Growing up in Iran

The following is an excerpt from the book Leaving Islam by Ibn Warraq. I present it here to give evidence of just what sort of regime Iran is, and what sort of religious system Islam is. The following is from chapter 17: "Leaving Islam and Living Islam." The testimony is from a woman who grew up during the Iranian revolution:

"In my late teens, Iran was pregnant with revolution. The atmosphere of the time was for change, a profound demand for fundamental change in society. People were marching and fighting for freedom and justice. Unfortunately, the revolution was defeated by the Islamic tradition. The final decades of the twentieth century witnessed another holocaust, an Islamic one, because of which thousands have been executed, decapitated, stoned to death, and tortured by Islamic governments and Islamic movements. That was the beginning of a dark era that has not ended. That was the beginning of the rise of political Islam in the world, a period in history that most probably could be compared to the 1930s. There have not been and there are no limits to murder and repression: Young and old, women and men are all legitimate targets of Islam's blind and bloody terror. Any voice of dissent and freedom has been silenced on the spot. The robe, turban, and Koran continue to drive millions of people into Islamic dungeons. The conduct of Islamic movements is primarily in the form of opposition of the freedom of women, women's civil liberties, freedom of expression in the cultural and personal domains and the enforcement of brutal laws and traditions against people, and the killing, beheading, and genocide of people from young children to the elderly.

"Yet this is a period in Iranian history of which humanity all around the world is largely unaware, a period during which crimes of such dimension and intensity were committed against people by the Islamic Republic of Iran and other political Islamic groups that, were they better known, would appall the wider world. In Iran, violence has another dimension: one that is based on Islam. The very statement that an Islamic Republic exists somewhere means that unparalleled and brutal violence exists in it. The very fact that people are forced to abide by laws based on something some god or prophet is reported to have said somewhere is a form of mental violence. If anyone protest against such laws, they are subject to suppression and punishment. And questioning Islam means suffering the worst and the most ferocious kinds of punishment. Iran is the most transparent picture of what Islam is capable of."

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