I'm Hemmant Mehta and I'm Jessica Blumkey and you're listening to the

podcast for Friendly atheist.com you can now listen to all of our episodes and

see show notes at friendly atheist podcast.com.

Ali A Rizvi is a Pakistani Canadian writer, physician, and musician who resides in Toronto.

He's the author of a new book called The Atheist Muslim.

Ali lived in Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan as part of a progressive Muslim family

before he moved permanently to Canada in his 20s.

He's a trained physician and a vocal advocate for secularism, science, and reform,

particularly in the Muslim community.

Ali, thanks for being with us.

Thank you for having me.

Absolutely.

So let's get this out of the way.

Let's talk about the title of the book,

the atheist Muslim. You're obviously an atheist, but do you still consider yourself a

Muslim? Well, let me, the title is a little bit, it's partly tongue in cheek, but only partly.

It's really a play on the book, it really explores the idea of the Islamic ideology and to what

extent it's incorporated into the Muslim identity.

So it's really an ideology slash identity play which I think is a lot more pronounced in the

Muslim world in general because religion is a much bigger part of people's lives

even in their governments and their public affairs their political affairs and so on.

So it really is a hit at that and I want to read the book, it makes sense why the title is,

...