Muslim Apostasy: When Silence Isn't Golden

Last month, Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported that Prince Charles was leading efforts to combat the Islamic law of apostasy, under which leaving the Muslim religion is at the very least illegal and is often punishable by death. Charles had held a private summit of Christian and Muslim leaders at Clarence House to discuss the issue. There was, however, one hitch: The Muslim delegation at the summit cautioned the prince and other non-Muslims not to speak publicly about apostasy laws, and some of the Christian leaders in attendance were reportedly “sympathetic” to this concern.

Although the proffered reason that non-Muslims should not speak publicly about apostasy laws was that Muslim moderates could better influence the debate without outside intervention, this argument does not stand up to scrutiny. After all, virtually every observer agrees that the West cannot prevail in the war on terror unless Muslim moderates can counter their co-religionists’ more militant outlook, yet Westerners do publicly criticize Islamic terrorism, loudly and repeatedly. Western silence on the apostasy issue will not help Islamic moderates; rather, silence is more likely to make both Muslims and also converts out of Islam believe that the issue is unimportant to the outside world.

Many Westerners, however, appear hesitant to speak out on the issue of religious freedom for converts out of Islam. There are two apparent reasons for this hesitation. First, in our multiculturalist society, many feel awkward about speaking up on behalf of those who leave Islam out of concern that attacks on apostasy laws could be seen as criticism of Islam itself. Moreover, apostasy laws affect small numbers in comparison to the large-scale threat of terrorism. Thus, many people may believe that it is not worth making waves over the issue.

This base view should be rejected. In pursuing interfaith dialogue, the treatment of apostates from Islam is one of the crucial issues that Prince Charles and other Westerners should address because the ability to change one’s faith is a fundamental right. Freedom of belief lies at the very heart of an individual’s identity because one’s theological outlook is central to one’s moral and philosophical understanding of the world. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights thus proclaims that everybody should have the “freedom to change his religion or belief.”

For the vast majority of Muslims residing within the Islamic world, this freedom does not exist. Conversion out of Islam is illegal in at least fourteen countries, and is punishable by death in at least eight. Although official proceedings against Muslim apostates are relatively rare, they do occur. Most recently, Asia News reported on December 17 that Emad Alaabadi, a Saudi Arabian convert to Christianity, had been taken into custody by Saudi authorities.

Even in Muslim states that don’t officially prohibit conversion out of Islam, the legal system is often used against those who leave the faith. In Egypt, for example, the government refuses to issue new identification papers to converts that reflect their new religion. Without new identification papers, converts’ children must be raised Muslim and the converts have to live their lives as though they were still Muslim. Those who attempt to raise their children in their new faith when their papers list their religion as Islam may be charged with blasphemy. Because of this, apostates in Egypt are routinely charged with falsifying documents.

But by far the greatest threat to Muslim apostates comes not from the state, but from former co-religionists who believe that apostasy should be punished and set out to enforce the law themselves.

It is difficult to quantify with certainty how many apostates from Islam are killed, because such incidents too often go unreported. Paul Marshall, a senior fellow at Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom, told me in an interview that he knows of at least a dozen cases in the past year in which apostates were killed for leaving the faith, and estimates that hundreds of apostates are killed every year worldwide.

This problem is magnified by the fact that many apostates, even if not killed, are subject to physical attacks. One prominent example is Yakup Cindilli, a Turkish convert from Islam to Christianity who slipped into a coma in October 2003 after being savagely beaten for distributing New Testaments in his hometown. Marshall estimates that hundreds of Muslim apostates are beaten every year.

Beyond that, most converts out of Islam living in the Muslim world are forced to disguise their new faith because of the persecution they would face at the hands of either the state or their fellow citizens. Marshall believes that thousands of converts from Islam to Christianity are in hiding in Egypt, and that tens of thousands of Muslim apostates throughout the world are concealing their new faith.

This is not some internal Muslim issue about which Westerners should politely hold their tongues. Rather, people are killed every year for following their conscience, and many more beyond that have their fundamental right to religious freedom abridged. Westerners should put aside their hesitations, and should publicly condemn the immoral treatment of Muslim apostates.

In case anyone was still wondering:

I have a question about offensive Jihad. Does it mean that we are to attack even those non-Muslims which don't do anything against Islam just because we have to propagate Islam?
Answer 12128 2004-07-13
You should understand that we as Muslims firmly believe that the person who doesn't believe in Allah as he is required to, is a disbeliever who would be doomed to Hell eternally. Thus one of the primary responsibilities of the Muslim ruler is to spread Islam throughout the world, thus saving people from eternal damnation.
Thus what is meant by the passage in Tafsir Uthmani, is that if a country doesn't allow the propagation of Islam to its inhabitants in a suitable manner or creates hindrances to this, then the Muslim ruler would be justifying in waging Jihad against this country, so that the message of Islam can reach its inhabitants, thus saving them from the Fire of Jahannum. If the Kuffaar allow us to spread Islam peacefully, then we would not wage Jihad against them.
and Allah Ta'ala Knows Best
Mufti Ebrahim Desai

Thank you Mufti. But one more question please, cow dung be upon you. How do we save infidels from eternal damnation by killing them?

Study some history. The Roman Catholic church had a political stranglehold on Europe up to that time, and killing heretics was common practice.

Really? How common? The worst episode of oppression in Church history that most people refer to is the Spanish Inquisition. Over a 350 year period, 3-5000 people were executed as part of an overarching effort to drive the Mohammedans out of Spain.

The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition

How does this compare to Calvin's Geneva?

“In five years, 1542-46, Geneva, with 16,000 inhabitants, had fifty-seven executions and seventy-six banishments. All these sentences were sanctioned by Calvin.”

The Protestant Reformation occurred for a reason, you know; it didn't happen in a vacuum. It started because of the offensive nature of certain Catholic doctrines and practices, and it gained traction because it was a way for European nations to break the political power of the Roman Catholic church.

There was corruption in the Church. There's no doubt about that. But this shouldn't surprise Christians since Jesus told us that the weeds would grow up along with the wheat. And the "cure" was worse than the disease.

Papal crowning of kings in Europe is very similar to the church-state theocracies in the Middle-east right now.

Hardly. The Church was normally trying to extricate Itself from affairs of State:

The Church in the Middle Ages
From the 9th cent. to 1520 the church was simply Western Europe taken in its religious aspect, and no clear line divided spiritual from temporal life. In the West (unlike the East) the religious organization was free for centuries from grave interference from civil rulers. Charlemagne was an exception, but his influence was benign. In the chaotic 9th and 10th cent. every part of the church organization, including the papacy, became the prey of the powerful.
The restoration of order began in monasteries; from Cluny a movement spread to reform Christian life (see Cluniac order). This pattern of decline of religion followed by reform is characteristic of the history of the Roman Catholic Church; the reform goals have varied, but they have included the revival of spiritual life in society and the monasteries, and the elimination of politics from the bishops' sphere and venality from the papal court. The next reform (11th cent.) was conducted by popes, notably St. Gregory VII and Urban II. Part of this movement was to exclude civil rulers from making church appointments—the first, bold chapter in a 900-year battle between the church and the “Catholic princes” (see church and state; investiture).
The 12th cent. was a time of great intellectual beginnings. St. Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercians revived practical mystical prayer. Gratian founded the systematic study of the canon law, and medieval civil law began its development. This double study was to provide weapons to both sides in the duel between the extreme papal claims of Innocent III and Innocent IV, and the antipapal theories of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Also in the 12th cent., Peter Abelard and other thinkers pioneered in rationalist theology.
From early rationalist theology and from the teachings of Aristotle developed the philosophies and theologies of St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas (see also scholasticism). This was the work of the new 13th-century universities; to them, and to the friars—the Dominicans and Franciscans—who animated them, passed the intellectual leadership held by the monasteries. St. Dominic's order was formed to preach against the Albigenses (a campaign that also produced the Inquisition). The vast popular movement of St. Francis was a spontaneous reform contemporary with the papal reform of the Fourth Lateran Council. The 13th cent. saw also the flowering of Gothic architecture.
The contest between church and state continued, ruining the Hohenstaufen dynasty and, in the contest between Boniface VIII and Philip IV of France, bringing the papacy to near ruin. Then came the Avignon residence—the so-called Babylonian captivity of the papacy (1309–78), a time of good church administration, but of excessive French influence over papal policy. Except for isolated voices, such as that of St. Catherine of Siena, the church seemed to lose energy, and a long period devoid of reform began. A long-enduring schism and a series of ambitious councils (see Schism, Great) involved most churchmen in a welter of politics and worldliness.
There were popular religious movements, characterized by revivalism and a tendency to minimize the sacraments (along with church authority); they encouraged private piety, and one group produced the inspirational Imitation ascribed to Thomas à Kempis. The popular tendencies were extreme in John Wyclif, who developed an antisacramental, predestinarian theology emphasizing Bible study—a “protestant” movement 150 years before Protestantism.
The Reformation and Counter Reformation
The 15th-century councils did little for reform, and the popes, shorn of power, were reduced to being Renaissance princes. Such men could not cope with the Protestant revolt of Martin Luther and John Calvin (see also Reformation). The Protestants aimed to restore primitive Christianity (as described in the Bible), and they succeeded in weakening the hold of the church in all of N Europe, in Great Britain, and in parts of Central Europe and Switzerland. Politics and religion were completely intertwined (as in England, Scotland, and France); hence the admixture of religious issues in the Thirty Years War.
Within the church there triumphed the most extensive of all the church's reform movements (see Counter Reformation; Jesus, Society of). From it sprang a general revival of religion and much missionary activity in the new empires of Spain and Portugal and in East Asia. In France, Catholicism found new life, beginning with St. Francis de Sales and St. Vincent de Paul. There, too, began the cult of the Sacred Heart (i.e., God's love for men), which would affect Catholic prayer everywhere. A contrary influence was Jansenism (see under Jansen, Cornelis), an antisacramental middle-class movement.

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