Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide

by Paul Marshall

  Nyamko Sabuni

  A similar situation confronted Nyamko Sabuni, who became Sweden’s minister of integration and gender equality in October 2006. Born in Burundi to exiled Congolese parents—a Muslim mother and a Christian father (she does not practice either religion)—Sabuni became the first Swedish cabinet minister of African origin. Her appointment was controversial due to her efforts to fight the “honor culture,” which she views as the source of abuses such as virginity checks, forced marriages, veiling, female genital mutilation (FGM), and violence against women, particularly within Muslim communities. She has called for compulsory gynecological exams to ensure that teenage girls have not been subjected to FGM and has asserted that girls under the age of fifteen—the age of consent in Sweden—should be prohibited from wearing the veil, arguing, “Nowhere in the Koran does it state that a child should wear a veil; it stops them being children.” She has been charged with “Islamophobia” and received strident criticism from Swedish Muslim groups, fifty of which petitioned for her removal soon after she was appointed. Due to death threats, she requires twenty-four-hour security, and her staff has ceased printing her daily activities on her website.76

  Souad Sbai

  Souad Sbai, head of Italy’s Association of Moroccan Women, was increasingly threatened after winning a seat in the Italian parliament in 2008. She is not an active Muslim but expresses pride in her heritage, emphasizing, “I’ve never talked about Islam … I’ve spoken about Muslims who treat women badly. And this is a crime?” As of April 2009, three men faced trial for making death threats against her and other unknown individuals. Sbai, who supports interfaith dialogue and has criticized the veil and burka, suspects that radical imams “are telling their followers, wrongly, that she insults Islam.”77 In 2009, she brought a court case against “Akrane H.,” who, in 2006, penned what she describes as “a death ‘fatwa’ … for which I had to live in fear for quite some time.” In addition to telling Sbai to “begin to pray to God, leave work for men” and that “a woman who does not cover her head must be hanged by the hair,” the letter claimed she had “been exposed as a ‘massihia’ (Christian),” which is, effectively, a charge of apostasy. In a landmark ruling, the court accepted Sbai’s argument that such a claim was a de facto death threat.78

  Kadra Noor

  On April 13, 2007, Kadra Noor—a prominent member of a Norwegian-Somali women’s organization—was severely beaten in downtown Oslo by a group of Somali men. In a 2000 hidden-camera documentary, she had called attention to Norwegian imams’ support for female genital mutilation. She was attacked after telling a Norwegian paper that “the Quran’s view of women should be interpreted again” and reported that “while I lay on the pavement they kicked me and screamed that I had trampled on the Koran. Several shouted Allah-o-okbar (God is great) and also recited from the Koran.” The Islamic Council of Norway denounced the attack, and two suspects were arrested.79

  Asra Nomani

  In the United States, after promoting a more assertive role for women in Islam, Muslim feminist and former Wall Street Journal writer Asra Nomani received death threats, including one from a caller who said he would “slaughter” both her and her parents if she did not “keep [her] mouth shut.” She has criticized gender segregation in mosques and helped organize mixed-gender services with female prayer leaders. Critics denounced Nomani as a “troublemaker” and accused her of having CIA and Mossad links. Members of her hometown mosque in Morgantown, West Virginia, have sought to banish her for “disrupting worship and spreading misinformation about Islam.” Nonetheless, she has refused to cease her efforts for women or her efforts against Wahhabi-style fundamentalists, who she believes are gaining increasing influence in American mosques with the help of abundant cash flows.80

  Amina Wadud

  Amina Wadud, a Virginia Commonwealth University professor of Islamic studies, led a mixed-gender prayer service in Manhattan. The service was held in an Episcopal church after three mosques declined to host it, and an art gallery offered but changed its mind upon receiving a bomb threat. Wadud was threatened, and the service was denounced widely in the Middle East, including by the Saudi grand mufti, who called it a ploy by “enemies of Islam,” and by an official of Al-Azhar University’s women’s college, who described it as an act of apostasy.81

  Shabana Rehman

  Stand-up comedian and columnist Shabana Rehman has received death threats for addressing questions of women, Islam, and integration through humor. In one routine, Rehman, whose family moved from Karachi to Oslo soon after her birth, comes on stage dressed in a burka, which she quips is not very practical when assembling IKEA furniture but great for scaring children, before shedding it to reveal a red cocktail dress. She criticizes arranged marriages, FGM, and sharia law, as well as Norway’s shortcomings in integrating its immigrant population. She mocks Norwegian “halal hippies” who disregard abuses within Islam for the sake of multiculturalism. In 2002, a group of conservative Muslim women symbolically excommunicated her over a protest she had staged against the honor killing of a Kurdish girl. In 2008, several months after she had promised to burn the Qur’an during one of her routines, unknown assailants shot at her sister’s Oslo restaurant, though no injuries resulted. Rehman has made such an impression in Norwegian politics that immigration debates are now commonly referred to as the “Shabana debate.” In a now-common pattern, critics have charged her with fueling prejudice against immigrants. The Norwegian immigration minister, however, praised her for stimulating conversation about how immigrant culture can be merged with Norwegian culture.82

  Naser Khader

  Those promoting tolerance and democratic values within Islam are also under threat. One is Syrian-born Naser Khader, who in 2001 became the first person of immigrant background to win a seat in the Danish parliament. A consistent foe of Islamic extremism, Khader formulated “Ten Commandments of Democracy,” among which he included free expression, nonviolence, and a promise to “separate politics and religion” and “never [to] place religion above the laws of democracy.”83 In September 2005, he refused to attend a meeting on Islamist militancy convened by the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, that Khader said would “legitimize radical religious leaders” who were also invited. Soon after his election, Khader required police protection due to death threats from the Nazi far right and Muslim extremists.84 Amidst the growing cartoon controversy, in 2006, he founded the Democratic Muslims Network to promote the voices of moderate Muslims. Calling himself a “cultural Muslim,” he stresses, “Of course you can be a democrat and a practicing Muslim simultaneously.… The goal is not to vote Islam away, but to vote democracy in.”

  Khader also organized a demonstration of moderate Muslims against Saudi Arabia for its assault on Denmark’s freedom of the press. Within a few weeks, his organization had acquired a membership of 1,500 but still remained a minor voice.85 Khader noted that many members had left the group due to threats, a particular problem for women.86

  He was threatened with death by Ahmed Akkari, one of the primary cartoon agitators, who said in March 2006 that if he “becomes minister for foreigners, or integration, shouldn’t two guys go see him to blow him up, him and his ministry?”87 After his remarks were captured on hidden camera, Akkari claimed that they were intended as a joke; he was investigated but not charged by Danish police, though the scandal did lead to his removal as spokesman for the Islamic Faith Community.88

  Ahmed Aboutaleb

  Moroccan-born Ahmed Aboutaleb was an Amsterdam alderman who stressed the need for immigrant integration. In 2004, he was denounced by Muslim extremists and Dutch racists alike. In the wake of van Gogh’s murder, he received death threats after he told a mosque audience that Muslims must accept common Dutch values, saying, “Anyone who doesn’t share these values would be wise to draw their conclusions and leave.” Van Gogh’s killer, Muhammed Bouyeri, called him a heretic; for his part, Aboutaleb, who has emphasized the complexity of Qur’anic interpretatio
n, said, “it makes me laugh when a kid like Mohammed B. thinks he can derive enough knowledge from the Koran in English and Dutch to think it is his duty to gun a person down.”

  Aboutaleb was one of the few Muslims present at the Amsterdam demonstration protesting van Gogh’s murder. He argued that, despite their possible distaste for van Gogh, others “should have been there to defend the rule of law.” He also contended that the Dutch government should have made stronger efforts to initiate a dialogue after van Gogh’s killing, emphasizing that “we have to draw a line, not between Muslims and non-Muslims, but between the good people and the bad people.”89 As of early 2005, Aboutaleb had to make his public appearances “always surrounded by people armed to the teeth.”90 In January 2009, he was appointed mayor of Rotterdam and has continued to tell his fellow immigrants, “Stop seeing yourself as victims, and if you don’t want to integrate, leave.”91

  Afshin Ellian

  Writer and law professor Afshin Ellian was a former member of a far-left Iranian party, who fled to the Netherlands in 1989. He quickly gained degrees in law and philosophy and eventually began contributing to Dutch newspapers. Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, he has stridently criticized both Islamism and its multiculturalist apologists. He responded to the van Gogh killing in an article titled “Make Jokes about Islam!” and has argued: “Free speech is in danger of being increasingly restricted by invoking ‘Islamophobia’ and ‘racism.’ … Luther was not a Catholicophobe. He was critical of the church. Voltaire was not a religiophobe. He was simply critical of the intolerant manifestations of religion. Should the Reformation have been warded off on the grounds that Luther ‘must not stigmatize all Catholics? ’”92 Like Hirsi Ali, Ellian has been written off as an “Enlightenment fundamentalist” by many of his coreligionists, and he, too, has required constant protection. He believes that “extremists are afraid that if Dutch society becomes a safe haven for an intellectual discussion of political Islam, it will be very dangerous for them.”93

  Canadian Reformers

  In Canada, Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC) spokesman Tarek Fatah earned enemies by opposing the use of sharia courts in Canada, advocating for gay rights in Islam, and criticizing a prominent British imam. He was forced to give up his position due to death threats against himself and his family. The leader of the larger and more reactionary Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC), Mohamed Elmasry, wrote in the CIC’s journal that Fatah was “well known in Canada for smearing Islam and bashing Muslims.” Fatah was attacked in 2003 for allegedly insulting Islam’s prophet Muhammad and was called an “apostate” while being assaulted in 2006.94

  In October 2006, Farzana Hassan Shahid, the MCC’s president, said that she and her colleagues were receiving threatening e-mails from Islamist radicals and that she was twice called an apostate for her heterodox positions on sharia and homosexuality, as well as her denunciations of terrorism. She called for Ontario’s attorney general, Michael Bryant, to expand hate-crime laws to cover threats made against her and other liberal Muslims, explaining that the law should “include or acknowledge accusations of blasphemy and apostasy into the existing hate laws so the public and legal frame work is sensitized to this issue.”95

  Two other Canadian Muslims, Prof. Salim Mansur, of Indian background, who has spoken against self-censorship in the name of sensitivity, and Raheel Raza, a Pakistani-Canadian, have also both been threatened with death for their views against radical Islam. Both spoke together with Tarek Fatah at an October 2008 conference, condemning gender segregation and criticizing the willingness of some Canadian leftists to abet Islamic extremism.96

  In April 2007, Pakistani-born journalist Jawaad Faizi was brutally assaulted outside the Canadian home of his editor, Amir Arain of the Pakistan Post, over his criticism of the Pakistani Muslim group Minhaj-ul-Quran. His article had questioned whether the group’s leader could really have written the prophet Muhammad’s name on the moon, as he had claimed. Callers began threatening Faizi and announcing to Arain, “You are not a Muslim, you are supporting Christians.” Faizi’s assailants told him he must stop writing against Islam, “or he would be attacked again.”97

  In 1972, when she was four years old, Irshad Manji’s family fled to Canada to escape Idi Amin’s regime in Uganda. Between the ages of nine and fourteen, she studied at a Canadian madrassa and was expelled after challenging her teachers on issues ranging from the prohibition of female prayer leaders to evidence for a Jewish conspiracy against Islam and, finally, for asking why Muhammad ordered his army to destroy a Jewish tribe. She became a highly successful television presenter, taking liberal positions and, as an open lesbian, speaking out on gay issues. Manji chose to call for the reform of Islam rather than abandoning her religion. Her 2004 book, The Trouble with Islam Today, denounces human rights abuses committed in the name of Islam, including anti-Semitism, crimes against women, and the continuance of slavery under some Islamic regimes. She argues that scriptural literalism, while a problem in all religions, has become mainstream among Muslims, helping shut down religious debate. In her view, the Qur’an should not be treated as the unquestionable, direct word of God.

  In addition to denunciations, she has received enough violent threats to convince her to hire a bodyguard and to bulletproof her home. Nonetheless, Manji avoids bringing a bodyguard to speaking engagements so that she can convince young Muslims, many of whom she believes share her concerns, that it is possible to speak out against extremism. Alongside the threats, she reports messages of gratitude from Muslims, especially young women, saying that she “is saying out loud words they have only whispered.” Manji argues: “Muslims in the West are best poised to revive Islam’s tradition of independent reasoning … we already enjoy the precious freedom to think, express, challenge and be challenged—all without fear of state reprisal.”98

  Other Reformers

  In 2001, Jordanian Islamist Abd al-Munim Abu Zant issued a fatwa calling for the scholar Khalid Duran, a U.S. resident who headed the Ibn Khaldun society, to be killed for apostasy. Duran had not left Islam but was subject to a worldwide smear campaign after the Council on American-Islamic Relations attacked his book, Children of Abraham: An Introduction to Islam for Jews. Duran, a strong proponent of interreligious dialogue, had written the book for the American Jewish Committee to “lift [the] cloud” over Jews’ perception of Islam as a result of the Mideast conflict. He wanted to “demonstrate Islam’s sublime spirituality” and to “persuade Jews that Islam should not be blamed for its malpractice by certain contemporary Muslims.” His car was vandalized, and he had to relocate to a safe house.99

  During the January 2009 fighting in Gaza, Islamic radicals sent death threats to French imam Hassen Chalghoumi, who was prominently involved in outreach to France’s Jewish community. Oil was poured on his car, and he required a bodyguard and police protection; his house had previously been vandalized after he participated in a Holocaust commemoration ceremony and urged Muslims to honor the victims.100

  In a 2004 Independent column, Islamic scholar Akbar Ahmed mourned the suppression of “the gentle voices of Islam” by governments determined to “stay in power at all costs.” Part of his article also lamented “vicious personal attacks” on the prophet. In the U.K., however, he was “denounced as an Uncle Tom for being too keen to have dialogue with Jews and Christians and far too impressed by Western civilisation.” He spoke at evensong at a Cambridge chapel and gave a lecture for Liberal and Progressive synagogues in the United Kingdom, but “[f]or this I was branded a Zionist agent—and received violent threats both from extremist Muslims appalled at my consorting with the ‘enemy’ and from racist Britons who told this ‘black bastard’ to ‘go home.’”101

  Former Muslims

  Whether atheists or converts to another religion, some former Muslims live in fear of attacks for apostasy, and those who have spoken out against this oppression often compound their endangerment.102 In January 2005, Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad of the militant Al Muhajiroun group, then living in Brit
ain, declared that in the restored caliphate that he wished to bring about, “Muslims could not convert to Christianity on pain of execution.” The Ireland-based European Council for Fatwa and Research—led by the ubiquitous Sheikh al-Qaradawi—sidesteps the question of extrajudicial executions for apostasy by declaring, “Executing whoever reverts from Islam is the responsibility of the state and is to be decided by Islamic governments alone.” The council justifies the (properly authorized) killing of “those who declare their action in public and may cause Fitna by bringing down the name of Allah (swt), His prophet (ppbuh) or the Muslims,” on the grounds that this is analogous to treason.103 This problem goes beyond fiery pronouncements by radicals or disingenuous Islamist figures: according to a 2007 report by the think tank Policy Exchange, 36 percent of British Muslims from the ages of sixteen to twenty-four, 37 percent of those between twenty-five and thirty-four, and 31 percent of British Muslims overall agreed “[t]hat Muslim conversion is forbidden and punishable by death.”104