As a child of Shiites growing up in Saudi Arabia, Ali Rizvi remembers being constantly told that violence and bloodshed in the Muslim world “had nothing to do with Islam.” He became skeptical of this explanation when he finally read the Quran—in English translation—at age twelve, beginning a journey away from the religion of his birth that supplies the foundation of his recent book, The Atheist Muslim. Oren Kessler writes in his review:

When [Rizvi] presented the offending verses to community elders, they merely offered further excuses, dismissing famed translator N.J. Dawood as an Iraqi “Yahoodi” (Jew) who was not to be trusted. . . . [Rizvi] became convinced that most of the Muslims in his life were good people not because of their creed, but despite it.

Thus persuaded, he soon ran up against one of the more curious markers of our age: the charge of prejudice or even racism that attends any effort to scrutinize faith—particularly Islam. . . . Western elites, he laments, are crippled by the fear of being labeled bigots (a condition he terms “Islamophobia-phobia”). Here, Rizvi [underlines] the contrast between “Islamophobia” and anti-Semitism—the former being a judgment passed on ideas, the latter on a people. . . .

Letting go of faith isn’t easy. It is the relinquishment not only of one’s moral mooring but of one’s friends, community, and, often, family. Rizvi exemplifies the pro-science, pro-Enlightenment “atheist Muslim” of the book’s title, but he acknowledges that many others can’t and won’t make that leap. . . .

[F]or a more flexible, modern Islam to succeed, he argues, one obstacle looms largest: the doctrine of scriptural inerrancy. . . . [But] Islam, he believes, can survive a rejection of inerrancy and remain intact.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.