Scenario:
You live in a nation with a Muslim government. A census man comes to your door.
*knock knock knock
You answer.
"Hello Mr. ____, I'm from the government, and we have you on file as being Muslim. I'm required to ask, have you changed your religion, or are you still a faithful Muslim?"
You remember the Hadith that are the basis for the laws in your nation, which say clearly:
Sahih al-Bukhari 6922
'Do not punish anybody with Allah's punishment (fire).' I would have killed them according to the statement of Allah's Messenger (ﷺ), 'Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.'"
Sunan an-Nasai 4059
Ibn 'Abbas said:
"The Messenger of Allah [SAW] said: 'Whoever changes his religion, kill him.'"
This is also narrated in Sahih al-Bukhari 3017, Sahih Muslim 1676c, Sunan an-Nasai 4061, 4063, 4065, Sunan ibn-Majah 2535, Jami at-Tirmidhi 1458, etc., and based on Surah 4:89 in the Quran
You chuckle nervously - "Of course not!"
He adds a tally to his clipboard.
"That's good to hear brother," he says, and leaves.
Now, would anyone in their right mind call that a legitimate tally? Of course not. It's enforced adherence, at gunpoint, to a false religion.
As of the writing of this article, there are 27 nations in the world with over 95% Muslim populations. In reality, you can't get 95% of people to agree on anything, especially something as emotional and important as religion, and yet these are the official numbers published by the governments of these countries.
In practice, even countries which legally have the death penalty for apostasy rarely exercise it on a citizen. However, leaving Islam can result in:
So knowing all of this, and having seen it happen numerous times in your community/city to some person who was outed as an apostate, it's far easier to just shut up and do the bare minimum, even though you think Islam is a false religion. Is this all just a hare-brained theory from a Christian? Let's see:
In a poll conducted by GAMAAN in Iran, a nation which officially claims to be 99.5% Muslim, among those who were able to self-report anonymously (the only proper way for a poll to be conducted), less than half of them professed to be Muslim.
The results, in summary, were:
If the ratio of apostasy is even half of Iran's in other Sharia nations, we are looking at a much smaller religion than it boasts to be. Some 400 million people are possibly being added to the official count for Islam, when they would publicly deny Islam if not for the retribution for doing so. Add to this all of the marginally/culturally Muslim people within these massive Muslim-population nations, and we have even less still that actually believe that Muhammad was the true final prophet sent from God.
The number of those deceived by Islam is still far too high, but not as high as is claimed by Muslim nations.
This is significant, because, puzzlingly, many Muslims point to the fact that "Islam is the fastest growing religion" as somehow being indicative of its truthfulness. It spreads by high birthrates, and the edge of the sword, not voluntary conversion by rational adults. And even then, most "Muslims" claimed by Muslim nations, according to this poll, grow up not to believe a word of the false prophet Muhammad.
Furthermore, if 99.9% of humanity believed in Islam, that wouldn't make it true. For centuries now, Christianity has been the world's largest religion. Does that make it de facto truth, Muslims? They don't think so. So, please stop wasting the time of us both with this argument.