An Ex-Muslim’s Advice to Israel & The Jewish People – Dr. Anjuli Pandavar

Ex‑Muslim On Leaving Islam: A Woman’s Journey & Her Message

The story that follows is a first‑person account by Dr. Anjali Pandavar, an ex‑Muslim who left Islam after a painful inner struggle with faith, community, and conscience. It is shared in her own words, shaped into an easy‑to‑read article while preserving her voice and message.

Growing Up Muslim & Feeling Out of Place

Dr. Anjali Pandavar, an ex-Muslim, is going to tell us her personal experience about leaving Islam and some of the lessons that Israel and the Jewish world can learn from it.

I went through several iterations of this talk to package it in a way that would be most digestible to people, and I think I’d like to very briefly talk about myself and my experience with Islam and living Islam.

I’ll pare it down to the five most important things that I think I would like to leave you with:

1. Moderate Muslims, the thing that always comes up
2. Islamophobia and slash Islamism
3. How Muslims see you
4. How to solve the problems of Muslims taking advantage of our society, and they all do
5. The way forward, especially for countries like Australia that are currently under full‑on attack, and also for Israel

I was born into a Muslim family and grew up in a Muslim community in South Africa. My family was not devout by Middle Eastern standards. By those standards, they would probably be scoffed at for not being religious enough.

Even so, I did go to a madrasa as a child. I had to read the Quran, and I absolutely hated it. We were taught to “read” Arabic, but that did not mean read in the way you might imagine. We were taught to make the sounds that correspond to the symbols on the page, with zero comprehension. We were not required to understand anything we were reading.

For me, as a child, this was unbearable.

• In a state secular school, I was always the top pupil.
• In the madrasa, I was always at the bottom of the class.
• I could never manage to read half a sentence of the Quran because of this demand to recite what I could not understand. Something in me could not bear that.

Later, I became more confident in reading, and I began to take religion quite seriously in my late teens and early adulthood. I was still going to the madrasa. But all this time, my discomfort with the Muslim environment around me grew.

• I saw incredible ignorance.
• I saw a sense of superiority over everyone else.
• Above all, I saw cruelty.

Among Muslims themselves, there was great kindness and warmth. But toward anyone who was not Muslim, there was a very different side. Outwardly, people were nice, they shared things in Ramadan, and they appeared generous. But beneath that, I saw great cruelty toward non‑Muslims, toward animals, and toward Muslims who did not behave as expected.

It was:

• Amazing cruelty towards children.
• Amazing cruelty towards women.

That cruelty is one of the things that really propelled me, as an ex‑Muslim leaving Islam, away from the faith.

A Question About God That Would Not Go Away

When I was 16, I had a conversation with our Christian neighbor over the garden fence. She said to me, “We all pray to the same God.”

At the time, it did not mean much to me, except as a nice‑sounding idea. A week later, the Yom Kippur War broke out.

• At my secular school, the headmaster led a prayer at assembly that God help the Jews to victory.
• That same night, in the mosque, our imam led a prayer asking God to grant Muslims victory.

The conversation with the Christian lady was fresh in my mind. I thought, “How is God going to solve this one?”

That question stayed with me. It sat inside me as I became more aware of how messed up Muslim people were, in the sense of the contradictions and cruelty I saw. This dissonance built up till I turned 22.

By then, the Iranian Revolution had just taken place. It was 1979. All my Muslim friends disappeared off to places like Cairo, Tehran, Islamabad, and Medina.

• They were determined to become “real” Muslims.
• They left South Africa looking for religious affirmation.

I looked at this and thought, there is no way on earth I am going to do this. It looked like knee‑jerk stupidity, like robotic behavior.

Then came the moment that made it all crystal clear.

The Madrasa Incident Ended My Faith

It was a Saturday. I was in the madrasa, the only one there. The madrasa was behind the teacher’s house.

As I arrived at the gate:

• His daughter, about 16, stood inside with her hands resting on the top of the gate.
• Outside, a young boy, maybe 17 or 18, had his hands resting on top of hers.
• They looked into each other’s eyes, not breaking eye contact.
• That was love. They slid the gate open so I could enter, still without breaking eye contact, and then closed it again. It was a beautiful human moment.

I went through the house to the classroom at the back, took out my Quran, and waited.

A minute later, there was noise of an explosion in the house:

• The teacher shouted at the top of his voice.
• His daughter screamed.
• There was a sound of something hard striking her.
• His wife screamed at him to stop.
• He did not stop. I did not see any of this directly; it was happening inside the house.

I was calm inside. I closed my Quran, put it into its bag, got up, and walked out.

Walking back through the house, the beating and screaming had stopped. I saw no one, but:

• I could hear the daughter sobbing bitterly somewhere in the house.
• The carpet was littered with splinters of the plank he had used to beat her.

When I stepped outside, I knew:

• I was done with Islam.
• I was done with religion.
• I was done with God.
• I wanted nothing more to do with this whole sorry business for the rest of my life.

Later, I realized that this was not the exact moment I ceased to be a Muslim. In truth, I had stopped being Muslim long before. I had just not admitted it to myself.

That is how this ex‑Muslim left Islam completely.

Why Study Islam After Leaving It?

You might think that after leaving Islam in 1979, I immediately turned to studying it. In fact, it took years, even beyond 9‑11. Only later did I feel the need to really get to the bottom of what Islam is.

My motivation was not theological. It was psychological and sociological:

• Why are Muslims the way they are?
• What is going on in their heads?
• How are they shaped to be, as I put it then, “these insane people.”

I studied:

• Islam in general.
• Sharia in particular, which I had not taken seriously before, but which is actually the most important part.

Through this study, I tried to understand:

• How Muslims can be so nice and friendly, and yet so cruel and evil at the same time.
• Why do the nicest Muslims insist that the worst ones are not really Muslim?

My conclusion, from the texts, was that:

• The horrible ones are the “proper” real Muslims, because a Muslim, by Islamic definition, is at war with non‑Muslims.
• That is a very hard conclusion, but it is the one this ex‑Muslim, leaving Islam, arrived at through long study.

Moderate Muslims, Jihad & Zakat

Many people say, “But I know a nice Muslim.”

• They bring you to iftar.
• They bring cake.
• They help you with your work or your school.

All that can be true. This does not change what the doctrine says.

Islam, as I describe it here, is:

• A martial religion.
• A religion of war, expecting everyone to participate.
• The war is called jihad.

The Quran, for example, in 2:216, talks about warfare being commanded even though it is disliked, and then reminds believers that Allah knows and they do not. For a believer who doubts the command to wage war, this verse says that the problem is with them, not with the command.

In addition to personal obligations such as prayer and fasting, Islam also has communal obligations. The key communal obligation is jihad.

• If some Muslims go out to fight, the rest are free of the sin of not doing jihad.
• If nobody does it, then everyone has sinned.

So, in this structure:

• Peaceful Muslims have an interest in there being violent Muslims.
• Their role is to enable those who fight, even if indirectly.

That can mean:

• Keeping silent when they know someone is being groomed for violence.
• Providing money.
• Every Muslim who pays zakat gives charity in the mosque. A minimum proportion, often described as 12.5 percent here, is directed to jihad.

They fund:

• Travel to conflict zones.
• Training.
• Food and accommodation for fighters.

So, from this viewpoint, your “friendly, peaceful Muslims” and the violent ones are part of one system with different roles.

“Islamists,” Da’wah & Islamophobia

In the West, we use terms like:

• Islamists
• Jihadists
• Radicals
• Extremists

According to the analysis I am sharing here, these are our inventions, not Islamic ones. In Islamic sources:

• There is no division between “Muslim” and “Islamist.”
• There are simply Muslims who kill and Muslims who enable killing.

The peaceful, law‑abiding Muslims are said to be doing da’wah. In this framing, da’wah is not neutral missionary work. It is described as:

• Hoodwinking.
• Bamboozling.
• Deceiving non‑Muslims into viewing Islam positively.

Part of that, in this account, is the use of the term “Islamophobia.”

Islamophobia is described as:

• A deterrent against criticism.
• A vague label used to intimidate and silence.
• A tool that can be invoked to punish anyone who says something Muslims do not like.

Because it is undefined and undefinable, it:

• Cannot function properly in law.
• Becomes a “counter‑legal” device that operates outside normal legal clarity.

The claim here is that both some Muslims and some non‑Muslim allies use Islamophobia as a blunt instrument to:

• Get people fired.
• Shut down the debate.
• Criminalize criticism in practice, if not in statute.

Friendship, Taqiyyah & Trust

Another big question is friendship.

Many people will say:

• “But my Muslim friend is wonderful.”

The point made in this talk is not to deny that people can be kind in daily life. It is to highlight what the doctrine itself says.

Quran 3:28 tells believers not to take unbelievers as friends in preference to believers, unless they are protecting themselves. Classical exegesis, like Ibn Kathir, says that:

• Muslims may show friendship outwardly to protect themselves.
• Inwardly, they should not feel friendship for non‑Muslims.

This is linked to the concept of taqiyyah, often summarized as:

• The permissibility, even virtue, of lying to protect the faith or the community.
• Taqiyyah, and related concepts like tawriyyah, form what is described here as a kind of science of religiously sanctioned lying.
• Taqiyyah involves direct dissimulation.

Tawriyyah involves saying something technically true but intentionally misleading.

The example given is the “Is Mansoor here?” story, where “here” is interpreted as “right here at the door” rather than “in the house,” to mislead the police.

The conclusion drawn is that you cannot be at peace with people who, according to this interpretation of their religion, are at war with you in doctrine.

Dhimmitude, Jizya & Second‑Class Status

Dhimmis and dhimmitude are often described in Western discourse as second‑class citizenship under Islamic rule.

The answer here stresses that:

• The concept of “citizen” is a Western one, not an Islamic one.
• In Islam, there are slaves of Allah, not equal citizens.

When Muslims conquer a non‑Muslim land, the framework presented is:

• You are told to become Muslim or be killed.
• If you are a Jew or Christian, you may instead accept dhimmi status and pay jizya.

Jizya is described not as a simple tax, but as:

• A ritualized humiliation.
• A method for breaking down your soul and dignity so that you eventually convert.

Quotations from classical sources depict the goal as killing the love of life, leadership, and honor in the dhimmi, making them indifferent to poverty or wealth, praise or insult, and so on, until they submit completely.

In this view, that is what awaits non‑Muslims under Islamic rule if they are “lucky” enough to be People of the Book. Others may have no such options at all.

What Can Westerners Do

What can be done to raise awareness and protect Western societies, including Australia and Israel?

The suggestions given are blunt and controversial, but they are integral to this ex‑Muslim leaving Islam perspective, so they are included here faithfully:

• Do not allow yourself to be intimidated.
• Ordinary people should not feel compelled to befriend Muslims.
• In this speaker’s personal practice, as a former Muslim, she has no Muslim friends because she believes she knows what she is dealing with.
• Do not grant special accommodations.
• If you are in a position of authority, do not make special rules for Muslims.
• Oppose local measures such as special pool hours for Muslim women or other religiously‑based exceptions.
• Reverse existing concessions where possible.
• Identify concessions already granted.
• Work democratically and legally to have them canceled or annulled.
• Examples given include restricting halal certification and challenging the building or operation of mosques and madrasas.
• Enforce existing laws consistently.
• Use the criminal law for actions like polygamy, financing terrorism through zakat, or other offenses covered by Sharia that conflict with national law.

The idea is to use the internal logic of Sharia that says Muslims must leave a country where they cannot practice their religion fully. By disallowing certain religious practices in non‑Muslim lands, the hope (from this perspective) is that those committed to full Sharia may choose to leave rather than reshape the society around them.

Continuing the Conversation

To stay in touch and share a report on the Quran, the speaker provides her website: Murtad2Human.org.

Listeners who wish to explore more of this ex‑Muslim leaving Islam perspective or contact her directly are encouraged to visit the site and reach out.