Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide

by Paul Marshall

  Ali Ahmad Said Asbar is often regarded as the greatest contemporary Arab poet and is more commonly known by his pen name, Adonis or Adunis. He is Syrian by birth and has established most of his reputation while living in Lebanon and, for the later part of his life, Paris. On October 13, 2008, he gave a lecture at Algeria’s National Library arguing that Islamist attempts to impose their religion on society and the state are wrong. Islamists responded by accusing him of being an “apostate,” something that, of course, could lead to his death. In the meantime, Algeria’s Minister of Culture denounced his “ideological deterioration” and fired the library’s director for inviting him.20

  Jordan

  In the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, King Abdullah holds broad executive powers and may dissolve Parliament and dismiss his cabinet, which he selects, at his discretion. The lower house of the National Assembly, elected through universal adult suffrage, is limited in its ability to initiate legislation and cannot enact laws without the assent of the upper house, which is appointed by the king. Of Jordan’s 5.8-million population, 95 percent is Sunni Muslim, with 1 percent Shia and Druze, and 4 percent Christian, predominantly Greek Orthodox. The country is also 98 percent ethnic Arab, with a large Palestinian component, and 1 percent each Circassian and Armenian. The legal system is based on a combination of sharia and French codes, with sharia courts handling personal matters for Muslims—including marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance—while special tribunals of respective religious communities exercise jurisdiction over non-Muslims.

  Converts can suffer from family violence. In 2003, Zena, an Iraqi widow who had converted from Islam to Christianity in Jordan, was kidnapped by her brother, who took her back to Iraq where he beat her daily in order to force her to return to Islam. She managed to escape, returned to Jordan, and was given protection by her church, but she has been on the run from her brothers who have come to Jordan to find her. She had been unable to gain asylum in a Western country.21

  There are also some cases in which people accused of apostasy have had their rights removed by sharia courts, and they can become legally almost nonexistent. An important precedent was set in September 2004, when a convert to Christianity, Samer Muhammad Khair Talib al-Aidy, was arrested on charges of apostasy—the first case of its kind in modern Jordan. Samer refused to renounce his Christian faith and was found guilty and stripped of his civil rights. This judgment included the annulment of his marriage, his inheritance, and all documents that he had ever signed. The court ruling stated that he no longer had a legal religious identity and therefore possessed no property rights and could not be legally employed; it also declared his marriage annulled, and he could only remarry his wife if he converted back to Islam; potentially he could lose custody of his children. Having received death threats from his brothers, he fled the country and found asylum in the United States.22

  In March 2008, Muhammad Abbad al-Qader Abbad, who had converted to Christianity fifteen years before, together with his Christian wife, Muna al-Habash, and Salam, one of his children, was beaten for his apostasy by the relatives of a convert living with the family. Abbad’s father also reported him to the police and demanded custody of Abbad’s two children. When Abbad went to the police to report the beating, he was charged with apostasy and brought before a sharia court. Abbad claimed that, due to his lack of real faith, he had never been a Muslim. As a result, the court sentenced him to a week’s imprisonment for contempt of court. He was released on bail after he was hospitalized due to his injuries. At a second hearing, Abbad refused to deny his Christian faith and fled the country before the trial had ended, fearing that he would lose his rights and custody of his children. In June 2008, the court annulled his marriage in absentia.23

  Article 5 of Jordan’s 1998 Press and Publication Law forbids publication of “anything that conflicts with the principles of freedom, national responsibility, human rights, and values of the Arab and Islamic nation.”24 Two journalists, Jihad Al-Momani and Hussein Al-Khalidi, were arrested in January 2006 and charged with “denigrating the Prophets in public” and “insulting God,” after they published three cartoons of Muhammad in the newspaper al-Shihan. Al-Momani, the chief editor, was immediately fired. In February 2006, each received a two-month prison sentence, although they were immediately released on bail.25 Al-Momani says that he has received death threats.26

  Jordan’s grand mufti, Noah Alqdah Samas, accused Islam Samham, a Jordanian poet and journalist, of apostasy in 2008. There was terminology from the Qur’an in Samas’s Arabic verses, along with lines that compared the poet’s loneliness with the loneliness of Yusuf, a prophet from the Qur’an. Samham was accused by the Printing and Publication Department of “harming the Islamic faith and violating the press and publication law for combining the sacred words of the Qur’an with sexual themes.”27 He received death threats while waiting for the court’s decision and on June 22, 2009, was sentenced to one year in prison and a $14,000 fine.28

  Jordanian officials have also attempted to use the country’s laws to prosecute foreign acts of blasphemy. Court orders have summoned Dutch MP Geert Wilders to appear before the Jordanian public prosecutor under charges of blasphemy and “contempt of Muslims” because of his anti-Islam film, Fitna.29 Similarly, a Danish cartoonist and ten newspaper editors are being prosecuted in absentia for blasphemy and “threatening the national peace.” The punishment for blasphemy in Jordan is up to three years of imprisonment, though it is unlikely that Jordan will be successful in forcing any extradition. However, Wilders has expressed concern that an arrest warrant issued through Interpol could lead to extradition from other countries that he may visit.30

  Morocco

  Since Morocco gained its independence from France in 1956, its royal family has ruled the country. The two legislative chambers serve as “debating” forums rather than as autonomous bodies, and the several opposition parties are weak. No political party is allowed to challenge the monarch’s ultimate authority. About 99 percent of Morocco’s thirty-one-million-person population is Sunni Muslim, and the remainder is Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and Shia. The constitution establishes Islam as the official religion and the king, now Mohammed VI, as “Commander of the Faithful and the Supreme Representative of the Muslim Community.” As such, he is charged with ensuring “respect for Islam.” Article 106 of the constitution says that the constitutional provisions related to the place of Islam cannot be changed.

  The 1958 Press Code, amended in 2002, provides severe penalties for speaking ill of Islam. Article 29 of the code forbids the import of writings that “infringe the Islamic religion.” Articles 38 and 41 establish a penalty of three to five years in addition to a 10,000- to 100,000-dirham fine for the publication of such writing. No similar law exists for infringing or offending other religions.31 Christians who are foreign visitors or converts from Islam have been monitored, arrested without charge, and deported or imprisoned for missionary activity, an offense punishable by law. There are well-publicized cases of authorities punishing blasphemy.

  The Moroccan government has also taken steps to outlaw literature comparing Islam and Christianity. In November 2008, it banned an issue of the French magazine L’Express International because it contained material deemed “offensive to Islam.” The issue, dubbed “The Jesus-Mohammad Shock,” contained a number of articles that drew similarities between the two religions—including comparing Jesus and Mohammad. The magazine’s editors were surprised at Morocco’s response since they had taken extra care to publish an issue that considered Muslim sensitivities and they released it during a period when the government was promoting interfaith dialogue with the West.32

  Although voluntary conversion from Islam is in principle legally acceptable, the authorities have harassed “apostates” and others. Article 220 of the penal code prescribes a prison term of six months to three years for “anyone who employs incitements to shake the faith of a Muslim or to convert him to another religion.” This has been used agains
t Christians thought to be involved, directly or indirectly, in “proselytism.” In 2010, International Christian Concern reported that Jamaa Ait Bakrim was serving a fifteen-year prison term for “proselytizing” and “destruction of goods of others.” In 1993, Jamaa had returned to Morocco from Europe, where he converted to Christianity. In 1994, he was placed in a mental hospital in Inezgane for proselytizing. In 1996, he was sentenced to a year in prison for putting up a Christian cross in public. In 2001, he was prosecuted again, and, in 2005, he was sentenced to fifteen years and was being held in Prison Centrale, in Kenitra.33

  The authorities have also, on occasion, interpreted Article 220 broadly, harassing those converts who have merely associated with other Christians and Muslims. Similarly, while the government permits the display and sale of Bibles in English, French, and Spanish, it limits access to those published in Arabic by blocking their import and sale, even though there is no law strictly prohibiting them.34

  In July 2004, authorities initially confiscated and refused to renew the passports of five converts. Later, they all received their passports, but it has been reported that two of them were harassed and interrogated at length by the police.35 In January 2005, a Christian convert named Hamid al-Madany was arrested without charge after a photocopy of his passport was found in the possession of a Western missionary who had been arrested for distributing Bibles. Hamid was released on bail, and in October 2005, all legal proceedings against him were dropped.36 In 2010, extremists began posting images of dozens of Christian converts and their families on Facebook, calling them “hyena evangelists” who are trying to “shake the faith of Muslims,” and giving their addresses.37

  Foreigners

  In one curious incident, Gilberto Orellana, the conductor of the San Salvador symphony orchestra, was living in Morocco, having been invited by Moroccan officials to teach at the prestigious National Conservatory. In December 1994, he was arrested, along with five Moroccan associates, and sentenced to a year in prison for the crime of proselytizing. Orellana admitted that at a dinner party, when asked, he had spoken to friends about his Christian faith. This was apparently what led to the police raid, nine days of interrogation, and a prison sentence. A few days later, he was released, taken to the Spanish border, and banished from Morocco for five years. Three of Orellana’s five friends were released immediately. The other two, who were imprisoned with him, suffered physical abuse at the hands of the authorities. One was reportedly tortured with electric shocks; the other suffered a broken arm. The men were only released after they had made a declaration of Muslim faith.38

  In November 2006, Sadek Noshi Yada, a German tourist, was sentenced to six months in jail and fined 500 dirhams for “shaking the faith” of Muslims by distributing books and CDs on Christianity to young Muslim Moroccans. Prior to this, the local media had declared that a secret Christian proselytizing campaign was being launched in the area.39 In March 2009, five European women—four Spaniards and one German—were purportedly caught “red-handed” attempting to convert local Muslims to Christianity. The women were later expelled from the country, although subsequent reports indicate that they were not “proselytizing” at all, but simply holding a Bible study with twenty fellow Christians; all of them were arrested in Casablanca and held overnight for interrogation. Though Morocco prides itself on its religious tolerance (and it is much more tolerant than some other countries in its neighborhood), the number of Christians arrested in recent years for holding illegal religious gatherings does not speak well for its respect for freedom.40

  On February 9, 2010, over sixty officers arrested eighteen Moroccan Christians and their American pastor in a private home. Of the Christians arrested, five were small children ranging in age from infant to four years old; the group was held and interrogated for fourteen hours. Eventually, they were released, and the American was deported. The group had been charged with “shak[ing] Muslims’ faith and undermining the Kingdom’s religious values” by trying to recruit Muslims for Christianity.41 Following these arrests and vague accusations of “proselytism,” the Moroccan government began to expel dozens of expatriate Christian workers. Further expulsions began in May 2010 until the total exceeded 100. The expulsions covered Christians of all denominations and included people who had been in the country many years, and several were married to Moroccans. Some were staff of an orphanage, the Village of Hope, which raised more than thirty Moroccan children in a family setting and had a policy of not proselytizing. Because of the expulsions, many of the children were separated from their adoptive parents. Several of the expulsions appeared to violate a Moroccan law stating that expatriates resident in the country for more than ten years cannot be deported unless they have committed a crime. The expatriates consistently maintained that they had not violated the law on proselytizing, but the country appeared to be sliding into intolerance of Christians.42

  Muslims

  In the Sunni-dominated country of Morocco, Shia Muslims also have a difficult time, and some of this is connected to political associations with Iran. In March 2009, Morocco cut off diplomatic relations with Iran, in part due to accusations that Iranians were attempting to spread Shia in Morocco. These allegations were based on Moroccan intelligence reports indicating that Iranian diplomats were working to spread Shiism throughout North Africa. The Moroccan government viewed this as extremely hostile and threatening, believing that it aimed “to alter the religious foundations of the Kingdom, [to] attack the foundations of the Moroccan people’s ancestral identity, and to attempt to undermine the unity of the Muslim religion and the Sunni Maliki rite in Morocco.”43 On April 2, 2009, a spokesman stated: “[T]he Kingdom, whose foundations are grounded in Islam and the Sunni Maliki rite, can never tolerate serving as a hotbed for spreading Shiism and Christian proselytizing.… The freedom of belief does not mean conversion to another religion.”44

  Reformers can also face problems. In September 2009, six members of Morocco’s Alternative Movement for Individual Freedom (MALI) were arrested near Mohammedia for eating publicly during Ramadan. The group is the first in Morocco to publicly demonstrate for the right not to observe Ramadan, and its members have been labeled “agitators” by the Islamic scholars of the local province. MALI’s spokesmen denied being anti-Islam and argued that their stance was merely “in favor of individual freedom.” The group members face up to six months’ imprisonment.45

  Turkey

  Mustapha Kemal Ataturk’s secular, nationalistic legacy still influences Turkish politics and culture, and Article 24 of the constitution forbids the state to be established on religious principles. Nevertheless, the country’s population of seventy-three million is predominantly Muslim, mostly Sunni, though with ten to twelve million Alevis (see section following). Only 0.2 percent are Christian, Jewish, Baha’i, and Ezidi. This predominance of Islam creates tension between Turkey’s secular constitution and its Islamic identity. Since November 2002, the Justice and Development (AK) Party, whose roots lie in the Islamic Welfare Party that was banned in 1998 for “conspiring against the secular order,” has won sweeping majorities in three general elections by promising to end governmental corruption and put the country on a path toward European Union (EU) membership.

  While the Turkish constitution provides for religious freedom, the state maintains tight control over religion, dictating the content of Friday mosque sermons and monitoring radio and television stations for “misuse of religion.”46 In Turkey, with its almost-century-old secular traditions, it is certainly possible to criticize religion and religious beliefs, including Islam. Turkish intellectuals can write critiques and analyses that would be banned, or worse, in much of the Muslim world. In this sense, there are not restrictions on blasphemy as such. However, one of the country’s idiosyncrasies is that the state’s defense of nationalism can almost include a ban on criticism of Islam. Article 301 of the penal code, passed in 2005, made it a crime to, inter alia, publicly denigrate “Turkishness,” a provision amended in 2008 to r
efer instead to the “Turkish nation.” At least fifty journalists have been charged under the article, including Nobel Prize–winning novelist Orhan Pamuk; the charges against Pamuk were later dropped.47 This law can incorporate a religious dimension because Islam is regarded as an integral part of the Turkish nation. So, in a peculiar twist for a secular constitution, insulting Islam can be viewed as tantamount to insulting the Turkish nation and is therefore forbidden.48 Also, Article 216 provides sentences of one to three years for openly inciting enmity or hatred toward another person based on religion and six months to a year for openly denigrating religious values.

  A further complication for religious freedom is Turkey’s so-called deep state, a term describing secular-nationalist circles in the army, police, and other elements of state administration.49 Along similar lines, there have been allegations that an ultranationalist group, Ergenekon, has been involved in several cases of religious persecution, and prosecutors have been investigating the organization and making arrests, claiming that members have sought to mount a coup.

  Turkey’s unique blend of Islam and secular nationalism became evident in the murder of Hrant Dink, a man who defies easy categorization. Though in Turkey, he was often called the “voice of Armenians.” Dink did not stress Armenian nationalism and was opposed to French and American bills on Armenian genocide.50 Yet, when, as editor-in-chief of the weekly Agos, he was convicted in 2005 under Article 301 for “insulting Turkish identity” by referring to the 1915 mass slaughter of Armenians as “genocide,” he became a target for nationalists.51 On January 19, 2007, he was shot and killed outside of his Istanbul office. When questioned, the suspect in the murder, Ogun Samast, age seventeen, proclaimed, “I shot him after saying the Friday prayers. I’m not sorry…He [Dink] said ‘I’m from Turkey but Turkish blood is dirty’ and that’s why I decided to kill him.”52