ISIS had no relationship to Islamic texts and traditions. It means those texts and traditions are contested. That contestation is exactly why freedom to debate and criticize ideas matters so much.

A doctrine becomes less dangerous when its worst interpretations are not merely denounced but made impossible to defend under open scrutiny.

Why Liberal Societies Misread the Threat

Liberal societies are often tempted by two opposite strategic errors.

One error is panic. This treats Muslims as a demographic threat and responds with suspicion, exclusion, and collective hostility. This is wrong, unjust, and counterproductive. It drives ordinary Muslims toward defensive identity politics, strengthens extremists who say the West hates Muslims, and abandons the liberal distinction between persons and ideas.

The other error is denial. This treats criticism of Islamic doctrine as inherently bigoted and responds with euphemism, self-censorship, and moral confusion. This is also wrong. It abandons reformers, dissidents, ex-Muslims, women, and minorities who need to be able to engage in open criticism most. Liberal societies often fail these people. They celebrate diversity in the abstract while ignoring internal dissent within minority communities. They invite the most conservative “community representatives” to speak for everyone. They treat criticism from ex-Muslims as embarrassing. They worry more about offending religious authority than about protecting the individual conscience of those under its pressure.

A liberal society should say: Muslims are equal citizens and must be protected as persons. Islamic ideas, like Christian ideas, secular ideas, nationalist ideas, Marxist ideas, feminist ideas, conservative ideas, and academic ideas, must remain open to criticism.

We should apply this standard consistently. We should criticize Christian nationalism when it tries to impose doctrine through state power. We should criticize far-left woke theories when they treat disagreement as harm. We should criticize far-right nationalism when it turns identity into destiny. We should criticize Islamism when it subordinates conscience, women, minorities, apostates, and free speech to religious authority.

We should criticize any system that makes correction dangerous. Bad ideas are not defeated by hiding them.