Critique of Islam: What Is Islamicamentando’s Purpose?

To those who wonder what Islamicamentando is for, why this project exists, what idea drives it and what kind of contribution it wants to offer to public debate, we want to answer directly and transparently.

Islamicamentando was created to spread knowledge, encourage debate and analyse Islam critically: not as a simple private faith, but as a religious, legal, social, cultural and political complex that has historically and doctrinally affected, and still affects, the life of societies.

It was not created to fuel hatred against Muslims. Persons must always be respected in their dignity and rights. It was created instead to defend a principle that should be elementary in every free society: no religion, ideology or system of power must be shielded from criticism, study, satire and public judgment.

For this reason, we think it is useful to explain openly who we are, what we do, what we criticise and why we consider it necessary to break certain taboos that still make it difficult to speak about Islam freely, seriously and without moral blackmail.

Critique of Islam and Apologetic Disinformation

The purpose of Islamicamentando is to help, in our small way, break the apologetic disinformation that presents Islam in a partial, selective or propagandistic manner. At the same time, we are not interested in improvised criticism made of slogans and unsupported claims: that would weaken the very cultural work we want to carry forward.

We do not seek an impossible equidistance between incompatible claims, and we do not intend to soften uncomfortable conclusions to make them more acceptable. We want to provide materials, sources, articles and reflections through the site and social channels, spreading knowledge and offering tools to those who want to understand what the texts, doctrines and history of Islam actually show.

We have a critical, clear and recognisable position. This does not mean abandoning study, nor does it authorise anyone to reduce every objection to Islam to “hatred”, “racism” or “Islamophobia”.

Our critique is deliberately radical, polemical and direct. We do not claim neutrality: we claim the right to formulate very severe judgments, provided they rest on sources, facts, reasoning and real problems.

Criticising Islam Does Not Mean Hating Muslims

The point is not to hate Muslims. Persons must always be respected in their dignity and rights. A Muslim, like anyone else, has the right to personal freedom, security, protection from concrete discrimination and respect as a human being.

But respecting persons does not mean making ideas untouchable.

Islam, like Christianity, atheism, communism, fascism, liberalism, nihilism or any other worldview, can be studied, criticised, discussed and challenged.

When a system of ideas claims to influence law, family, freedom of speech, the condition of women, the relationship with those who do not believe, public morality and the organisation of society, it no longer concerns only the private conscience of the individual believer. It concerns everyone.

That is precisely why it must be open to public discussion.

Why Criticism of Islam Concerns Politics, Law and Society

In our view, Islam cannot be reduced to a simple private faith, comparable to the personal religiosity of someone who prays, fasts or believes in God. That dimension exists, of course, and it concerns the individual conscience of the believer.

But the main problem does not lie there.

Historically and doctrinally, Islam presents itself above all as a communal, legal, social and political complex founded on submission to an order believed to be divine. It does not merely propose a personal spirituality: it tends to organise family, law, public morality, relations between men and women, relations with non-Muslims, freedom of speech, power and collective life.

This dimension, more political than purely religious, is what we intend to analyse and criticise. When a religion also becomes a normative, identity-based and political system, it no longer concerns only those who believe in it: it concerns society as a whole.

Why Do We Criticise Islam and Not Christianity?

Islamicamentando is a thematic project. It was created to analyse Islam and subject it to radical criticism on religious, cultural, legal and political grounds, not to distribute its attention equally among all existing religions and ideologies. A critique of Islam does not have to be accompanied by an equivalent critique of Christianity in order to be legitimate.

The question “What about Christianity?” is rarely an answer on the merits. Invoking the Bible, the Crusades or the Inquisition does not refute the sources cited, does not change the content of the Qur’an and the hadith, and does not erase the history of Islamic law. It simply moves the discussion to another topic.

Christianity has been criticised for centuries in books, universities, newspapers, cinema, television and satire. Anyone who wants to devote a project to it is free to do so: there is no lack of space or material. Islamicamentando has chosen instead to deal with Islam, which too often is removed from the same critical treatment through automatic accusations of Islamophobia, intimidation and moral blackmail.

Focusing on Islam does not mean absolving Christianity, denying its historical responsibilities or declaring it immune from criticism. It means having consciously chosen our object of study and cultural intervention. Those who dispute our conclusions should address the sources and arguments: whataboutism is not a refutation.

Criticism of Sanitised Islam and Asserted Islam

The problem is not only when Islam is softened and presented as perfectly compatible with every modern idea of freedom, equality and democracy.

The problem also exists when it is asserted more explicitly for what it has historically and doctrinally been: a religious, legal, social and political system that does not limit itself to speaking about the relationship between man and God, but often claims to regulate society, law, politics, family, sexuality, freedom of speech and relations with those who do not believe.

Both aspects deserve attention. Sanitised Islam can hide the problems. Asserted Islam can show them openly.

Islam and the West: Nihilism and the False Islamic Solution

In a free but increasingly fragile West, marked by nihilism, relativism, loss of meaning, extreme individualism, crisis of the family, loneliness and moral confusion, some may begin to think that the solution is to surrender to a simple, clear, total and already defined system.

Sharia, or more generally the idea of a society entirely regulated by religious norms, may appear to some as an ordered answer to modern chaos. But this apparent solidity has an enormous price: the reduction of individual freedom, critical conscience, dissent, equality between men and women, and the possibility of living without submitting to religious authority.

We do not think the West is perfect. That would be absurd. The West has produced freedom, rights, science, pluralism and progress, but today it is also affected by serious internal diseases. Yet the fact that the West is ill does not mean that Islam is the cure.

Islam, Freedom and Western Values

Western freedom did not arise from nothing or from mere individual whim. It arose from a long historical process made of law, philosophy, Christianity, Greek reason, Roman law, political conflicts, reforms, Enlightenment, constitutionalism, separation of powers, freedom of conscience and limits placed on religious and political power.

This path did not create a paradise. But it produced something rare: a space in which, at least in principle, believers and non-believers, men and women, majorities and minorities, religious persons and persons critical of religion can coexist.

This space is imperfect, contradictory and often hypocritical. But it remains preferable to a model in which social order is guaranteed by submission to a total religious system, where individual freedom is tolerated only within limits established by a sacralised authority.

Provocation as a Tool of Criticism of Islam

Yes, Islamicamentando also uses a provocative, polemical and uncomfortable mode. It is a deliberate choice.

When a topic is protected by taboos, moral blackmail and automatic accusations of “hatred” or “Islamophobia”, provocation helps break the frame of discourse and forces people to look at what is normally avoided.

This does not mean targeting Muslims as persons. It means rejecting the idea that Islam should enjoy special protection from criticism, satire and public judgment.

What Islamicamentando Wants to Do

Islamicamentando wants to provide materials, sources, reflections and tools useful for understanding Islam better in its various dimensions: historical, doctrinal, political, legal, cultural and social.

We want to offer content to those who have doubts, to those who want to go deeper, to those who are not satisfied with ready-made formulas, and to those who have sensed that the relationship between Islam, the West, freedom and modernity is far more complex than is often claimed.

We do not claim to have the final word on everything or to be infallible. We are willing to correct errors when they are refuted with verifiable evidence and sound arguments. But this does not oblige us to adopt a conciliatory tone or suspend judgment: we claim the right to ask questions, show sources, denounce doctrines and challenge dominant narratives directly.

Conclusion: Criticism of Islam, Knowledge and Freedom

Islamicamentando was not created to offer a conciliatory representation of Islam, but to subject its texts, doctrines, institutions and historical consequences to uncompromising criticism without reverential fear.

Our purpose is not to fuel hatred against Muslims, but to spread knowledge and break a taboo that prevents truly free debate.

Islam, like any other religion or ideology, must be open to study, criticism, challenge and ridicule without intimidation and without moral blackmail.

Respecting Muslims as persons does not mean making Islam untouchable as a system of ideas.

And defending the freedom to criticise Islam means, ultimately, defending everyone’s freedom.