Leaving Islam is not like leaving Christianity.

When a Christian leaves Christianity, whether into atheism, agnosticism, or some form of spirituality, they are still moving within a moral landscape shaped by Christianity itself.

Western civilization is the child of Christendom.

The ex-Christian is not existentially disoriented, because the cultural air he breathes remains Christian, even if God has been removed from the equation.

He does not need to rebuild the world. The world he lives in was already built by Christianity.

In that sense, the ex-Christian remains Christian, whether he likes it or not.

By contrast, when a Muslim leaves Islam, he inevitably begins to build his new morality upon the foundations that Christianity laid and the West later globalized, whether he realizes it or not.

Concepts like freedom of conscience, intrinsic human dignity, the moral status of women, and the rejection of coercion in religion are not neutral, universal values. They are historically Judeo-Christian values, developed through centuries of theological, legal, and cultural evolution in the West.

If that same ex-Muslim remains in, or is surrounded by an Islamic culture, the dissonance becomes unbearable.

Because he is now internally structured by one moral system but externally surrounded by another that is categorically antithetical.

When a Christian leaves Christianity, he leaves a room and stays in the same house.

When a Muslim leaves Islam, he is exiled from the house entirely.