Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide

by Paul Marshall

  Sadeq Abdul Karim Malallah, an advocate for the rights of Saudi Shias, was first imprisoned at the age of seventeen in 1988 for throwing stones at a police car.32 During his imprisonment, he was reportedly physically abused and was transferred to a Mabahith prison after he resisted a judge’s pressure to abandon his Shia faith in return for a lighter sentence. Malallah was then accused of making blasphemous statements while in jail, including the statement that Muhammad, not God, had authored the Qur’an. Although he recanted the alleged offending statements before the court, the judges stated that the statements’ severity made it impossible to waive the penalty for blasphemy despite his repentance. His appeals to a higher court and to King Fahd were both denied, and he was publicly executed by beheading on September 3, 1992.33 In 2002, as many as seventeen Saudi Shias were facing execution or life imprisonment for heresy.34

  In February 2007, a Sunni human rights activist was placed under arrest for meeting with leading Shia cleric Sheikh Hasan al-Saffar.35 Between fall 2008 and spring 2009 alone, Saudi security forces reportedly intervened to ban a Shia funeral procession, seized banners intended to mark the start of Ashura, broke up a Shia religious assembly and arrested its organizer, arrested four brothers who had arranged Shia activities, and arrested two Shia religious leaders. One of them—Sheikh Ali Hussein Al-Amar, arrested on May 17, 2009—was charged with financing Shia religious activities.36

  In May 2008, Ali Sibat, a Shia Muslim from Lebanon who claimed to offer psychic predictions and advice on his popular show on Lebanese satellite television, was arrested by the mutawa’in while on pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. After being held for over a year, he was sentenced to death on November 9, 2009, for practicing witchcraft. His lawyer states that he was deceived into believing that if he made a confession, he would be released. Instead, he was forced to appear on a Saudi religious TV program and repeat the confession, which was then used to help convict him.37

  In February 2009, religious police filmed Shia women on pilgrimage at a cemetery in Medina believed to be the burial place of many of Muhammad’s descendents. The women’s male relatives, outraged by this invasion of privacy, insisted that the police turn over the footage, but they were arrested for their efforts on the women’s behalf. This set off riots by thousands of Shia pilgrims, many of whom were arrested or injured. There are reports that government forces fired live ammunition, and one Shia scholar reportedly was stabbed at the entrance to the Prophet’s Mosque by a man shouting, “Kill the rejectionist.” However, the Interior Ministry denied that anyone had been injured. In early March, King Abdullah declared that those arrested would be released, but, in March, there was a second wave of arrests. Since this incident, Saudi authorities have increased efforts that interfere with Shias praying collectively.38

  Ismailis

  While Shia in general suffer discrimination, one particular group, Ismailis, suffers even worse treatment. The Organization of the Islamic Conference summit held in Mecca in December 2005 did not even acknowledge Ismailis as Muslims. Ismailis in the kingdom are forbidden to publish their own prayer books. In September 2006, at least sixty Ismailis were in prison over riots that occurred in 2000. In 2008, at least eighteen remained in jail.39

  Hadi Al-Mutif is probably Saudi Arabia’s longest-serving blasphemy prisoner. He enrolled in the Najran police training camp, where, in December 1993, during afternoon prayers, he allegedly made a joke about praying on “the penis of the prophet.” Al-Mutif denies this.40 Three people reported him, and he was arrested on January 20, 1994. Soon after, he was transferred to the custody of the secret police—the Mabahith—whom he states beat him and deprived him of sleep. In December 1994, he was tried in Najran General Court on charges of “insulting the Prophet.” Al-Mutif says that the judge told him not to deny the charges unless he wanted to be returned to the Mabahith for additional “interrogation.” After six short hearings, in which he was denied legal representation, he was sentenced to death for apostasy. His family asked the head of the Saudi Commission on Human Rights, Turki Al-Sudairy, to intervene, and he sent letters to the king asking that Al-Mutif be given a clean cell and his health be monitored.41

  Al-Mutif went on a hunger strike on September 5, 2006, that ended on September 13, after he had collapsed on September 11. Prison officials responded by placing him in solitary confinement, without access to medical care, where he reportedly attempted suicide twice during the first month. After two messages that Al-Mutif taped about his case were played on Al-Hurra television, the government moved him from Najran General Prison to solitary confinement in the Mabahith’s maximum-security prison in Najran, where he has remained. Many observers believe that his Ismaili faith was one reason that he was sentenced to death. His superiors had reportedly criticized his Ismaili faith prior to turning him over to the police, and the judges in the case displayed anti-Ismaili bias. The Chief Judge of the appeals court declared, “You are a corrupt minority. You don’t belong to Islam in any form. You have no creed or religion.” International organizations have pleaded for his release which is perhaps why the death sentence has not yet been carried out. However, he was denied the customary furlough to attend his father’s funeral. In 2015 USCIRF was told by Saudi officials that his only recourse is a king’s Pardon, (In 2006, an Ismaili high-school student was sentenced to fourteen years in prison and to 4,000 lashes for uttering the same phrase that Mutif had allegedly used.)42

  On April 23, 2000, tensions erupted into violence between security forces and Ismailis in Najran, considered the spiritual seat of the Sulaimani Ismailis. Based on differences between the Sunni and Ismaili systems of calculating its exact date, police had closed all Ismaili mosques during Eid al Fitr, a provocative act somewhat comparable to closing all churches on Christmas. Security forces then raided an Ismaili mosque, arrested an imam, and charged the imam with “sorcery.”43 Over 100 Ismailis (some reports say 400 to 500), including prominent religious leader Hajj Mohamed Al-Saadi, were arrested, and two Ismaili teachers—Sheikh Ali bin Dhib al-Mahan and Mahdi bin Dhib al-Mahan—were charged with sorcery.44 Many of those detained reported torture, including beatings, electric shock, stress positions, sleep deprivation, and forced confessions. Seventeen received death sentences, and sixty-five received life terms. Often, the trials were secret, and some were unaware that they had even been tried and sentenced.45 In December 2002, Al-Saadi was released, the sentences of the seventeen men on death row were reduced to ten-year prison terms, and others’ prison terms were shortened.46

  On January 15, 2002, Ahmad Turki al Sa’ab, an Ismaili leader, was arrested after giving an interview to the Wall Street Journal in which he criticized Saudi policy toward Ismailis. On February 4, 2002, two others—Hamad ‘Ali Daseeny al-Hutailah and Hamad Qulayan al-Zbeyd—believed to have been present during the interview, were also arrested. The government says they threatened national security through contact with foreign entities.47 The only direct quotation from al Sa’ab in the final Journal article was, “We love our country, but we believe that the government is making a mistake against us.” Al Sa’ab was not permitted counsel, was reportedly tortured, and, on April 23, 2002, was sentenced to seven years in prison and 1,200 lashes.48 His sentence was later reduced to half a year in jail, probably in order to deflect international criticism in a high-profile case.49 Al Sa’ab was rearrested on May 13, 2008, along with six other Ismailis, after he presented King Abdullah with a petition signed by seventy-seven Najran residents requesting the release of Al-Mutif and seventeen people in prison since the 2000 riots and listing grievances against the governor of Najran province.50

  Sufis

  Many Sufirituals and literature are prohibited by Saudi authorities. The late Sufileader Sheikh Mohammed Alawi al-Maliki was labeled an apostate by some Wahhabi clerics and barred from teaching in the Grand Mosque in Mecca, even though his father and grandfather had both taught there.51 In 2003, sixteen men from the Al Jouf region were arrested for possessing Sufi literature, and Saudi authorities
temporarily closed a weekly Sufi gathering in 2005.52

  There have been some signs since 2003 that Sufis may be able to practice their faith more easily. In June 2004, Sheikh al-Maliki was invited as a Sufi representative to a royally authorized assembly on religious reform. In October, then–Crown Prince Abdullah attended the Sheikh’s funeral, which drew more than 200,000 people.53 The popular Wahhabi cleric Salman al-Odah also met with Sufi leader Abdallah Fadaaq in spring 2006.54 However, the destruction of Sufi shrines and restrictions on Sufi literature continue. Followers of the Shafi’i and Maliki schools of sharia are prohibited from leading prayers at the Grand Mosque and are often castigated as Sufis by their critics.55

  Sunnis

  Like others, many Sunni victims have been accused of blasphemy, not necessarily because of theological arguments, but because of brief, often off-the-cuff comments, or because they are alleged to be sorcerers. In May 2005, the religious police arrested Fawza Falih for allegedly practicing witchcraft. She was sentenced to death in April 2006, reportedly because of several accusations, including one from a man who claimed her sorcery caused his impotence. In September 2006, an appeals court overturned this sentence and returned the case to the lower court, which nonetheless reinstated it, claiming that protecting “the creed, souls, and property of this country” demanded her execution. While imprisoned, Falih, who is illiterate, was reportedly coerced into fingerprinting a confession of whose content she was unaware.56

  Egyptian pharmacist Mustafa Ibrahim, who lived in Arar, was accused of using black magic to separate a neighbor from his wife. As evidence, authorities cited books, candles, and herbs discovered in his residence. The Saudi Press Agency later reported that Ibrahim had “confessed to adultery with a woman and desecrating the Qur’an by placing it in the bathroom” at a local mosque.57 As with many other cases, there are concerns that his confession was extracted under torture. In April 2007, Ibrahim was sentenced to death because, by “violating the boundaries set by God,” he was no longer a Muslim but an apostate. He was executed in November 2007.58

  In early 2007, Sabri Bogday, a Turkish barber in Jeddah, had a dispute with an Egyptian neighbor, who then reported him to the police. According to the Egyptian, during their altercation, Bogday had cursed God and Muhammad. The case was first heard on June 13, 2007, and, after eight hearing sessions, on March 31, 2008, the court declared that the alleged remarks proved him guilty of apostasy and then sentenced him to death. On May 1, 2008, the Mecca appeals court declined to overturn his sentence.59 Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the head of the Turkish parliament’s Human Rights Commission, sought a reprieve for Bogday, and Turkish president Abdullah Gul wrote to King Abdullah on his behalf.60 However, because the punishment was considered hudud, religiously required, Bogday was not eligible for a pardon. On further appeal, if his crime were judged to be disbelief, he could repent and avoid the death penalty, but if judged heresy, he could not.61

  In what was turning out to be a very bad year for Turkish barbers in Saudi Arabia, in May 2008, authorities arrested Ersin Taze, who owned a barber shop in Riyadh, for “insulting the Prophet Muhammad.” Several charges were dropped due to lack of evidence. According to one Turkish diplomat, “The [Turkish] embassy, after knowing that Taze is being implicated falsely, requested Prince Salman to intervene. … The prince ordered local officials to speed up the trial or release the accused if there is no evidence against him.” Taze was released on May 30, 2008.62

  Sunni Reformers

  Other Sunnis are persecuted because they seek cultural, political, and religious reform. Like that of Iran, Saudi Arabia’s government regards itself as the embodiment of Islam, so criticism of the ruling powers can be treated as criticism of Islam itself. One Jeddah businessman lamented of the clergy: “If you are against them, you are against Islam. If you criticize them, you criticize Islam.”63 This also raises the issue of takfir, accusing people, including Muslims, of apostasy, which can be interpreted by fanatics as a justification for murder. Though, since the beginning of Saudi Arabia’s own terrorist scare in 2003, the Interior Ministry has launched a reeducation campaign that attempts to discredit takfiri thinking; officials continue to condemn Muslims with differing views as “unbelievers.”64

  Sheikh Saleh al-Lihedan, then head of the Supreme Judiciary Council, on September 9, 2008, issued a fatwa making it permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV stations that “broadcast immorality” (an authorization he later said applied only to proper authorities and following a trial). His fellow cleric, Abdallah Ben Jabreen, then on the Council of Senior Religious Scholars, defended him: “[T]hose (writers) and journalists and satellite TVs who attack scholars, and particularly well-known sheikhs, and publish bad bulletins about them—they must be punished … even by lengthy imprisonment … or by dismissing them from their jobs, and flogging and rebuking.”65 In February 2010, Sheikh Abd al-Rahman al-Barrak declared that whoever permitted the mixing of men and women in places of education and employment “is an infidel. … Either he retracts or he must be killed.”66 In the opening fatwa of a government booklet distributed in 2005 by the Saudi embassy in the United States, the late Grand Mufti Bin Baz responded to a question about a Muslim preacher in a European mosque who said “declaring Jews and Christians infidels is not allowed.” Bin Baz accused the unnamed European cleric of apostasy: “He who casts doubts about their infidelity leaves no doubt about his own infidelity.” This echoes long-standing and widely distributed official religious edicts that “innovative imams” are “heretics and their prayers are invalid.”67 In 2001, during a class about ideas of love in poetry, teacher Mohammad Al-Suhaimi, who taught Arabic literature at middle- and high-school levels in Riyadh, said that love is a “noble thing.”68 When asked if love was not all about marriage, he replied that in a typical Saudi marriage, where the couple often do not know each other well before the wedding, “the emotions tend to be amiability and compassion.” He also said that music, forbidden by Wahhabi hard-liners, is a gift from God, although adding that its permissibility is disputed. He explained, “I asked my students to love God instead of fearing Him…. I teach teenagers who need love and affection at a difficult period in their lives. I will not turn everything in their lives into fear and terror, especially their relationship with God.”69

  Based on remarks by some students, critics contended that Al-Suhaimi endorsed premarital sex and recommended that students reduce their fear of God. He was then suspended, and complaints were brought to Prince Abdul Rahman bin Abdul Aziz, Deputy Minister of Defense and Aviation, who had Al-Suhaimi arrested, without filing any formal charges.70 After twenty-two days in prison, Al-Suhaimi staged a hunger strike and was released, but, in 2003, he was tried on allegations of encouraging adultery, sodomy, masturbation, music, and smoking tobacco. He was also accused of degrading the prophet Muhammad and his teachings. The five accusing students were fifteen years old at the time and were apparently under pressure from an Islamic Studies teacher to incriminate Al-Suhaimi. Al-Suhaimi responded that he had never made any such statements concerning sex but had rather been discussing love, and other students in the class were willing to corroborate his version, but they were not given the opportunity to testify.71 While he was ultimately found innocent of apostasy, he was found guilty of “un-Islamic behavior” and, on March 9, 2004, sentenced to 700 lashes and three years’ imprisonment. After he publicly recanted his supposedly blasphemous statements and declared his faith in Islam, his sentence was reduced to 300 lashes. He received a royal pardon in December 2005, was released from prison, was eventually reinstated as a teacher, and began to write a weekly column in Al-Watan newspaper.72

  One of the more famous cases of blasphemy and related laws to repress political dissent concerns reformers Ali al-Domaini, Abdullah al-Hamid, and Matrouk al-Faleh. The three men were part of a group of thirteen first arrested in March 2004 in connection with a petition they had circulated advocating the creation of a constitutional monarchy.
73 Their ten colleagues were released in exchange for a promise to desist from pro-reform activities, but al-Domaini, al-Hamid, and al-Faleh rejected the deal. As a result they were accused of offenses including “incitement against the Wahhabi school of Islam” and, according to the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, “introducing ‘Western terminology’” in their calls for reform. On May 15, 2005, al-Faleh received six years in prison, al-Hamid, seven, and al-Domaini, nine for “stirring up sedition and disobeying the ruler.”74 In August 2005, King Abdullah pardoned all three. However, in February 2007, al-Faleh was rearrested, probably due to his criticism of the prison conditions for several other Saudi reformers—themselves jailed for organizing a women’s protest over the lengthy detention without charge of alleged terror suspects.75

  Mohammad Al-Harbi was a high-school chemistry teacher in Ein Al-Juwa, Al-Qassim. In mid-2004, he was accused by other teachers and some of his twelfth-grade students of “mocking religion,” “praising unbelievers,” preventing students from performing ablutions, and practicing witchcraft. They also claimed that Al-Harbi had ridiculed bearded men, an especially dubious charge in light of the fact that Al-Harbi himself had a beard. He responded that Islamic studies teachers were angered by his passionate lectures attacking terrorists and extremists after the 2003 Al-Hamra Compound explosions and were looking for a pretext to remove him. He had reportedly also drawn the ire of colleagues by talking positively about the Bible, speaking favorably of Jews, and supporting the use of critical thinking to reconcile apparent contradictions between the Qur’an and the Sunna. Following the complaints, the Ministry of Education transferred Al-Harbi to an administrative post and tried him for blasphemy. His attorney, Abdul Rahman Al-Lahem, said the trial violated many legal procedures, since no witnesses other than those responsible for the complaint testified. Nor was Al-Harbi allowed to question the complainants. Also, jurisdiction over a case involving “sacrilege” properly belonged to a special religious court. In November 2005, Al-Harbi received a sentence of 750 lashes, to be given at a rate of fifty each week over the course of fifteen weeks, and three years in jail. The case drew substantial domestic and international attention; in early December, then–Crown Prince Abdullah, and now king, overturned the sentence.76