Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide

by Paul Marshall

  The fourth category is Muslim reformers and dissidents, including theologians, editors, journalists, authors, democracy activists, and others, especially when they challenge the entrenched power of regimes that claim to be representative of Islam. Those designated as possible heretics or deviants include Bangladeshi feminists, Iranian religious scholars, Egyptian intellectuals, opponents to slavery and corruption in Mauritania, social reformers in Afghanistan, and innumerable others.

  In 2002, a group of religious scholars, the Bandung Indonesian Ulemas Forum (FUUI) issued a fatwa saying that reformer Ulil Abshar Abdalla deserved to die after publishing an article in the newspaper Kompas titled “Freshening Up Islamic Understanding.” Abdalla had already been targeted by the radical Islam Defenders Front. In Afghanistan in 2007, Ghaus Zalmai, formerly an outspoken journalist, who was then spokesman for the attorney general, was arrested for publishing a Dari translation of the Qur’an. Several of Afghanistan’s courageous reformist journalists have been charged with blasphemy and imprisoned, especially when they have raised questions abut the status of women. In 2007, Aishath Aniya, formerly the Maldivian Democratic Party’s Deputy Secretary-General, was forced to resign and go into hiding after writing an article criticizing the notion that women must wear a veil lest men be tempted. Ali Ahmad Said Asbar is often regarded as the greatest contemporary Arab poet and is more commonly known by his pen names, Adonis or Adunis. In October 2008, after 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 accused him of being an “apostate,” and the Minister of Culture denounced his “ideological deterioration” and fired the library’s director for inviting him. In Yemen in March 2010, several leading Muslim scholars declared that people pushing for a ban on child brides were apostates.

  Vague Charges

  One of our main findings is that “blasphemy,” “insulting Islam,” and even “apostasy,” not to mention a myriad of other related offenses, have no clear definitions; what is perceived as an offense varies not only from country to country, but also within countries and regions. Even there, they can be in constant flux. This means that many persons do not know, and cannot know, at any given time and place what is prohibited and what is not. In 2009, Islam Samham, a Jordanian poet and journalist, was sentenced to a year in prison for apostasy for “combining the sacred words of the Qur’an with sexual themes.” In usually secular Turkey, one can be punished for insulting the “Turkish nation,” which can incorporate a religious dimension because Islam is regarded as an integral part of the Turkish nation.

  The possible breadth of what can be banned as blasphemy appears almost limitless. The late Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Baz, while Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, declared, “Those who claim that the earth is round and moving around the sun are condemned as apostates and their blood can be shed and their property can be taken in the name of God.” He annulled the fatwa in 1985, but for a ten-year period in the late twentieth century, any Copernican in Saudi Arabia was thus declared by the highest religious authority as someone who should be killed and stripped of property. Bin Baz also attempted to provide a comprehensive list of religiously forbidden expressions, including “say[ing] that enforcing the punishments prescribed by Allah, such as amputation of the hand of a thief or stoning of an adulterer, is not suitable for this day and age.” He condemned the belief that any system or law that is human in origin can be better than sharia, which would condemn the majority of governments across the Islamic world, most of which have constitutions and incorporate non-sharia laws in their legal and judicial systems. He also listed as banned the belief that “Islam is merely a relationship between Allah and the individual, and that it should not interfere in other aspects of life,” a view that would render many Muslims apostate.6 His fatwas remain in force after his death and are disseminated by the Saudi government around the world. The Saudi government expects such fatwas of its highest religious authorities to be enforced through temporal punishments and, within its borders, seeks to ensure that they are.

  Saudi Arabia punishes those whom it deems mushrikun, or “polytheists.” The term “polytheist” can be used expansively, including against those who celebrate the prophet’s birthday, since this can be deemed “an act of imitating Christians.” (Christians and Shias are also called “polytheists.”) This can also have a multiplier effect whereby “[a]nyone who does not consider the polytheists (mushrikun) to be unbelievers, or who has doubts concerning their unbelief, or considers their way to be correct, is himself an unbeliever (kafir).” So if you do not celebrate the prophet’s birthday, but do not think that those who do so are polytheists, then you too may be a polytheist. Perhaps you might be a polytheist if you disagree with this. Other possible charges in the Kingdom include witchcraft, sorcery, and “harboring destructive thoughts.”

  Malaysia works on the premise that Muslim Malaysians are very easily confused, and so it outlaws religious speech that could “create confusion among Muslims” or might contain “twisted facts that can undermine the faith of Muslims.” Pakistan’s blasphemy laws can be violated “by any imputation, innuendo or insinuation, directly or indirectly,” which makes knowing when the law is violated extremely difficult. Iran has probably the widest range of crimes, including “friendship with the enemies of God” and “hostility towards friends of God,” “fighting against God,” “dissension from religious dogma,” “spreading lies,” and “propagation of spiritual liberalism.”

  State Repression

  Adherents of newer religions, converts, Muslim minorities, and religious, social, and political reformers can be subject to various means of attack as insulters of religion. The dangers they face exist not only in states generally regarded as religiously repressive but also in countries often considered more moderate. Not just Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, but also Egypt and Bangladesh can use the full force of the law, as well as extensive extralegal measures, against them.

  Apart from the vagueness of laws relating to blasphemy offenses, the prosecutions in many key Muslim-majority countries also frequently fall far short of international standards of due process and fairness. Proving intent is often not necessary in order to secure criminal convictions, and arguing that what the accused said was in fact true could itself be considered blasphemous. Hence, the accused is deprived of any meaningful defense. In blasphemy cases in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Sudan, the weight of testimony of a male Muslim is worth more than that of a non-Muslim, and even more again if the non-Muslim is a woman. On this basis, a simple accusation made against a non-Muslim by a Muslim can be enough to secure a conviction. In many places confessions are coerced but are nevertheless routinely allowed as evidence.

  Some countries provide little opportunity for a fair hearing and, in others, such as Saudi Arabia, defendants may not even have the right to be present at their own trial. In Iran, the “apostate” Baha’is have no rights whatsoever. In Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries, no law is allowed to stand if religious authorities assert that it contradicts the tenets of Islam—as they understand it. Challenging the status of religious offenses is often an offense in its own right, and thus reforming such systems becomes nearly impossible. This produces a circularity such as that which afflicted Afghan editor Ali Mohaqeq Nasab, who was arrested for publishing “un-Islamic” articles after he questioned whether it was right to kill apostates. Criticizing and questioning religious authority is simply forbidden.

  Societal Repression

  Despite the grave effects of state repression, the greater danger to those accused is from societal forces in attacks that range from calculated assaults by vigilantes and terrorists to sudden attacks by enraged mobs. Pakistan provides striking examples. Although many persons have been persecuted under its blasphemy laws, there have, so far, been no official executions; however, there have been many deaths, and tens of thousands persecuted, through extralegal violence in r
esponse to blasphemy accusations. Some of these killings take place while victims are in police custody. As we have described, after an allegation that a Qur’an had been defaced, in March 1997, the town of Shanti Nagar, home to many Christians, was attacked by thousands of Muslims, and, despite the presence of hundreds of police, rioters destroyed 326 houses and fourteen churches. Women and girls were abducted; some were raped, and some forcibly married. On August 1, 2009, about a thousand people, believed to be connected to the Taliban-linked Sipah-e-Sahaba militant group, attacked local Christians in Gojra. Over forty homes were razed, and at least seven Christians were killed, six of whom, including two children, were burned alive.

  Yet this extralegal violence does not occur without the cooperation of government authorities. It can in turn be encouraged by state agents, or ignored by them. In 2000, Lahore High Court Judge Nazir Akhtar said publicly that Muslims have a religious obligation immediately to kill anyone accused of blasphemy; they should not wait for legal proceedings. This statement, though later retracted, reveals the degree of prejudice and violence surrounding the issue. Asma Jahangir, who was chair of Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission, has said that Pakistan’s “pattern” of violence against religious minorities was helped by local politicians who “protect [militants] and keep their names out of police reports.”7

  More particularly, state policies and laws encourage the actions of nonstate actors. Discussing the violent minority within Muslim society, journalist Sabrina Tavernise puts it this way: “an intolerant, aggressive minority terrorizes a more open-minded, peaceful majority, while an opportunistic political class dithers, benefiting from alliances with the aggressors.”8 Brian Grim and Roger Finke’s research has shown that “[t]o the extent that governments deny religious freedoms, violent religious persecution and conflict will increase.”9 As the late Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s Minister of Minority Affairs, declared following the Gojra riots against Christians: “The blasphemy law is being used to terrorize minorities in Pakistan.”10 In March 2011, Bhatti himself was murdered for his opposition to the blasphemy law.

  Political Manipulation

  Since religion and politics overlap everywhere in the world, and especially in the Muslim world, there is no clear line between politically and religiously motivated restrictions. But, very often, apostasy and blasphemy accusations are used in the narrower and more cynical sense of “political,” as defined by Ambrose Bierce: “A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”11 In this style of politics, speech is repressed ostensibly in the defense of religious belief or sentiment, when in fact it is questions of personal advantage, economic gain, and power struggles that are really at issue. In such cases, the elastic nature of apostasy, blasphemy, and insult accusations, combined with lax legal standards and anomic violence, allows them to be put to Machiavellian usage.

  In Iran, the government has imprisoned learned clergy who have argued against the regime’s purported Islamic justification of its own authority, and its claims for the almost absolute power of the Supreme Leader. Scholar Mohsen Kadivar wrote The Theories of the State in Shiite Jurisprudence, a three-volume work containing a comprehensive critique of the official Iranian doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih, the rule of the jurist, and concluded that the doctrine was not “a part of Shiite general principles.” For this he was sentenced to eighteen months in prison.

  After the renewal of protests in Iran in December 2009, Ayatollah Khamenei and government loyalists called for protesters to be arrested and put to death for offending God and the prophet, as well as for insulting Ayatollah Khomeini. As part of this effort, the government charged opposition members with religious crimes, especially mohareb, or “making war against God and His Prophet.” General Muhammad-Ali Aziz Jaafari has said, “Those who demonstrate against the system are waging war on Allah.” In the same period, the regime has been arresting Baha’is for alleged participation in demonstrations as part of its effort to stigmatize the opposition through association with a group deemed heretical. Pro-government demonstrators have carried signs asserting that Mir Hussein Mousavi, the opposition leader, is a Baha’i. On January 5, 2010, a regime-linked paper declared in a headline “The So-Called God-Loving Mousavi’s Men Turned Out to be Baha’is and Terrorists.”

  In Saudi Arabia, reformers Ali al-Domaini, Abdullah al-Hamid, and Matrouk al-Faleh were arrested after they circulated a petition advocating the creation of a constitutional monarchy. Charges against them included “incitement against the Wahhabi school of Islam” and “introducing ‘Western terminology’” in their calls for reform. An Interior Ministry spokesman said they had issued “statements which do not serve the unity of the country and the cohesion of society … based on Islamic religion.”

  Some of the most striking examples are from Sudan, which has used accusations of religious speech and thought crimes to try to quash a wide variety of political opponents. Because of his criticism of the regime, Mohamed Mahmoud Taha—perhaps the country’s leading Muslim scholar, as well as the leader of the opposition Republican Brotherhood—was executed in 1985 for apostasy, although there was no such provision in the penal code. In the 1990s, Sudan threatened UN Special Rapporteur Gaspar Biro, a Hungarian lawyer, with allegations of blasphemy because of his reports on human rights in the country. In the most sweeping apostasy fatwa in modern times, in 1992, the Kordofan government declared jihad on the Nuba region, and, in 1993, six government-sponsored Muslim clerics in Kordofan declared: “An insurgent who was previously a Muslim is now an apostate; and a non-Muslim is a non-believer standing as a bulwark against the spread of Islam, and Islam has granted the freedom of killing both of them.” This fatwa declared that the Nuba non-Muslims could be wiped out as they were barriers to Islam and that Nuba Muslims were now apostates who not only could be but also should be killed. Hence, half a million people were sentenced to death. Subsequent conditions in the 1990s prompted human right organizations to declare the Nuba mountain region a site of genocide.

  Political Closure

  Similar political attacks also occur in Muslim countries regarded as more moderate, such as Malaysia. In 2008, legal complaints were lodged against Raja Petra Kamaruddin, a member of the Selangor royal family, editor of the website Malaysia Today, and perhaps the country’s most prominent political blogger. One of the alleged offenses was that his article, “I Promise to Be a Good, Nonhypocritical Muslim,” insulted Islam. He was held without charge in a prison camp for two months.

  Malaysia also reveals how religious demagoguery erodes self-critique and moderation. In speaking about the Malaysian government’s proposal to criminalize Christians’ use of the word “Allah,” on the grounds that it gave offense to Muslims, Marina Mahathir, daughter of Malaysia’s former long-time prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, noted that “the furor over religious language will feed on itself.… It’s only a few people who are inflamed about it.… But if you keep stoking … sooner or later more and more people will think, ‘Oh, maybe we should be upset as well.’”12 Former finance minister Tengku Razaleigh agreed: “In a complex multiracial society a party and a government whose primary response to a public issue is sunk in the elastic goo of ‘sensitivities’ rather than founded on principle, drawn from sentiment rather than from the Constitution, is already short of leadership and moral fibre.” Razaleigh added, “ ‘Sensitivities’ is the favored resort of the gutter politician. With it he raises a mob, fans its resentment and helps it discover a growing list of other sensitivities. This is a road to ruin.”13 Malaysia is also notable in the degree to which the government maintains that it must repress alternative viewpoints because its Muslim population is not capable of dealing with different thoughts and ideas.

  When these countries’ populations are insulated from alternative viewpoints, they can become ever more pliable, thus perpetuating the system. The 2003 UN Arab Human Development Report, commenting on the fact that more foreign books had been translate
d by Spain in one recent year than by the entire Arabic-speaking world in the last thousand, noted: “In Arab countries where the political exploitation of religion has intensified, tough punishment for original thinking, especially when it opposes the prevailing powers, intimidates and crushes scholars.” Such repression also affects journalists, artists, filmmakers, human rights activists, teachers, dissidents, politicians, religious minorities—all who are perceived as challenging the prevailing order.

  Whatever the particular accusations used, the effect is the same: religious minorities are threatened and persecuted, critics of the regime are imprisoned or killed, and debate about the nature of Islam is stifled. As Malaysia’s Sisters in Islam stated: “By narrowing the space for open dialogue among citizens and squashing their quest for information and to read, the government’s act can be deemed as ‘promoting Jahiliah’ as it will push us into a more suppressed world where we will blindly follow with no questions asked, lest it disrupts our small worldview….”14 If Islam cannot be discussed, much of the country’s law and politics has been placed beyond discussion and, therefore, beyond reform.