Review: Ali A. Rizvis "The Atheist Muslim" is a passionate, timely but muddled plea for reform

Title The Atheist Muslim: A Journey from Religion to Reason
Author Ali A. Rizvi
Genre Non-Fiction
Publisher St. Martin’s Press
Pages 256
Price $37.99

KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE
Published Friday, Nov. 25, 2016 11:19AM EST

Ali A. Rizvi was just five years old when his view of God shifted from the “merciful” and “compassionate” supreme being that his Pakistani Muslim family had instilled in him, to one capable of “cruel, sadistic, and obscene” acts. It happened while visiting his aunt’s home in London to say goodbye to his three-year-old cousin, Sana, whose battle with childhood leukemia was coming to a gruesome, undignified end.

As his mother and aunt turned to the Koran to console themselves, he asked his father to explain why the family was praying to a God who seems to be tormenting a child? The father muttered something about Sana returning to her original place, back to God.

“And right there – years before I would even know the meaning of the word skepticism – its seeds have been sown,” Rizvi writes in The Atheist Muslim: A Journey from Religion to Reason. It’s one of several powerful revelations in a passionate, timely but, ultimately, muddled plea for secularism and reform in Islam.

A Canadian surgical oncologist who grew up in Libya, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, Rizvi is better known as an occasional columnist for the Huffington Post, where he has explored the challenges of Muslims who leave their faith, sometimes known as ex-Muslims and other times as atheists – or, to their critics, apostates. His book weds the tenets of the New Atheism of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens to a narrative of a journey from faith to doubt. To Rizvi, science not only trumps the blind faith that the Abrahamic religions require, but its transparency provides a pattern to place or restore order in the universe.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/review-ali-a-rizvis-the-atheist-muslim-is-a-passionate-timely-but-ultimately-muddled-plea-for-reform-in-islam/article33048374/