I learned a bit more about Islam from Daniel Pipes’s essay “When Muslims Leave the Faith” in the August 6, 2020 Wall Street Journal. One point he makes that I had had some inkling of is that Islam is one of the most dangerous religions to leave:

Overtly apostatizing is a radical act that can lead to execution in some Muslim-majority countries, including Iran. Even in the West, apostates often meet rejection by families and friends that can turn violent.

Daniel also cites the following interesting statistics:

There are about 3.5 million Muslims in the U.S., according to a 2017 Pew Research Center survey. The data suggests that about 100,000 of them abandon Islam each year, while roughly the same number convert to Islam. Altogether nearly a quarter of those raised in the faith have left, with Iranians disproportionately represented. Similar trends prevail in Western Europe, where conversions in and out of Islam appear roughly to balance out.

In the U.S., ex-Muslims’ motives for leaving vary. Asked what their “main reason” was for no longer identifying as Muslim, Pew found 25% had general issues with religion and 19% with Islam in particular. Some 16% said they prefer another religion, and 14% cited “personal growth.” More than half of them abandon religion entirely, and 22% now identify as Christian.

There have been some efforts by ex-Muslims to support other ex-Muslims:

The activists Nonie Darwish and Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote books about becoming “infidels.” …

Some ex-Muslims living in the West do something inconceivable in Muslim-majority countries: They publicly organize against Islam in dozens of groups like Germany’s Central Council of Ex-Muslims and Ms. Darwish’s Former Muslims United. Such organizations also provide mutual support in the face of intense hostility and raise troublesome issues—with female genital mutilation among the most prominent in recent years—thereby becoming some of the most credible critics of Islamism.

Other than the threat of death for ex-Muslims and the threat of female genital mutilation for current Muslims, all of this is familiar to me from what happens with ex-Mormons, who do a fair amount to support one another.

One book-writing ex-Muslim Daniel Pipes fails to mention is Reza Aslan, who has writing a book about the past, present and future of Islam:

I ran into this book by accident (or by the design of Amazon’s algorithm) this past week and put it on my book wishlist. (I have a deal with myself that if I list a book on an Excel file I have that I can buy it as soon as I will actually sit down to begin reading it. This is a big help in reducing how much I spend on books.)

Note: I have a tag “religionhumanitiesscience” that will get you to my posts on religion and my posts on political philosophy. If you click on the link on this sentence, that will also take you there.