Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide (65 page)

A primary reason why some Muslims and Muslim regimes feel the need to introduce apostasy laws today is to curtail conversions from Islam. However, Muslims also seek to convert non-Muslims. The fact that Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the world is indicative of this. In countries like Malaysia, the number of people converting to Islam is far greater than the number of Muslims who renounce Islam. Therefore, it follows that if Muslim states were to introduce apostasy laws, Muslims are likely to face similar restrictions in non-Muslim-majority states and thus prevent Muslims from converting non-Muslims to Islam. It would be inequitable to suggest that only Muslims should have the right to proselytize. Further, forcing Muslims who do not want to remain Muslim to adhere to Islam would categorize them as hypocrites, according to the Qur’an. People who remain Muslims under the threat of force are unlikely to have anything beneficial to offer to Islam or Muslim communities. Criminalizing apostasy and imposing a death penalty give the impression that Islam is an imposed religion. It may only succeed in offending the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the world
who embrace Islam voluntarily. Therefore, a more effective and practical alternative needs to be found to prevent Muslims from renouncing Islam.

It seems that, with the exception of a vocal group of extremists, ultratraditionalists and some political Islamists, the majority of Muslims throughout the Muslim world are moving away from the notion of the need to force Islam on Muslims to the view that Islam is essentially a covenant between the individual and God. This is closer to the Qur’anic idea of noncoercion in religion, which was so strongly emphasized in the Qur’an in a variety of contexts but largely ignored in the formulation of the classical law of apostasy. Unlike the classical period, in which “noncoercion in religion” was considered to have been “abrogated,” today the view that is emerging argues that noncoercion was not only
not
abrogated but also remains a fundamental principle of Islam and guarantees religious freedom to all. Nevertheless, many Muslims have remained reluctant to take the logical step of examining apostasy laws and declaring them irrelevant to their life today. Others, although only a few, are arguing for doing away with apostasy laws that adversely affect the individual’s basic rights as a person and are pressing for reform in this area.

Given that both the religio-political context in which apostasy laws were first put into effect and the division of the world into categories of the “abode of Islam,” “abode of war,” and “abode of peace” have lost their meaning and relevance in the modern period, it is important to rethink the punishment for apostasy and apostasy laws. The weak textual basis of the apostasy laws provides a strong religious justification for embarking on the task of reforming these laws and emphasizing religious freedom as a basic human right. This would indeed be a significant contribution to the global discourse on human rights today.

We have surveyed how apostasy and blasphemy rules are applied in many Muslim countries. We have reviewed the impact in the United Nations and in the West of increasing demands that such rules be enforced internationally. And we have presented Islamic scholars who argue that there should be no temporal punishment for such “sins.” These three themes are interconnected. Patterns in the Muslim world reveal the destructive effect of such laws and accompanying vigilantism and are a harbinger of the future into which the West is sliding if it should continue to bend to demands to outlaw “defamation of religion.” The arguments by the Muslim scholars demonstrate that this is a bitterly contested debate within Islam, in which acquiescence to the demands of repressive regimes and movements undercuts Muslims who argue for and defend—sometimes at the cost of their lives—individual freedoms of religion and expression.

The West is experiencing a diffuse but determined campaign to repress ridicule and critique of or within Islam, in ways analogous to the repression already existing in many Muslim-majority countries. This campaign has made inroads through lawsuits, diplomacy, economic boycotts, and, at times, lethal force and intimidation—all of which are contributing to a broad chilling effect on speech concerning Islam. Few Western leaders and policy makers comprehend the radical nature of the change that is being urged and is in fact already underway. Consequently, there is no concerted or coherent policy response. Instead, the West reacts to the threat of violence largely on an ad hoc basis, through a patchwork of self-censorship and laws restricting speech. Many Western governments embrace hate-speech bans, which serve as proxies for Muslim blasphemy laws.

This book attempts to show that if these demands are successful, the result would be far more sweeping and detrimental to Western society than has been foreseen. At stake are the freedoms of religion and expression that lie at the heart of Western liberal democracies. Furthermore, within Islam itself, compliance with these demands would tip the balance in favor of fundamentalists and extremists, since reformers would be attacked for their views even in the relative safe haven of the West. In his foreword, former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid warned that such efforts “play directly into the hands of fundamentalists, who wish to avoid all criticism of their attempts to narrow the scope of discourse
regarding Islam, and to inter 1.3 billion Muslims in a narrow, suffocating chamber of dogmatism.”

If Islam, and Islam alone, were to be protected by the state from critique, an illiberal interpretation of Islam would attain a de facto privileged status in the West. Conversely, should Christianity and other religions also benefit from such state protection, fundamental individual freedoms would be essentially negated.

The background and consequences of this campaign are illustrated by our survey of the customs and norms in many OIC states. It is important to note that governments in Muslim-majority countries, as well as elsewhere, also repress freedom for reasons that have little to do with Islam. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan restrict any expression, including by peaceful Muslims, which might challenge state authority. Egypt can imprison anyone who “affronts the President of the Republic.”
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Iran imprisons multitudes for religious offenses but also, especially since the protests following the 2009 elections, has imprisoned many others on stated grounds of threatening national security or undermining the regime. It is also important to recognize that the severity of restrictions varies from country to country.

However, despite these caveats, our survey shows that in Muslim-majority countries and areas, restrictions on freedom of religion and expression, based on prohibitions of blasphemy, apostasy, and “insulting Islam,” are pervasive, thwart freedom, and cause suffering to millions of people. This survey, extensive though it sometimes is, does not attempt to cover all countries or examples; for reasons of space and to avoid repetition, we limit our review to some twenty Muslim countries, including the worst offenders, and have left out very many cases.
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Despite widespread and growing repression, much of the debate on free speech and freedom of religion in the West and in the UN takes place in isolation from, and often with utter obliviousness toward, the actual application of bans against blasphemy, apostasy, and “insulting religion” throughout much of the Muslim world. However, it is only by examining these practices that we can understand what OIC members and Islamist agitators are pressuring the Western world to adopt.

Some of the pressure takes place through repeated resolutions in the United Nations. It also occurs through such acts as the attacks on Salman Rushdie’s translators and international humanitarian workers, threats against Flemming Rose, boycotts of Danish or Norwegian goods, and demands over who should lead
NATO. These actions have been supported variously by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan, Turkey, and other Muslim-majority states, sometimes acting together through the OIC. Certainly, the push to outlaw purported criticism of Islam has a grassroots base among some Muslim groups in the West, but it is these governments that have given the movement articulation, respectability, and financial and organizational support.

For example, behind the scenes of the Danish cartoon crisis, the OIC and several of its member states manufactured much of the Muslim outrage, most of which began four months after the cartoons appeared. They stirred Muslim anger and lent legitimacy to the issue, ensuring wide and sustained attention. By the time the crisis subsided, polling showed that an astonishing 99 percent of Jordanians and 98 percent of Egyptians had heard of the Danish cartoons. The media in Jordan and Egypt were tightly controlled by their governments and, according to Reporters without Borders, had press freedom scores of 112 and 143, respectively, with 175 being the worst. Their populations tend to hear about things their governments want them to hear. Iran and Syria were implicated in some of the violence, in an attempt to deflect attention from Iran’s nuclear project. Saudi Arabia and Egypt, irate about U.S. foreign policy democratization projects in the region, were instrumental in initiating the boycott and inflaming passions in the street. The OIC voted to condemn the cartoons, issued a démarche against Denmark, and instituted a boycott against private Danish companies.
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Not all Muslim-majority governments are responsible for the violence associated with much of the blasphemy ban movement, but several have benefited from that violence and have not hesitated to use it to further their own agendas. At the UN, OIC members have leveraged attacks against Western cartoonists and politicians in order to reinvigorate their long-term diplomatic effort to create a universal blasphemy ban. At the UN Human Rights Council in 2007, Egypt’s representative stressed that the Danish cartoon crisis “highlighted the damage that freedom of speech, if left unchecked, may lead to.”
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The expectations of this lobby are thus based partially on what occurs today in their domestic politics and society. The revolutions and political turmoil now sweeping the Arab world appear to be allowing an even greater role for religion in public affairs, so this is not likely to subside.

For these reasons, our survey of practices in many Muslim-majority countries illuminates the type of strictures these states aim to impose on the rest of the world. Taken as a whole, it becomes readily apparent that such strictures constitute one of the major patterns in human rights violations in the world today. Finally, it reveals a key reason why, despite having only minority support, radical views of Islam proliferate: many opponents of radical Islam are silenced by the coercive force of the state or by mobs and vigilantes, often acting with impunity, who justify their violence by claiming to protect Islam from “insult.” The practice of punishing blasphemy is an important weapon used by radicals in Islam’s ongoing war of ideas.

Some of the victims are eccentric, like the followers of a Malaysian group who thought that teapots symbolized harmony between people and were therefore sentenced to years in prison, or the Indonesian Sumardi Tappaya, sentenced to six months for heresy after a relative reported that he whistled when he prayed. Others are merely unfortunate, like the multireligious group of Pakistani children who put ointment on an injured donkey; they were accused of insulting Islam and jailed when the ointment smeared into a pattern that a fanatic thought resembled the names of “holy personalities.” The donkey was also detained briefly.

However, most victims fall into four basic categories, together comprising millions of people. The first category includes adherents of religious groups that have arisen in the Muslim world in recent centuries. They are accused of thereby maintaining that Muhammad is not the last of the prophets. The two main such groups are the Baha’is and the Ahmadis. These groups differ, in that the latter usually maintains that they are in fact Muslim, while the former do not.

Ahmadis suffer persecution throughout the Muslim world, even in traditionally moderate countries such as Bangladesh and Indonesia. They are viciously persecuted in Pakistan, and the Pakistani constitution even specifically singles them out for persecution: they face up to three years in prison if they call themselves Muslim. On June 9, 2008, the Indonesian government, after persistent pressure from extremist groups, issued a joint ministerial decree ordering the Ahmadiyya community to cease all religious activity in which they described themselves as followers of Islam.

Baha’is also suffer widespread persecution, especially in Iran, their place of origin and home to a large Baha’i community. Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, hundreds of Baha’is have been killed for their religious beliefs; in 2010, most of the Baha’i leadership was in prison. In 2007, Afghanistan’s General Directorate of Fatwas and Accounts, an advisory body to the Supreme Court, pronounced all converts from Islam to Baha’ism to be apostates and declared that all Baha’is are infidels. In Egypt, on March 29, 2009, during a televised discussion of the Baha’i religion, prominent commentator Gamal Abdel Rahem denounced one of the guests, Baha’i Basma Gamal Musa, as an “apostate” who “should be killed!” Baha’is in the village of al-Shuraniya were promptly attacked with rocks and firebombs.

The second category of the persecuted is those who convert, or wish to convert, from Islam to another religion or who simply wish to give up being Muslim. These are regarded as apostates. The persecution of apostates is often extended to anyone thought to be involved in others’ apostasy, particularly anyone who talks to Muslims about other religious beliefs. Libya imprisons converts. Iran’s Parliament has debated introducing legislation mandating death for apostasy, but even without such legislation, courts have relied on interpretations of sharia, and even quotations from Khomeini, to put to death or otherwise harshly punish apostates. Malaysia has assigned converts, or would-be converts, to reeducation
camps. Egypt’s security services have tortured converts. Algeria’s Minister of Religious Affairs, Ghoulamullah Bouabdellah, has equated Christian evangelism with terrorism. In a 2010 scare over “proselytism,” Morocco expelled dozens of expatriate Christians. In 2007, three Turkish Christians in Malatya, including two converts from Islam, were tortured and their throats slit. Saudi Arabia officially instructs that apostates should be killed, and, in 2008, a Saudi member of the
muttawa
burned his daughter to death after she converted. In Afghanistan converts have been killed, and in Somalia, all Somali Christians are being systematically hunted down and killed on the grounds that they are apostates; the Al-Shabab militia openly declares its intention to kill every Christian in the country.