The Atheist Muslim: A Journey from Religion to Reason

by Ali A. Rizvi

they didn’t get their morality from the Quran; they used their already-present morality to interpret it—or at least to interpret what they thought was in it. Why not cut out the middleman? I thought. You already have what you’re hoping to get from a book that tells you that you need the book in order to get what you already have without the book in the first place, right?

Was this really about extremists corrupting the religion? Or was it about moderates sanitizing it?

My parents had a ready reference point in the Saudis. Anything that both the Saudis and we practiced was real religion.

Those who make the “it’s culture, not religion” argument are essentially doing what the “it’s politics, not religion” crowd does: trying to find a way to criticize acts they find deplorable without being seen as disrespectful of religion, or worse, blasphemous to it.