Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide (27 page)

On February 28, 2006, the government passed Ordinance 06–03, regulating worship by non-Muslims. Article 2 of the ordinance guarantees religious freedom and respect for different religions. However, its implementation has made it more difficult for non-Muslims to practice their religious beliefs. For example, Article 5 declares, “Structures intended for the exercise of religious worship are subject to being registered by the State, who assures their protection.” In practice, many places of religious worship have never been approved and thus are operating illegally in the eyes of the state. Meanwhile, Article 11 states that anyone who “incites, constrains or utilizes means of seduction tending to convert a Muslim to another religion” can be imprisoned for up to five years and fined up to 1 million dinars (about $16,000 US).
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Initially, the regulation was not strictly enforced. Then, in December 2007, political leaders from the al-Nadha Islamic party demanded that the government “slow the activity of Christian missionaries in the country.” This may have reflected concern in government circles that Christianity was growing among the non-Arab Kabyle people (the growth of Christianity in Algeria is largely in the Berber, not Arab, regions).
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In response, officials tried, incongruously, to equate Christian evangelism with terrorism, asserting that Christians threatened Algeria’s Islamic identity. By February 5, 2008, authorities had initiated a program of restricting missionaries, and, by April 11, the government had ordered half of all Algerian Protestant churches to close. Government officials claim that Muslims are under the same restrictions, but this does not appear to be true. Some observers believe that President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is reaching out to Islamists for support and trying to distract the public from complaining about domestic concerns.

Whatever the motivations for increased enforcement of 06–03, religious freedom in Algeria has deteriorated precipitously since its passage. As one Catholic leader put it, “This is very new, to be considered as an enemy of the country.”
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These new pressures may have been mitigated somewhat by pressure from the international community. For example, on June 6, 2008, more than thirty U.S. congressional representatives sent a letter to President Bouteflika protesting the 2006 law, as well as expressing concern about the general persecution of Christians in Algeria.
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Meanwhile, participants in the UN Human Rights Council have questioned the compatibility of 06–03 with both Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 36 of Algeria’s own constitution. In response, however, much of the Algerian press has alleged that the country is under attack from “outsiders,” and there is speculation that the government may respond by increasing its control over religious rights.
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For example, on June 7, 2008, in response to criticism of the government’s recent stance toward Christians, the Minister of Religious Affairs, Ghoulamullah Bouabdellah, accused churches of collaborating with outsiders to destabilize the
country; he even repeated his February 2008 equating of Christians and terrorists.
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While Islamists support these recent developments, many Algerians are growing weary of their government’s intolerance of religious minorities, and this made religious freedom an issue in the April 2009 Algerian presidential elections.

At the same time, Christians faced legal battles. On June 20, 2007, five Algerian Christians were brought before a court for possessing religious literature and preaching Christian doctrine. The five were fined and sentenced to one year in prison, though whether the sentence was fully carried out is not clear. A week later, another Christian was brought before a court after giving a Bible to undercover police officers who were posing as interested, potential converts. The officers arrested him and confiscated all the Bibles in his possession. On February 5, 2008, three Christians were told that they would be sentenced to three years in prison and charged 500,000 dinars ($8,000 US) for attacking religion.
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Those who convert from Islam to another religion face both official and unofficial pressure. On March 29, 2008, Habiba Kouider, a thirty-five-year-old Algerian convert to Christianity, was riding a public bus from Oran to her home in Tiaret, where she attended a Bible school. Police confronted her on the bus and detained her after finding Bibles and other Christian literature in her handbag. After twenty-four hours of interrogation, she was brought before a state prosecutor, who allegedly offered to close the case if she would return to Islam. Otherwise, in his words, “If you persist in sin you will undergo the lightning of justice.”
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After she refused to renounce her faith, Kouider was officially accused of “practicing non-Muslim religious rites without a license.” When her defense attorney argued that there was no such charge under Algerian law, the prosecutor responded that Kouider’s possession of several copies of the Bible suggested that she was planning to distribute them in violation of Ordinance 06–03 (which gives rules for religious worship by non-Muslims). The defense countered that her possession of Bibles did not prove anything and that the charges were baseless. Meanwhile, the judge reportedly confiscated the notebooks of journalists attending the trial, despite the defense’s objection that, since the trial was public, the press had a right to be present.
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The prosecutor demanded that she be sentenced to three years in prison, and a Tiaret court was scheduled to rule in May 2008. The verdict was postponed and postponed again on December 31, 2008, probably because of the international attention Kouider’s trial had received.
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The police, however, weren’t finished with her. On June 1, 2008, five plainclothes officers detained her and, after a humiliating body search, interrogated her for two hours, asking, “Why did you convert to Christianity?” Although Kouider was eventually released, the episode demonstrates the Algerian authorities’ animus toward conversion.

In early June 2008, police found Bibles in a car belonging to Rachid Muhammad Essaghir and an associate, and, on June 18, they were put on trial in Tissemsilt for “distributing documents to shake the faith of Muslims.” Together with church
leader Youssef Ourahmane, they were also charged with “blaspheming the name of the Prophet and Islam,” as well as threatening a Christian convert who had reconverted to Islam. The man who claimed to have been threatened, Shamouma Al-Aid, had first encountered the Christian group in July 2004 and had claimed that his family was persecuting him for converting to Christianity. Ourahmane maintained that the church took care of him and only later discovered that he was in touch with Islamic fundamentalists while professing Christianity. Ourahmane says he believes Al-Aid used Christians to get money and information and subsequently funneled it to the radicals. Ultimately, the church excommunicated Al-Aid, at which point he made his accusations of blasphemy and threats.
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Essaghir, Ourahmane, and another Christian, Djallal, were convicted of insulting Islam and the prophet but won their case on appeal.
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Further problems erupted around Tafat Church in Tizi-Ouzou, about sixty-two miles east of Algiers. The church—part of the Protestant Church of Algeria—opened in 2004. Until 2009, it met in a small rented building. In November 2009, it opened its doors in a new location to its nearly 350 congregants, many of whom were converts from Islam. On December 26, 2009, around fifty Muslims blocked the way of people trying to attend a Christmas service. The protestors were reportedly irritated that a new church building had opened near their homes and that it was being frequented by many visitors from outside the area. These Muslims feared that their own young people could be lured to the church with promises of money or cell phones. On December 28, a mob broke into the new church structure, stealing the sound equipment; two days later, the building’s electricity service was cut off. Youssef Ourahmane said, “[I]t was the first time to my knowledge that this happened…Having hundreds of Christians coming to meet and different activities in the week, this is very difficult for Muslims to see happening there next door, and especially having all these Muslim converts. This is the problem.” In early 2010 there were six blasphemy- and apostasy-related court cases pending against Algerian churches and Christians.
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There is increasing concern over conversions to Shia Islam, because of possible ties to Iran. Also, as in much of the Arab world, critical Muslim writers can be targeted as “dangerous to Islam.”
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One example is novelist Anouar Ben Malek, who has been criticized for offending Islam and for expressing hatred against Muslims and their prophet in his most recent work,
Oh Maria
. His historical novel recounts a brutal period in the history of Christian-Muslim relations, and the dialog contains the sort of inflammatory language that Muslims and Christians might have employed in attacking one another in those days. Ben Malek insists that the language is appropriate in its historical context and that the views espoused by the novel’s fictional protagonists cannot be equated with his own views. So far, Ben Malek has not faced anything more serious than threats and
condemnation in the Algerian media. But the maintenance of freedom of speech that touches on religions remains an uphill battle in Algeria.
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Ali Ahmad Said Asbar is often regarded as the greatest contemporary Arab poet and is more commonly known by his pen name, Adonis or Adunis. He is Syrian by birth and has established most of his reputation while living in Lebanon and, for the later part of his life, Paris. On October 13, 2008, he gave a lecture at Algeria’s National Library arguing that Islamist attempts to impose their religion on society and the state are wrong. Islamists responded by accusing him of being an “apostate,” something that, of course, could lead to his death. In the meantime, Algeria’s Minister of Culture denounced his “ideological deterioration” and fired the library’s director for inviting him.
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In the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, King Abdullah holds broad executive powers and may dissolve Parliament and dismiss his cabinet, which he selects, at his discretion. The lower house of the National Assembly, elected through universal adult suffrage, is limited in its ability to initiate legislation and cannot enact laws without the assent of the upper house, which is appointed by the king. Of Jordan’s 5.8-million population, 95 percent is Sunni Muslim, with 1 percent Shia and Druze, and 4 percent Christian, predominantly Greek Orthodox. The country is also 98 percent ethnic Arab, with a large Palestinian component, and 1 percent each Circassian and Armenian. The legal system is based on a combination of sharia and French codes, with sharia courts handling personal matters for Muslims—including marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance—while special tribunals of respective religious communities exercise jurisdiction over non-Muslims.

Converts can suffer from family violence. In 2003, Zena, an Iraqi widow who had converted from Islam to Christianity in Jordan, was kidnapped by her brother, who took her back to Iraq where he beat her daily in order to force her to return to Islam. She managed to escape, returned to Jordan, and was given protection by her church, but she has been on the run from her brothers who have come to Jordan to find her. She had been unable to gain asylum in a Western country.
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There are also some cases in which people accused of apostasy have had their rights removed by sharia courts, and they can become legally almost nonexistent. An important precedent was set in September 2004, when a convert to Christianity, Samer Muhammad Khair Talib al-Aidy, was arrested on charges of apostasy—the first case of its kind in modern Jordan. Samer refused to renounce his Christian faith and was found guilty and stripped of his civil rights. This judgment included the annulment of his marriage, his inheritance, and all documents that he had ever signed. The court ruling stated that he no longer had a legal religious identity and therefore possessed no property rights and could not be legally employed; it also declared his marriage annulled, and he could only remarry his
wife if he converted back to Islam; potentially he could lose custody of his children. Having received death threats from his brothers, he fled the country and found asylum in the United States.
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In March 2008, Muhammad Abbad al-Qader Abbad, who had converted to Christianity fifteen years before, together with his Christian wife, Muna al-Habash, and Salam, one of his children, was beaten for his apostasy by the relatives of a convert living with the family. Abbad’s father also reported him to the police and demanded custody of Abbad’s two children. When Abbad went to the police to report the beating, he was charged with apostasy and brought before a sharia court. Abbad claimed that, due to his lack of real faith, he had never been a Muslim. As a result, the court sentenced him to a week’s imprisonment for contempt of court. He was released on bail after he was hospitalized due to his injuries. At a second hearing, Abbad refused to deny his Christian faith and fled the country before the trial had ended, fearing that he would lose his rights and custody of his children. In June 2008, the court annulled his marriage
in absentia
.
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Article 5 of Jordan’s 1998 Press and Publication Law forbids publication of “anything that conflicts with the principles of freedom, national responsibility, human rights, and values of the Arab and Islamic nation.”
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Two journalists, Jihad Al-Momani and Hussein Al-Khalidi, were arrested in January 2006 and charged with “denigrating the Prophets in public” and “insulting God,” after they published three cartoons of Muhammad in the newspaper
al-Shihan
. Al-Momani, the chief editor, was immediately fired. In February 2006, each received a two-month prison sentence, although they were immediately released on bail.
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Al-Momani says that he has received death threats.
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