Some brave women in Germany are breaking with Islam:

...They unveiled a poster with the slogan, 'We've Given It Up,' showing the faces of many former Muslims who no longer believe. The 'coming-out' flies in the face of Islam, which does not make any provision for formally departing from membership in the faith.

'We want to breach a taboo,' said the chairwoman of the new Council, Mina Ahadi.

Michael Schmidt-Salomon, chairman of the Giordano Bruno Foundation, which is supporting the campaign, said, 'Never before have Muslims been so open about renouncing their faith.'

He said he hoped the Council would set an example worldwide.

Arzu Toker, deputy chairwoman, used a news conference to announce her separation from Islam: 'I herewith resign from Islam. That's it.'

Toker, a journalist who was born in 1952 in Turkey's eastern Anatolia region, is radical in her criticism of Islam. She does not accept its Sharia system of rules at all, saying they contradict both human rights and the values of the German constitution.

She added that Islam was anti-woman.

'It humiliates women and turns them into servants of the men,' she said, adding the Islam was anti-man as well.

'It reduces men to breeding animals controlled by their urges,' said Toker. She quoted the 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: 'He said, God is dead. One can live fine by taking one's own responsibility.'

She said she did not distinguish between Islam and fundamentalism.

'Islam is inherently radical,' she said.

Ahadi described her life to reporters and said, 'Political Islam has afflicted my life.' Born in Iran in 1956, her support for human rights had rapidly put her in opposition to the Islamic Revolution. She refused to wear a headscarf and was expelled from university.

Later her husband was executed. She had lived in Germany since 1996.

'I know all about political Islam,' she said. 'It ends up with us being stoned to death, even here in Germany.'

The ex-Muslims asserted they had already been threatened with violence but would not be intimidated.

'I'm not going to play mouse for the cat,' said Toker, referring to fatwas which state that apostates from Islam may be killed.

The news conference in Berlin was given police protection.