Apostasy

Perhaps the most quoted verse of the Koran is from Sura Al-Baqarah (The Cow). This verse - Sura 2: 256 begins with the words: "Let there be no compulsion in religion." This statement has been quoted by Muslim scholars and their apologists perhaps more than any other. As Pope Benedict XVI noted, it is an early Sura, from the time when Mohammed was still trying to gain acceptance from his peers. Unfortunately for some Muslims such a notion of religious freedom means nothing.

 Daniel Pipes has discussed the meaning of this verse, and states that for some, Sura 2: 256 has been "abrogated" or replaced by the historically later verse, Sura 9:73: "O Prophet! Strive against the disbelievers and the hypocrites! Be harsh with them." There are certainly Hadiths, which document oral testimonies of Mohammed's life and deeds, which clearly state that the founder of Islam believed that those who left Islam (apostates) should be killed.

 Forced conversions still happen in parts of the Islamic world, made worse by the fact that in cultures where this happens, those who become converts are forbidden from leaving Islam. In the West, Muslims freely carry out "dawah" or missionary activities, yet few Muslim spokespeople publicly condemn those who react violently to attempts at conversion of Muslims to another faith.

 At the weekend, 19 South Korean Christians returned home. Reunions with their families were tearful. They had been among a group of 23 people who were kidnapped by the Taliban, south of Khandahar in Afghanistan, on July 19. Two women had been freed in August when negotiations began. The kidnappers claimed that the Christians, most of whom were women, had been conducting missionary activities. For this "crime", the Taliban had slaughtered Bae Hyung-kyu, the group's 49-year old pastor, on Wednesday, July 25. In addition to riddling the pastor with bullets the Taliban also shot dead Shim Seong-min, a 29-year old man with the group.

 The hostages returning to South Korea were unaware of the killings until they arrived at Seoul airport from Dubai. Upon their return they were publicly condemned for putting themselves "at risk" by traveling to a region where Christian missionary work is regarded as a heinous crime. They were forced to make public apologies. The Saemmul Church, the Seoul-based Protestant community which had sent the missionaries to Afghanistan, agreed not to send more Christians to the region, and the government agreed to troop withdrawals.

 Last August, aid workers from South Korea who were working in Afghanistan were threatened with violent reprisals by fanatical Muslims. These fanatics were not the Taliban, but 500 Afghan imams who had convened at Mazar-i-Sharif in the north of the country. Workers from the Institute of Asian Culture and Development who had planned to stage a Peace Festival on August 5, 2006 were accused of trying to spread "Christianity" as part of their aid work, though there was no evidence to support this.

In March 2006, the Western world was shocked by the case of Abdul Rahman. Even the Washington Post voiced concerns. 41-year old Mr Rahman had left Islam 16 years previously, and had spent most of his time away from his home country of Afghanistan. He had returned in 2002, hoping to gain custody of his two children. He was found to be a Christian, and for this he was put on trial.

 Abdul Rahman's trial began on Thursday March 16, 2006. He was officially charged with "rejecting Islam". Initially the prosecutor, Abdul Wasi, offered Mr Rahman the chance to convert back into Islam, in exchange for having charges dropped. When this offer was rejected, Wasi insisted on demanding the death penalty. The judge in the case, Ansarullah Mawlavezada, announced: "We are not against any particular religion in the world. But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law. It is an attack on Islam."

 As Mark Steyn caustically observed: "We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die," says Abdul Raoulf of the nation's principal Muslim body, the Afghan Ulama Council. "Cut off his head! We will call on the people to pull him into pieces so there's nothing left." Needless to say, Imam Raoulf is one of Afghanistan's leading "moderate" clerics. Even Rahman's own father added his voice to those calling for his death, and a leading Shia cleric in Kabul agreed that Rahman "must be hanged".

 The judge in his case stated that Rahman appeared to be mentally disturbed and his family, who had originally reported that he was a Christian, agreed that he should be spared because of his "insanity". The case was dropped due to "gaps in evidence". On March 25, 2006, Rahman was moved to maximum security Policharki prison, after receiving death threats from other prisoners. In Mazar-i-Sharif, a protest was held to voice anger at Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada's decision to drop the case. Mr Rahman was smuggled out of Afghanistan on March 29, and was given asylum in Italy, where he adopted the name "Joel".

 It later transpired that Rahman did have a history of mental problems, but this does not alter the fact that even today, after hundreds of Western soldiers have died to support Afghanistan's fragile government, apostasy from Islam can still invoke the death penalty. Afghanistan is one of many Muslim countries that in 1948 signed the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 18 of this declaration states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

 In April, 2006, the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus held a Congressional forum in Washington DC. This heard that 14 Islamic countries have laws outlawing apostasy.  Nina Shea of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom said that in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen, Mauritania and Comoros, apostasy can be punished by death. In Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, the Maldives, Oman and Qatar, apostasy is a crime.

 There are thirteen verses in the Koran that refer to apostasy, but in these the punishments for apostates are those of hellfire, meted out in the afterlife. However, in the Hadiths, which document the deeds and sayings of Mohammed, passed on by chains of oral transmission from the time of his life, there is mention that the founder of Islam had claimed that anyone who left Islam should be killed. The most authentic (Sahih) collection of Hadiths is by al-Bukhari, who lived from 810 - 870 AD. His collection is revered by Sunni Muslims, and forms one of the sources of Islamic jurisprudence (sharia law).

 In Volume Four, Book 52 (Jihaad or Fighting for the cause of Allah), no. 260, Bukhari stated: "Narrated Ikrima: Ali burnt some people and this news reached Ibn 'Abbas, who said, "Had I been in his place I would not have burnt them, as the Prophet said, 'Don't punish (anybody) with Allah's Punishment (fire).' No doubt, I would have killed them, for the Prophet said, 'If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him.' "

 Virtually the same statement appears in Volume Four, Book 84 (Dealing with Apostates), number 57: Narrated 'Ikrima: Some Zanadiqa (atheists) were brought to 'Ali and he burnt them. The news of this event, reached Ibn 'Abbas who said, "If I had been in his place, I would not have burnt them, as Allah's Apostle forbade it, saying, 'Do not punish anybody with Allah's punishment (fire).' I would have killed them according to the statement of Allah's Apostle, 'Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.'"

 In Volume Nine, Book 83 (Ad-Diyat or Blood Money), number 17, Bukhari wrote: "Narrated 'Abdullah: Allah's Apostle said, "The blood of a Muslim who confesses that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that I am His Apostle, cannot be shed except in three cases: In Qisas for murder, a married person who commits illegal sexual intercourse and the one who reverts from Islam (apostate) and leaves the Muslims."

 Ibn Warraq, famous apostate and author of Leaving Islam, has  discussed other Hadiths that support Bukhari's statement. Warraq also mentions Islamic scholars who have taken the Koranic verses describing punishments to apostates as an injunction to kill apostates in this life. One of the founders of modern Islamism, Syed Ala Maududi (1903-1979), also claimed that the Koran (Sura 10: 11-12) advocates the killing of apostates.

 NYPD chief Raymond Kelly last month described the internet as the "new Afghanistan", a tool by which vulnerable people could become radicalized to the point of committing atrocities. The internet is certainly a vehicle by which Islamic preachers state plainly that apostates should be killed. One website, run by Shahid Bin Waheed explains that apostates from Islam deserve to die, citing Hadiths, and even the Old Testament as justifications. This man apparently is based in Pasadena, Texas.

 Another internet advocate of the killing of apostates is Sheikh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajjid, who uses Bukhari to claim: "The one who has known the religion which Allaah revealed, entered it and practised it, then rejected it, despised it and left it, is a person who does not deserve to live on the earth of Allaah and eat from the provision." As Joe Kauffman has pointed out, though Munajjid lives in Saudi Arabia, he appears to have close contacts with Islamic groups in Florida. By means of "justification" for killing apostates, Munajjid states: "Is espionage or shedding blood worse than leaving the religion of the Lord?"

 Since the beginnings of Islam, apostates have been killed and attacked. An interesting historical account from 1924 (pdf document) by Samuel M Zwemer describes how apostates have been killed and persecuted by upholders of Sharia law. More - on the way apostasy is dealt with under Islamic jurisprudence - can be found here.

 Judaism and Christianity may have abandoned their previous persecutions of apostates, but in the Islamic world, this tradition shows no sign of disappearing. In April 2007, Pope Benedict XVI visited the city of Vigenavo in the north of Italy. Shortly before his arrival at this center of the shoe-manufacturing industry, local papers were carrying the story of a Moroccan man who had beaten up by Muslims in Vigenavo. He needed hospital attention. This man's "crime" had been to convert to Christianity.

 Last month, on August 6, a young politician was physically attacked by Muslims in the Netherlands. It was the third time that he had been subjected to beatings. 22-year old Ehsan Jami is a member of the Leidschendam-Voorburg city council, representing the Labour PvdA party. He is also an apostate, chairman of the Committee for Ex-Muslims which began in May 2007. This group will be officially inaugurated this month. Ehsan Jami had said in interview that Mohammed was a "horrible man". Fortunately for Mr Jami, the Dutch government is now offering him protection.

The Dutch council for former Muslims began life after a 50-year old woman apostate in Germany, Mina Ahadi, founded the "Central Council of Ex-Muslims in Germany" in February this year. Iranian-born Ms Ahadi received death threats for forming this organization. She said: "We have received more than 100 membership applications in recent days. We want to create a new movement, in other European countries too. We hope that soon there will be 10,000 of us representing many more people.... I don't think it's possible to modernize Islam. We want to form a counterweight to the Muslim organizations. The fact that we're doing this under police protection shows how necessary our initiative is."

 Similar groups were subsequently formed in Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden with the same aim - to challenge the influence that Islamist groups exert upon governments and the media. In the United Kingdom, a Council of ex-Muslims of Britain was formed on June 21, 2007, inspired by the German group. The founder of the British group is Maryam Namazie, who was born in Iran. She has received death threats for taking this stand. She claims that her group exists to counter the Islamist dogma peddled by groups such as the Muslim Council of Britain. This extremist organization has had the support of the Labour government, and has influenced their policy decisions.

 Ms Namazie said: "Those of us who have come forward with our names and photographs represent countless others who are unable or unwilling to do so because of the threats faced by those considered 'apostates', which is punishable by death in countries under Islamic law. By doing so, we are breaking the taboo that comes with renouncing Islam but also taking a stand for reason, universal rights and values, and secularism. We are quite certain we represent a majority in Europe and a vast secular and humanist protest movement in countries like Iran."

Maryam Namazie is a "secular humanist", being awarded the National Secular Society's "secularist of the year" award in 2005. She now frequently appears on UK television condemning the intolerance of Islamism. She has said that she has a "duty" to criticize Islam, and such forthrightness has led to her receiving death threats. The emergence of these councils of ex-Muslims in Europe are a reaction to the pandering to Islamism practiced by many European governments.

 In the Netherlands, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a famous and beautiful Somali-born apostate who also served as a member of parliament. On November 2, 2004, her friend Theo van Gogh was assassinated on an Amsterdam street by a Moroccan Islamist, Mohamed Bouyeri. Van Gogh had collaborated with Hirsi Ali on a TV documentary about Islam's repression of women, entitled "Submission". Pinned to Mr van Gogh's chest was a "hit list" of those who were to be killed. Ayaan Hirsi Ali's name was on the list. She was forced to live in seclusion, accompanied outside by armed bodyguards.  By March 2006, Hirsi Ali and another politician who criticized Islam - Geert Wilders - had notched up the receipt of more than 100 death threats in 12 months. Ms Ali left the Netherlands in 2006 to work in the United States at the American Enterprise Institute.

In February 2007 Abu Izzadeen, one of Omar Bakri Mohammed's followers, was revealed in a video calling for the death of Muslim soldiers who served in the army. The video was made in the Saudi-funded Regents Park Mosque in 2004. Izzadeen said: "Whoever allies himself with the Kaffirs (non-believers) against the believers - he is one of them. So those so-called enemies to Allah who join the British Government ??? ???cause remember the British Government, my dear Muslim brothers, are crusaders... crusaders come to kill and rape Muslims. Whoever joins them - he who joins the British Army, the American Army, he is a mortal kaffir and his only hukum (punishment) is for his head to be removed. Indeed, whoever changes his deen (Muslim code of life); kill him."

 The issue of punishing apostasy in Islam is rarely discussed by Muslim "spokespeople" such as the members of CAIR and MCB. These seek to change Western societies to accommodate Islam without questioning its pre-medieval aspects, which are incompatible with modern democracy. Such spokespeople attack critics of their ideology as "Islamophobes", comparing freedom of expression to racism. Despite its whinings about the victimization of Muslims, CAIR itself has been accused of responsibility for death threats which were made against Moroccan/German (and Muslim) academic Khalid Duran in 2001. This man had been publicly vilified by CAIR. In a Jordanian publication, a radical Sheikh consequently declared him to be a "murtad" - an apostate.

 In the West, Muslim fanatics have been free to call for the death of apostates. In Britain, when Salman Rushdie was labeled as an "apostate" and given a death fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini on February 14, 1989, numerous British Muslims called for his death, holding public demonstrations to this end. No one was prosecuted. In summer 2006, Omar Bakri Mohammed, spiritual leader of several British Islamist groups, announced from his base in Lebanon that Muslims should kidnap a British soldier in Afghanistan or Iraq, denouncing Muslims who serve in coalition forces as "non-believers" (apostates).

  Such extremist views are not the exclusive preserve of media-hungry fanatics. A poll, commissioned by Britain's Policy Exchange think-tank, was published in February 2007. This found that among young Muslims, 36% thought that those who left Islam should be "punished by death". The author of the poll blamed Britain's government policies of imposing multiculturalism, rather than fostering an inclusive concept of "being British", for encouraging such radical views among Britain's young Muslims.

 In British prisons, there are reports of forced conversions. Belmarsh prison is notorious for holding some of the country's worst Muslim extremists. In April 2006 it was reported that in this prison, a young black Muslim was severely beaten by an Islamic gang calling itself "The Muslim Boys". On the streets of south London these individuals have used violence to forcibly convert recruits. On Good Friday (April 14), eight members of the gang pounced on a man in the toilets and beaten him severely. The man had expressed a desire to become an apostate from their brand of Islam.

 I have written on Muslim honor killings - in many of these cases, the victim has been classed as an "apostate" from Islam by their family members. In the way that Salman Rushdie was labeled as an apostate, recent history is full of cases of Muslims who criticize aspects of Islam, or Muslims who follow certain brands of Islam, becoming denounced as "apostates". Some of these individuals have been subsequently killed.

One such critic of Islamic oppression is the feminist Taslima Nasreen, whose writings have found her labeled as an apostate and subjected to death threats both in her native Bangladesh and now in India, her adoptive country. An Indian-born Muslim who chose to leave Islam was Anwar Shaikh, who died in Wales on November 25, 2006. For the last decade of his life, he lived under constant fear of attack, after he received death fatwas from Pakistani clerics, for his written criticisms of Islam.

 In Iran, film maker Tahmineh Milani was arrested from her home on August 27, 2001. Her sixth movie, entitled "The hidden half" was about women's position in Iranian society at the time of the 1979 revolution. For this, she was accused of "supporting those waging war against God." She was thrown in prison, but international support saw her released a fortnight later. Ali Dashti (1894-1982), a former Iranian foreign minister, was not so fortunate. When his book 23 years was published in the 1970s, he incurred the wrath of Khomeini's revolutionaries. The book had questioned so-called miracles ascribed to Mohammed (such as splitting the moon in two). He was charged with apostasy, imprisoned and subjected to torture, even though he was in his eighties. After three years of such treatment, he died in his jail cell on January 16, 1982.

 In June 1992 in Egypt, a liberal secularist called Farag Foda - a critic of Islamist fundamentalists - was murdered. At the trial of his attackers, the defense was led by Sheikh Ahmad Ghazali, who was a theologian at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. This institution is the largest Sunni center of learning in the world. Ghazali argued that Farag Foda "and secularists like him are apostates who should be put to death. He added that if the government failed to carry out that 'duty', individuals were free to do so."

 Mahmoud Muhammad Taha was an Islamic scholar from Sudan, born in 1909. He advocated reform of Islam including rights for women, and for this, he was sentenced to death by the Numeiri government. He was hanged as an apostate at Kober prison in Khartoum on January 1985, two years after Sharia law was officially ratified in the country. In June 1998 a Sudanese primary school teacher and convert to Christianity, Mekki Kuku, was arrested for "apostasy". He was subjected to torture in prison, and offered financial rewards if he should return to Christianity. He eventually suffered a stroke, and was freed from prison. He fled the country. His case and several others are described in a report by the Barnabas Fund.

 The Barnabas Fund is a group that highlights the persecution of Christians and other religious minorities within Muslim nations. It is managed by British-based Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo, who is an apostate from Islam. He was born in Guyana to a Muslim family. He became a convert to Christianity in 1969, and eventually became an Anglican priest. Dr. Sookhdeo is an outspoken critic of Islamism, and though he has a PhD in Islamic Studies, he is accused by Muslim critics of "cherry-picking" from Islamic texts. On February 19, 2006 the Telegraph newspaper published an article in which Dr. Sookhdeo was interviewed. Fiercely critical of government policy of appeasing Islamists, he said: "But in Islam, choice is not allowable: there cannot be free choice about whether to choose or reject any of the fundamental aspects of the religion, because they are all divinely ordained. God has laid down the law, and man must obey. Islamic clerics do not believe in a society in which Islam is one religion among others in a society ruled by basically non-religious laws. They believe it must be the dominant religion - and it is their aim to achieve this."

 The article was withdrawn from the newspaper's website, and Sarah Sands, the editor who approved the article for publication, was fired. In Britain, the government's Foreign and Commonwealth Office supports a policy of "engagement" with the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood. The spiritual leader of this group is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. In July 2006, the UK government sponsored this individual's participation at an Islamic conference in Turkey. A spokesman from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said "It is our view that you have got to engage in discussion with individuals with whom you don't necessarily agree." In 2004, London's leftist mayor Ken Livingstone welcomed Qaradawi to Britain's capital city.

In 2005, Qaradawi argued that apostates should be killed.

In Parts Two and Three, I will continue to discuss the issue of "compulsion in religion" by examining Islamic attitudes to blasphemy, and recent cases of forcible conversions to Islam.