Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide

by Paul Marshall

  PART II

  MUSLIM-MAJORITY COUNTRIES

  Introduction to Muslim-Majority Countries

  The relation between Islam and the state varies widely across the world’s forty-plus Muslim-majority countries. The constitutions of eleven of these countries describe their political orders as secular. An additional eleven have no mention of any Islamic or secular nature. Another twenty-two do give Islam some stated constitutional role. Ten of these declare themselves to be constitutionally Islamic states and also say that Islam is the official religion of the state. The other twelve declare Islam the official state religion but do not declare the country itself an Islamic state. Of these latter twenty-two, fifteen declare that Islamic law, principles, or jurisprudence is a source of, or limitation on, legislation.1 There is also variation within these categories. Countries in which Islam has a legal status may also provide for freedom of religion, belief, expression, association, and assembly and also incorporate or reference international human rights standards in their legal systems. Furthermore, in many cases, Islam’s role is limited to certain areas of law, often family and personal status law.

  However, despite this continuing variety, the last three decades have seen an increasing radicalization across the Muslim world: in more long-standing regimes, as in Saudi Arabia; in regimes that came to power in a coup or revolution, as in Sudan, Somalia, and Iran; by creeping constitutional or legislative change, as in Pakistan; by provincial-level governments, as in Nigeria and Malaysia; and through local intimidation by Islamists, as in Bangladesh, Indonesia, or Yemen.

  This radicalization has produced increasing pressure and attacks in Muslim-majority countries on those accused of having in some way insulted Islam, especially affecting four groups. One group is those, such as the Baha’is or Ahmadis, who believe, or are thought to believe, that there has been a prophet after Muhammad, and who are thus castigated as heretics. Another is those who leave Islam or convert to another religion, who may be attacked as apostates. The third is Muslim minorities, such as Shias in Saudi Arabia or Sufis in Iran, who are deemed deviant, if not outright heretical. The fourth is Muslim dissidents, liberals, or reformers, especially if they challenge the entrenched power of regimes that claim to be representative of Islam.2

  In the following chapters we will survey the myriad threats to and attacks on these groups in Muslim-majority countries, both by the state and (often more commonly) by “society”—from calculated assaults by vigilantes and terrorists to sudden violence from enraged mobs. The dangers come not only in countries that are generally regarded as religiously repressive states, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also in many other countries often regarded as more moderate, such as Algeria, Jordan, or Morocco. To be sure, there remain Muslim-majority countries, such as Mali, in which freedoms of religion and speech are protected, but other traditionally moderate countries, even Indonesia, face increasing problems.

  Another feature of current restrictions is that terms such as “apostasy,” “blasphemy,” and “insulting Islam” are invoked without any precision; militias, mobs, and even courts frequently alternate between the terms and come up with new terms of their own, often ones lacking any historical foundation. Whatever particular charge is used, the effect is the same: religious minorities are often threatened and persecuted, critics of the regime may be imprisoned or killed, and debate about the nature of Islam is stifled.

  2

  Saudi Arabia

  Ali Al-Misaad, a twenty-five-year old Ismaili Shia native of Najran city, was stopped by members of the religious police on June 12, 2002, for listening to music while driving his car. The police told him to listen to the Qur’an instead; they claimed that he then insulted the Qur’an by calling it “boring.” On August 17, he was convicted by Judge Hamed Abdullah Al-Dosary of insulting Islam and sentenced to eight years in prison and 2,000 lashes. He was only released after serving eight months, when well-connected relatives staged an intervention on his behalf.1

  Hail Al-Masri, a Yemeni national, worked as a fruit seller in Jeddah. According to some of his roommates, his real crime was not getting up in time for dawn prayers. When a more hard-line roommate insisted that he do so, Al-Masri became irritated. He told his roommate to leave him alone. But he didn’t stop there. He also criticized the mutawa’in—the religious police—and his roommate’s newfound religious fervor. In so doing, he used a slang expression, roughly translated as “damn your religion,” a relatively common phrase. But the roommate filed a complaint with the court, and Al-Masri, who surely never thought he could be executed for the heated words he had spoken to his roommate, readily confirmed that he had angrily told him to leave him alone. Originally, he was sentenced to 600 lashes and two years in prison. Then, on January 7, 2003, a higher court in Jeddah, under Judge Ali al Zahrani, sentenced him to be beheaded on the charge of insulting religion. Astonished at the verdict, Al-Masri tried to flee the courtroom by jumping from the third-floor window, sustaining serious neck injuries.2

  In August 2008, Gulf News reported that a Saudi man who worked for The Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice had killed his daughter because she became a Christian. Using the nickname “Rania,” she had stated in an online posting several days earlier that she was being pressured by her family; they had discovered a cross on her computer screen and Christian articles that she had written. The paper reports that she was burned to death and that her tongue had been cut out.3

  Country Overview

  Since its unification in 1932, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been controlled by the Al Saud family, which rules in partnership with the Wahhabi clergy according to an extreme interpretation of Sunni Islam, commonly known as Wahhabism. About 85 to 90 percent of the population is Sunni, about 10 to 15 percent Shia, of whom about one-fifth is Ismaili. Foreign workers, including Muslims, Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists, comprise six to ten million, about one-quarter of the in-country population.4 The government is an absolute monarchy, and the Majilis al-Shura (Consultative Council), with members appointed by the monarch, has no significant power. Its legal system is based on sharia, with its jurisprudence ostensibly drawn from the strict Hanbali School of sharia. According to the 1992 Basic Law, the Qur’an and Sunna are the constitution.5

  Islam is the official religion, and all nationals must be Muslim. The court system and much of the policing is controlled by the Wahhabi religious establishment. Saudis are denied freedom to choose or change their religion; noncitizens, including Muslims, are strictly controlled. Public practice of all non-Muslim religions is forbidden. Christians and Jews are officially viewed, as taught in government textbooks, as “enemies of the believers,” unless they have a recognized “compact with the Muslims” by which their lives and property are respected, though they must abide by sharia.6 Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and also Shias and Sufis, as well as adherents of other religions, may be regarded as polytheists. The minority Shia community, living mainly in the eastern provinces, also suffers severe discrimination. Wahhabis frequently condemn as heretics, polytheists, and apostates those sects, groups, and movements within Islam that are not Salafi or other extreme Sunnis. The highest Saudi religious official, who was appointed by the government to his post, the late Grand Mufti Bin Baz, condemned Sufis in his government-published writings as “doomed to destruction.” Saudi state religious tracts exported worldwide teach that freedom of thought must be rejected since “[f]reedom of thinking requires permitting the denial of faith.”7 All media are subject to religious censorship, though some officially allowed speech has had more latitude in recent years.

  The U.S. State Department reported in 2009 that, often, “mosque speakers prayed for the death of Christians and Jews, including at the [state-sponsored] Grand Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina.” Such preachers, who receive government salaries, also often “end Friday sermons with a prayer for the well-being of Muslims and for the humiliation of polytheism and polytheists.�
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  Saudi officialdom promotes extreme religious intolerance. On March 17, 2008, a bill came before the Saudi Consultative Council calling for “an international pact for respecting religions … and [to] prohibit insulting them in any way” in order to combat a purported “onslaught on Islam” such as “the blasphemous cartoons and films being published in Denmark, the Netherlands, America, and the like.” However, the council soundly rejected the measure, with at least one member arguing that approving the measure would “make it obligatory to recognize some religions and will facilitate establishing places of worship for them in Muslim countries.”9

  The same intolerance pervades the educational system. A study presented at the December 2003 Second Forum for National Dialogue found that boys’ school texts on Islam “legitimiz[e] the violent repression of the ‘other’ and even his physical elimination because of his views on disputed issues. … These things may create a misapprehension that violent treatment of the ‘other’ is a task in which the pupil is obliged to take an interest.” Among the purported signs of unbelief were referring to God by nonstandard names, such as “the Absolute Power,” or saying that “religion is not in the hair,” with reference to a bearded man. Statements that could credit a force other than Allah with producing results, such as “Development programs will eliminate poverty and ignorance,” could indicate polytheism. Other Muslims, such as “Jahamiyya, Mu’tazila, Ashariyya, and Sufis, were deceived, and have deviated from the right path.” Celebrations of the prophet’s birthday are “imitating Christians” and redolent of “polytheism and deeds that are forbidden.”10 On June 11, 2008, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom reported that a twelfth-grade Tafsir (Qur’anic interpretation) textbook (still online in 2011) teaches that it is permissible “to kill an apostate (a convert from Islam)” (Tafsir, Arabic/Sharia, 123). A twelfth-grade Tawhid (monotheism) text states, “Major polytheism makes blood and wealth permissible,” meaning that polytheists can be killed or robbed with impunity (Tawhid, Arabic/Sharia, 15). In Saudi interpretation, “major polytheists” can include Shias and Sufis, as well as Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists.11

  Despite Saudi assurances since the 2003 National Dialogue that it has changed its texts, studies by the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom in 2008 and 2011 found that the Ministry of Education’s religious curriculum still taught hatred of Jews, Christians, Westerners, infidels, polytheists, and apostates, and it approved murder with impunity of members of many of these groups. For example, they assert that “building mosques on graves is an expression of polytheism” and that “major polytheism makes blood and wealth permissible.”12 These texts are posted on the ministry’s website, are required for all Saudi public schools, and are sent free to numerous mosques, Muslim schools, and libraries throughout the world.

  The law combines royal decrees and sharia, in which, apart from commercial matters, there is no unified code. Rules are often vague and subject to judicial idiosyncrasies; due process is severely deficient and, at times, wholly lacking, with religious police often summarily punishing their targets. Judicial proceedings, when they occur, are often closed to the public.13 Apostasy is, in principle, subject to sharia hudud rules, which means that the punishment—death—is believed to be fixed by divine order and not subject to judicial discretion, though the king has commuted sentences and pardoned those convicted of such offenses. People may be accused of witchcraft, without any clear definition of the offense, and can be executed on the grounds of ta’zir, which focuses on the severity of the act and the turpitude of the offender.14 The threshold for conviction in witchcraft cases is low and might even be a mere accusation. In May 2009, the religious police announced “a new national strategy for combating sorcery in the Kingdom,” but its details are not public.15

  Frequently, apostasy charges also lack evidence. In a 1970 memorandum on human rights sent to international organizations, the government asserted that the prohibition on Muslims changing their religion was because of “a Jewish conspiracy which was plotted in the early days of Islam” in which “[t]he Jews… craftily thought to let some of them join Islam then renounce it in order to make the Arabs suspect their religion and be misled.” Hence, a law was created preventing a Muslim from changing his religion “so that nobody could join Islam excepting after making a rational and scientific study of its doctrines ending with his permanent acceptance of the Muslim creed.” Its aim was to prevent “evil men … from joining Islam,” hence “extirpating malicious elements who have been persisting in spreading evil on Earth.”16

  Christians

  The Saudi government forbids the practice of any non-Muslim religion, as well as many forms of Islam, within the kingdom. Bringing in non-Muslim religious literature and symbols is generally banned, as well as Qur’ans and other Islamic items of non-Saudi origin, though the government now says they may be brought in for personal use only and kept out of the public eye. Until 2007, signs posted in Saudi airports warned openly of this practice.17 In recent years, the government has said it will not stop nonapproved religious practices if they are private and discreet, and there appears to have been a reduction in such interference. However, the mutawa’in still attack non-Muslims, who are also subject to apostasy and blasphemy accusations and, like “Rania,” described above, private attack.

  In 2001, Saudi authorities arrested fourteen expatriate Christians in Jeddah. One of them, an Ethiopian named Worku Aweke, had a passport with the name Ismail Abubakr, a Muslim-sounding name he had officially taken, probably to help find work in the kingdom. Suspected of being an apostate, he was beaten savagely and when, in January 2002, his fellow prisoners were taken to the Breman deportation center as a prelude to deportation, he was transferred to the Matta Jail in Mecca. Since his case attracted international attention, he was not charged with apostasy but was deported in March 2002, along with Filipino Christian Dennis Moreno.18

  On November 29, 2004, the religious police took Saudi citizen Emad Alaabadi to prison on charges of having converted to Christianity two years earlier. There are reports that other Saudi Christians were arrested at the same time, but their names remain unknown.19 Reportedly, Alaabadi has since been released and lives in Saudi Arabia under heavy restrictions.20 In May 2007, U.S. diplomats received information about another Saudi convert who was reportedly tortured and scheduled for trial. His fate, like his name, remains unknown.21

  On January 13, 2009, Hamoud Bin Saleh was arrested for comments posted on his blog criticizing the Saudi judiciary and discussing his conversion to Christianity. Authorities blocked the blog, which Google subsequently locked for an alleged terms-of-service violation. The company reportedly reactivated his site on February 5 due to popular outcry. On March 28, 2009, Bin Saleh was released but forbidden to leave Saudi Arabia or appear in the media. However, he defiantly continued to blog. He attributed his freedom to do so to the pressure that the Arab Network for Human Rights Information had put on the Saudi authorities. His blog was shuttered once more, but, so far, Saudi authorities appear to have been relatively lenient, especially given Saleh’s outspoken critiques and his clear “apostate” status.22

  Ahmadis

  Ahmadis also suffer in Saudi Arabia. On December 29, 2006, forty-nine Ahmadi expatriates were arrested in Jeddah, apparently on orders from Interior Minister Prince Nayef. They had just completed noon prayers at a rented guesthouse where they held monthly meetings. Their technical offense, mentioned by the police but never pressed as a formal charge, was meeting to pray without a permit. The next day, they were transferred to Buraiman Prison.23 At least six other Ahmadis were arrested in early January 2007, and all were eventually deported. When some of the Ahmadis’ employers attempted to obtain their release, they were turned away with the words, “There is an order from Nayef, so don’t come to try to release them.” One detainee said that interrogators pressured him to reveal the names of other Ahmadis in the country. Two additional expatriate Ahmadis were arrested in F
ebruary 2007.24

  Shias

  Probably the brunt of Saudi Arabian religious repression falls on its Shia minority, who are excluded completely from the state’s extensive religious media and broadcasting programming.25 State online textbooks condemn Shias as “polytheists.”26 Common Shia practices, such as celebrating Muhammad’s birthday or visiting the tombs of renowned Muslims, are in principle forbidden, though may be permitted in parts of the Eastern Province, a largely Shia area. In mixed Shia and Sunni areas, authorities limit public observances of Ashura, in which Shias mark the martyrdom of the Prophet’s grandson, Ali. Shia books and tapes may be banned. While Shia judges may use their own sharia school to rule on inheritance, family law, or endowments, there have been only seven such judges, all based in the Eastern Province, with three serving on an appeals court. In other cases, Shias must appear in Sunni sharia courts. Government departments may also refuse to implement rulings issued by Shia judges. Courts may also ignore Shia testimony or give it less weight than that of Sunnis.27

  A 2001 fatwa by Sheikh Abd al-Rahman al-Barrak, who then held a royally approved position on a religious council, declared that Shias are raafidah, “rejecters of religion,” who cannot be “a group of Muslims.”28 In December 2006, apparently for emphasis, he issued another fatwa proclaiming them heretics and apostates, “bearing all the characteristics of infidels.” On January 21, 2007, Sheikh Abdullah bin Abdulrahman bin Jibrin declared that Shias are heretics and apostates who cooperate with Christians to kill Sunnis—especially in Iraq—and that they should be expelled from Sunni Muslim countries.29 On June 1, 2008, twenty-two Saudi sheikhs, including al-Barrak and bin Jibrin, publicly denounced Hezbollah and also Shias in general as “a sect that the Jews inserted in the body of the Muslim Ummah a long, long time ago.”30 Shia Sheikh Tawfiq Al-Amer was imprisoned for a week because he condemned the statement and said that the authors spoke only for themselves and not for all Sunnis.31