Ibn Warraq
“Ibn Warraq,” a pseudonym historically used by Muslim dissidents, is a Pakistani ex-Muslim living in an undisclosed location in the United States and began writing critiques of Islam in the wake of the 1989 Salman Rushdie affair. To avoid attack, he keeps his identity and whereabouts hidden. Author of many books, including scholarly ones as well as the popular Why I Am Not a Muslim, he rarely appears in public. On one exceptional occasion, he did so wearing a disguise, and he has stated that not even his brother knows where he is. He hopes Qur’anic scholarship will help Muslim society grow “less dogmatic, more open,” as he believes biblical scholarship has done among Christians.105
Mina Ahadi
In 2007, ex-Muslims in three different European countries founded organizations to challenge the repression of apostates, but their leaders have been threatened and have had difficulty finding recruits. In February 2007, Iranian-born human rights activist Mina Ahadi helped establish the Central Council of ex-Muslims in Germany to assist those, particularly women, wishing to leave Islam. The group claimed forty members, many of whom had been active in communist politics in their home countries. Ahadi does not believe in the possibility of modernizing Islam from within but rather hopes to challenge the organizations that claim to represent all Muslims. Shortly after the organization’s launch, she received death threats and was placed under police protection. Other members were also “terrorized.”106
Maryam Namazie
Also in 2007, a group of former Muslims, led by human rights activist and feminist Maryam Namazie, established the Council of ex-Muslims of Britain. The council’s mandate was to challenge traditional Islamic punishments for apostasy and, as in Germany, provide non-religious immigrants an “alternative to the likes of the Muslim Council of Britain because we don’t think people should be pigeonholed as Muslims or deemed to be represented by regressive organizations like the MCB.” Namazie also denounced the British government’s “appeasement,” which she said had created social division by targeting “specific policies and initiatives” at Muslims. At its launch, twenty-five British ex-Muslims allowed themselves to be named as members. Namazie, who had received death threats, suggested that many people were still wary of joining due to “threats and intimidations.”107
Ehsan Jami
Ehsan Jami, a local council member for the Dutch Labor Party (PvdA), who moved to the Netherlands from Iran with his family at a young age, was initially attracted to militant Islamic ideology but was later motivated to leave Islam by events, including the van Gogh murder and the Danish cartoon crisis. He suffered three attacks; in one, a group of youths surrounded him at night and held a knife to his throat. After the third assault, in August 2007, when he was struck and pushed to the ground at a shopping center in Voorburg, he was given extra security.108 Jami launched an ex-Muslims’ group on September 11, 2007, calling for ex-Muslims to join in “breaking the taboo that comes with renouncing Islam but also taking a stand for reason, universal rights and values and secularism.”109 He declared, “Sharia schools say that they will kill the ones who leave Islam. In the West people get threatened, thrown out of their family, beaten up … We want that to change, so that people are free to choose who they want to be and what they want to believe in.”110
Jami also faced criticism from his own party. The deputy prime minister, Wouter Bos, stated that the group “offends Muslims and their faith.” Jami rejected the idea of joining Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party since his support of religious freedom placed him at odds with some of Wilders’s positions. However, on September 27, he collaborated with Wilders on a joint article, “We Will Never Be Silent,” which rejected a government official’s calls for them to moderate their rhetoric on Islam. The article urged immediate action against Islamization in the Netherlands, otherwise “we will relive the 1930s. Only that time it was Hitler, this time Mohammed.” After its publication, the local Labor party asked Jami to give up his council seat; he remained on the council as an independent. He closed his ex-Muslim committee in April 2008, stating that threats from Muslims were preventing people from joining.111
In spring 2008, Jami planned to make an animated film on the life of Muhammad that would have included images of the prophet sexually aroused in the presence of his nine-year-old wife. A Dutch Muslim group announced it would seek a ban on the film, while Jami proclaimed that it would be even more controversial than the 2005 Danish cartoons.112 However, he dropped the project after a request from the Netherlands’ justice minister and a warning that the Dutch government might be unable to protect him.113 In December 2008, he released a film entitled Interview with Muhammad, which contained a mildly confrontational interview with a masked man portraying Islam’s Prophet, who seemed in some cases open to a reformist interpretation of his teachings. Various Dutch Muslim groups dismissed the movie as a “tepid piece of fluff,” and in February 2009, in protest, the Muslim Spiritual Directorate of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, called for a boycott of Dutch flowers. Jami continues to face threats and requires constant protection.114
Wafa Sultan
Syrian-American psychiatrist Wafa Sultan began to question her faith when, in 1979, Muslim Brotherhood gunmen shouting “God is great” murdered her professor at the University of Aleppo. She maintains that many verses in the Koran say that you must kill those who do not believe in Allah. After emigrating to the United States, she contributed essays critical of extremist Islam to a Muslim reformist website. Sultan gained more attention and, in some quarters, notoriety, after an interview on the Al Jazeera television network in July 2005 in which she linked acts of violence by radical Muslims to “the savage and barbarian instincts aroused by teachings that call for refusing the other, killing him.” Her appearance was followed by a barrage of death threats, and Islamist radicals began mentioning her name on their websites.115
In a second Al Jazeera appearance on February 21, 2006, Sultan declared that the world was experiencing “not a clash of religions or a clash of civilizations” but “a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality … between those who treat women like beasts and those who treat them like human beings.” She also argued, “Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies.” She has subsequently received death threats and, in the summer of 2006, said she and her family were in hiding. She has also expressed concern about the safety of her family in Syria, stating that the secret police questioned two brothers after she appeared on Al Jazeera.116
She denounced Islam even more stridently on Al Jazeera in March 2008, and the network apologized for hosting an interview that “offended Islam.”117 This satisfied neither al-Qaradawi, who said that Sultan affronted Islam and blamed Al Jazeera “for allowing such a woman to appear,” nor the (American) Muslim Public Affairs Council, which said that Sultan “routinely insults and debases Muslims and everything they hold sacred” and accused Al Jazeera of “spreading Islamophobia.”118
Converts to Christianity
Converts from Islam to Christianity can face high risks.119 This can be illustrated by the example of Egyptian actor Omar Sharif, although he did not in fact leave Islam. In October 2005, he simply said, of his role as St. Peter in an Italian TV film, “[p]laying Peter was so important for me that even now I can only speak about it with difficulty.” Radicals read his remarks as a sign that he had become a Christian, and an Al-Qaeda-linked website declared, “He is a crusader who is offending Islam and Muslims and receiving applause from the Italian people. I give you this advice, brothers, you must kill him.”120
Converts do not need to be public figures to become targets. In September 2004, many Muslim-background converts to Christianity participating in a gathering for them in Falls Church, Virginia, stated that they faced death threats for leaving Islam. Registration and entry involved heavy security, and many participants used pseudonyms. Several reported keeping their conversion secret
from their own families due to fear of retaliation.
In Austria, a woman of Pakistani background who became a Christian was told by her father that she had two weeks to return to Islam or be killed. When she went to the authorities for help, they were apparently unable to comprehend why anyone would face such risks for the sake of religion and suggested she consider reverting to Islam.121
Nissar Hussein, living in a largely Pakistani immigrant area in Bradford, England, converted along with his wife from Islam to Christianity in 1996. Initially ostracized and taunted by their neighbors, the couple became targets of violence in 2001. Groups of young men followed them; a youth drove into Nissar’s parked car; an angry group threw rocks at his house, shouted death threats, and gave notice that his house would be burned down unless he returned to Islam. The police allegedly told Nissar to “stop being a crusader and move to another place.” Shortly afterward, the empty house next to the couple’s was set ablaze, bricks were thrown through their window, and Hussein’s wife was held hostage in her home for several hours. Hussein said he had “been utterly failed by the authorities.” Police ignored his complaints, claiming that defending the couple from violence was “not in the public interest.” In July 2006, the couple moved to a different neighborhood. Hussein’s story is not unique.122
A woman called Yasmin, who grew up Muslim in England and converted to Christianity in her thirties, told a Times reporter that after her family discovered her conversion, they disowned her. Her husband did the same to her children, a former friend attempted to strangle her, and neighbors forced her from her town: “We had bricks through our windows; I was spat at in the street because they thought I was dishonoring Islam. We had to call the police so many times. I had to go to court to get an injunction against my husband because he was inciting others to attack me.” When she moved to a new town, the attacks resumed, but she resolved not to move again. Instead she helped organize a clandestine support group for ex-Muslims. As of February 2005, her group had seventy members.123
In December 2007, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, who a month later was threatened for his comment about “no-go zones,” gave a speech warning that Muslim converts to Christianity in the United Kingdom are forced to live in fear. At the same event where he spoke, a thirty-two-year-old woman using the pseudonym “Hannah” recounted how she had fled home at the age of sixteen to escape sexual abuse by her father and an arranged marriage; she eventually had converted to Christianity after being sheltered by a Christian religious education teacher. Death threats against “Hannah” began after she was baptized. Armed with axes, knives, and hammers, a group of forty men, her father and uncle among them, assaulted her home. She said she had to move forty-five times in order to hide from relatives who demanded that she reconvert.
In November 2007, a new round of death threats prompted the police to place “Hannah” on an “at risk” list. Then married to a Church of England employee, she released a memoir titled The Imam’s Daughter. She said she refused to report her father to the police because of the shame it would bring upon her family, especially her mother, and because she suspected they would either not believe it or simply refuse to help her. According to a 2009 interview with the Times, when she had told a schoolteacher that her father was beating her, the school dispatched a social worker from within her community who refused to listen to her allegations and instead informed her father of her accusations, which led to additional abuse. The social worker subsequently told her, “It’s not right to betray your community.” She describes this as a common problem, when Muslim girls seeking to convert or to deal with abuse encounter British authorities eager to display multicultural sensitivity.124
Increased attention to the situation of converts in Europe and around the world came in April 2008, when Italian journalist Magdi Allam, born a Muslim in Egypt, converted from Islam to Christianity in a high-profile baptismal ceremony during an Easter Mass, where he was baptized by Pope Benedict XVI himself. Allam had been a strong critic of Islamic extremism for some time before ultimately deciding that the development of a moderate Islam was impossible. His attacks on radical Islam and support for Israel reportedly earned him a death sentence in 2003 from Hamas. A pro-Israel book he wrote in 2007, which was condemned by the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy, drew so many threats, with some Italian Muslims describing him as a “new Salman Rushdie,” that authorities enhanced his security detail.125
Allam explained that his conversion followed “a gradual and profound interior meditation,” conditioned by the fact that “for five years I have been confined to a life under guard, with permanent surveillance at home and a police escort for my every movement,” because of death threats from Islamic extremists in and outside of Italy. The intimidation that he faced as a Muslim reformist helped drive him from Islam. Allam also used the occasion to call for increased protection for Muslim converts to Christianity in Italy, of whom he said thousands “are forced to hide their faith out of fear of being assassinated by Islamic extremists who lurk among us.”126
The vice president of the Italian Islamic Religious Community expressed concern at the “high-profile” nature of Allam’s conversion. Italy’s deputy foreign minister for the Middle East, Ugo Intini, publicly attacked Allam’s “very harsh criticism” of Islam and called for the Vatican “to distance itself clearly from his statements.” Jordanian scholar Aref Ali Nayed of the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre, who had been involved in the “Common Word” initiative to improve Muslim-Christian relations, denounced Allam’s baptism as “provocative” and regretted that it came “at a most unfortunate time when sincere Muslims and Catholics are working very hard to mend ruptures between the two communities.” A Vatican spokesman later emphasized that the Vatican continued to place great importance on dialogue with Muslims and was not necessarily endorsing Allam’s controversial views, but the spokesman also implied that the high-profile baptism may have been carried out in order “to affirm the freedom of religious choice which derives from the dignity of the human person.”127
Closing
The targets of attacks over alleged insults to Islam are many and varied. Some are avowedly anti-Islam politicians. Others are artists or intellectuals who have intended only to criticize Islamic extremism, or clergymen who speak from their convictions, or even ordinary café owners who found themselves in the wrong neighborhood. Perhaps most targets are of Muslim background. Some are seeking to advance the interests of their coreligionists; others are ex-Muslims, either converts to Christianity or atheists. Some are Muslims with unorthodox views, while others are mainstream Muslims who denounce terrorism and violence. The only thing that they have in common is that they have acted or created or spoken in a way that offends the sensibilities—or frustrates the social and political ambitions—of Muslim fanatics and extremists.
Extrajudicial threats and attacks by vigilantes and terrorists have claimed more victims (including ones brutally murdered), and established a wider pattern of intimidation, silencing, and self-censorship, than have western legal processes. As Ben Elton and others have noted, there is already in place in much of Europe a set of taboos according to which certain things can no longer be said. The legally guaranteed freedom of religion of many European Muslims is restricted by the knowledge that they may be threatened, attacked, or harassed for a word of criticism or a change of faith.
PART IV
MUSLIM CRITICISM OF APOSTASY
AND BLASPHEMY LAWS
In this book, we do not analyze the development of notions of apostasy and blasphemy in Islamic or other history, nor do we assess their systematic treatment in Islamic jurisprudence and theology. Our concern is to survey the contemporary use of these notions to justify worldly punishments. Clearly, however, one important step in limiting or stopping their application to repress political and religious freedom is to show that such temporal punishments are not required by Islam. Consequently, we have asked three noted Muslim scholars to address this issue. They a
ll condemn disrespect for others’ beliefs, but they argue that Islam does not require temporal punishments for such offenses or purported offenses. Two of these essays are given in part IV, and one, “God Needs No Defense,” by the late Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid—the former president of Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, and head of Nahdatul Ulama, the world’s largest Muslim organization—is the book’s foreword.
Wahid outlines the nature of belief itself and argues eloquently that God does not need our defense from human blasphemy or, indeed, anything else. Moreover, those who seek to force their limited understanding on others may themselves be committing blasphemy and certainly coarsen Muslim society. He holds that the origins of blasphemy restrictions lie in the political ramifications of early Islam, when apostasy was tantamount to desertion from the caliph’s army. In today’s very different situation, temporal punishments for blasphemy and apostasy threaten not only religious minorities but also the right of Muslims to speak freely about their faith; they also hinder faith itself, which always includes growth and seeking for the truth.
In chapter 14, “Renewing Qur’anic Studies in the Contemporary World,” the late Professor Abu-Zayd, who was on the receiving end of extremist attacks and at one point was forced to flee his native Egypt, emphasizes that charges of apostasy and blasphemy are “strategically employed to prevent reform of Muslim societies” and “confine the world’s Muslim population to a bleak, colorless prison of sociocultural and political conformity.” He stresses the enormous social, cultural, and theological diversity in contemporary and historical Islam and outlines the patterns of interpretation used by Muslims. In particular, he argues against an “ahistorical” understanding of Islam and, while carefully never reducing Islam to history, stresses that we need to understand “its historical context … how it emerged and developed within Arabia and other parts of the world.” Only then can we understand how Islam should be manifest in our own situation and “liberate the ‘deep substance’ of the Holy Qur’an’s message.”
Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide Page 46