My breach with Islam started as far back as I could discern things. More to the point, I never embraced Islam in the first place, although I was born and raised in a Muslim family.

For one thing, I had a very difficult time following a so-called religion whose founder and followers had butchered my ancestors, raped and sold our women, burned our libraries, and destroyed our magnificent culture. Islam was forced down the throats of Iranians with the sword of Allah. In my heart, I never considered myself a Muslim. However, I didn’t reveal this until later in life for fear of retribution by radical Muslims.

Sharia law stipulates that any Muslim who turns his back on Islam should be given a chance to revert to the faith. For an unrepentant male apostate, death is the proscribed punishment and life imprisonment for the female apostate.

“Kill whoever changes his religion.” (Sahih al-Bukhari 9:84:57)

Islam considers an apostate as a person who unilaterally breaks the covenant he has made with the faith. An apostate is condemned as guilty of turning his back on Allah’s immutable eternal religion.

I came to the realization that the root cause of my peoples’ degradation and suffering was Islam. It was a creed imposed on an enlightened, tolerant and free people at the point of the sword by savages hailing from the Arabian Peninsula during the seventh century with promises of booty and women in this world and glorious eternal sensual rewards in the promised paradise of Allah in the next. With each passing day, I rejoice more and more in my good fortune; in my ability to avoid the yoke of Islamic slavery and its blinders that imprisons a billion and half people by walls of superstition, hatred of others, and a celebration of death.

Things Islamic not only did not resonate with me, they often clashed head on with what I valued and loved. What appealed to me and even enchanted me were more often than not, taboo in Islam or anathema to the creed. I loved life, beauty in all its forms, poetry, ancient Iranian culture and traditions. I loved laughter, celebrations of joy such as birthdays; our yearly festivities of Nowruz, my favorite, lasts for thirteen days. Nowruz, this ancient festival, has been celebrated for thousands of years by my people; it ushers in the spring, welcomes renewal of life, and expresses optimism for the year ahead to bless us with good health, abundant food, family, and friends in the land of a civilized and free people.

I have always believed one cannot possibly be a Persian and hold to the lofty tenets of the ancient Iranian Zoroastrian triad of good thoughts, good words, good deeds, and remain a Muslim. In the same fashion, one cannot cherish American values, the Bill of Rights and the United States Constitution and be a true Muslim. They are comprehensively incompatible with Sharia Law. . . .

There are still those who foolishly claim that Muhammad was a messenger from God and the Quran is a divinely revealed book. My suggestion is that they use their intellect and read the Quran fully for themselves without the assumption that the book is the literal word of God and that Muhammad was their messenger. Without this assumption as their starting point, they will find better than 90% of the book is about violence, threats of hell, exclusion of people, and the like. What kind of God would dictate things like what you find in the Quran? It took Muhammad 20 years to reveal this hodge-podge book that reads more like expressions of a delusional individual with multiple personality disorder.

I bemoan the plight of my native land and the people who have suffered and continue to suffer under Islam. Without Islam there wouldn’t be any Muslims to hoist the banner of hate and violence against non-Muslims. A few claim that Islam has done some good in the past. Well, that’s debatable. There are those who are equally convinced that Islam has inflicted a great deal of suffering on others from its inception to the present. What we all must agree on is that Islam and its sharia laws, at the very least, do not fit in today’s world.

Islam is a creed of an ignorant people in a primitive and barbaric age. It is fixated in time and place; it harbors the ambition of taking the 21st century world back 14 centuries and ruling it by its dogma of violence, intolerance, injustice and death. Yet, Islam is not only an obsolete vestige of a defunct era, but itself is an infinitely fractured belief that can hardly put its own home in order. The numerous Islamic sects are at each other’s throats; sub-sects and schools despise one another as much as they hate non-Muslims. Hatred, not love, drives Islam.

I am not against Muslims. I condemn Islam with all its derivatives and those who support and promote it. Muslims are patients and Islam is a disease. You want to help the patients to rid themselves of the affliction. You want to eradicate a horrifically communicable disease. Although many prefer to tackle the militant version of Islam, “Islamism,” for all intents and purposes, there is no sharp demarcation between, Islamists, Jihadists and Islamism. One and all are progeny of Islam itself. Any differences among the three are of degree and not kind. When one addresses Islamism and jihadism, their source is also addressed.

Regrettably, Islam cannot be reformed. Keep in mind that Islam claims it is the perfect eternal faith for mankind. Splits have occurred and will continue to occur in Islam. Yet, reformation has not happened in nearly 1400 years and is not going to happen. Islam is carved in granite, just the way it is. No change. Allah’s book is sealed.

In the monumental task of dealing with Islam and its variations, every individual, group and government must combine their resources and energies to prevail. We must urge all people to resist Islam’s encroachment and not be deceived by its sanitized version presented in non-Islamic lands. The destiny of civilized life hangs in the balance. Shirking of this responsibility would be an unpardonable act of every enlightened human being and organization that values human liberty and dignity.

Amil Imani is the author of a new book “Operation Persian Gulf.” Get your copy now.