Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide

by Paul Marshall

  43. “Egyptian Lawyer Files Suit for Rights of Christian Converts,” Assyrian International News Agency, March 16, 2009, http://www.christiantoday.com/article/egyptian.lawyer.files.suit.for.rights.of.christian.converts/22777.htm; Voice of the Copts, “The First Ever Lawsuit Filed by an Egyptian Advocacy,” March 12, 2009, http://voiceofthecopts.org/en/breaking_news/the_first_ever_lawsuit_filed_by_an_egyptian_advocacy.html. On December 20, 2008, an Alexandrian administrative court ruled that Fathi Labib Yousef, who had converted to Islam from Christianity in 1974, and in 2005 sought to revert to Christianity, could have his Christian status shown on his identity card. “Egypt: Citizen Wins Rare Legal Victory to Revert to Christianity,” Compass Direct News.

  44. “Muslim Sues for Right to Convert to Christianity,” Compass Direct News, August 7, 2007, http://archive.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&idelement=4978&lang=en&length=short&backpage=archives&critere=&countryname=Egypt&rowcur=25; “Islamists Join Case Against Convert to Christianity,” Compass Direct News, October 10, 2007, http://archive.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&idelement=5069&lang=en&length=short&backpage=archives&critere=&countryname=Egypt&rowcur=25; “In Hiding, Convert Continues Fight for Rights,” Compass Direct News, November 15, 2007, http://archive.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&idelement=5114&lang=en&length=short&backpage=archives&critere=&countryname=Egypt&rowcur=25; “Egypt: Muslim Authorities Call for Beheading of Convert,” International Society for Human Rights, August 30, 2007, http://www.ishr.org/index.php?id=697&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=762&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=296&cHash=c51802de6d; Pierre Loza, “Christian Convert Says He’ll Stay the Course, Despite Threats,” Daily Star, August 9, 2007, http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=8706; “Egypt, Muslim Convert to Christianity Fears for Life,” Middle East Times, August 14, 2007, http://www.metimes.com/print.php?StoryID=20070814-070417-8160r. Hegazy published a book of poems called Sherine’s Laugh. In one poem, “Ashraf Pasha,” he recalled the abuse he had suffered at the hands of Ashraf Ma’alouf, an SSI officer who reportedly tortured him for converting.

  45. “Tempers Flare into Melee at Convert’s Hearing,” Compass Direct News, January 25, 2008, http://archive.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&idelement=5205&lang=en&length=short&backpage=archives&critere=&countryname=Egypt&rowcur=25; “Egypt: Court Rules Against Convert.”

  46. “Egypt: Court Rules Against Convert”; “One Egyptian Convert’s Never-Ending Struggle,” Crosswalk.com, September 15, 2008, http://www.crosswalk.com/news/religiontoday/11581771/print/; “Egypt—Religious Freedom Profile.”

  47. “Another Convert Tries to Change Religious Identification,” Compass Direct News, August 7, 2008; Magdy Samaan, “Convert to Christianity Takes His Case to Court,” Daily News Egypt, August 13, 2008, http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=15722; BBC News: “Egyptian Christian’s Recognition Struggle,” February 13, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7888193.stm; “Egypt: Judge Ejects Lawyer for Christian from Court,” Compass Direct News, January 13, 2009, http://archive.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&idelement=5759&lang=en&length=short&backpage=archives&critere=&countryname=Egypt&rowcur=0; “Egypt: Ruling on Bid for Christian ID Expected Soon,” Compass Direct News, February 10, 2009, http://archive.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&idelement=5804&lang=en&length=short&backpage=archives&critere=&countryname=Egypt&rowcur=0.

  48. “Egypt: Islamic Lawyers Urge Death Sentence for Egyptian Convert,” Compass Direct News, February 27, 2009, http://archive.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&idelement=5826&lang=en&length=short&backpage=archives&critere=&countryname=Egypt&rowcur=0; “Egypt: Citizen Wins Rare Legal Victory” Compass Direct News (n. 42 above); “Egypt May Remove Religion from ID Cards,” Al Arabiya, March 25, 2009, http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/03/25/69227.html.

  49. “Egypt Church Issues First Conversion Certificate,” Compass Direct News, April 14, 2009, http://archive.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&idelement=5879&lang=en&length=short&backpage=archives&critere=&countryname=Egypt&rowcur=0; “Egypt: Convert’s Religious Rights Case Threatens Islamists,” Compass Direct News, May 12, 2009, http://archive.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&idelement=5917&lang=en&length=short&backpage=archives&critere=&countryname=Egypt&rowcur=0.

  50. “Egypt: Court Denies Right to Convert to Second Christian,” Compass Direct News, June 16, 2009, http://archive.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&idelement=5964&lang=en&length=short&backpage=archives&critere=&countryname=Egypt&rowcur=0.

  51. “Muslim Egyptian Girl Who Converted to Christianity Subjected to Acid Attack,” AINA News Service, April 17, 2010, http://www.aina.org/news/20100416201043.htm.

  52. Zyed Krichen, “Censorship and Persecution in the Name of Islam,” R,Bli T No. 1072, July 13–19, 2006, excerpted by Assyrian International News Agency, January 9, 2007, http://www.aina.org/news/20070108191217.htm.

  53. Warr, “The State of Freedom of Expression in Egypt”; Pakinam Amer, “Censorship of Literary Work Remains Unchallenged in Egypt,” February 12, 2007, http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/features/article_1262896.php/Censorship_of_literary_work_remains_unchallenged_in_Egypt; International Religious Freedom Report 2005, U.S. State Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2005/51598.htm; Azza Khattab, “All God’s Children,” Egypt Today, September 2004, http://www.egypttoday.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=2257.

  54. Zyed Krichen, “Censorship and Persecution in the Name of Islam.” In April 2010, a group of lawyers mounted a hisba case to get One Thousand and One Nights banned again, to try the government officials who allowed it to be published under Article 178 of the penal code, for publishing something that “offends the public decency”; see Mohamed Abdel Salam, “Egypt Lawyers Call for 1001 Nights to Be Banned,” Bikya Masr, April 27, 2010, http://bikyamasr.com/?p=12152; Steve Negus, “Brother of Another Color,” http://www.mafhoum.com/press2/77S26.htm; “World Press Freedom Review 1998,” http://www.freemedia.at/cms/ipi/freedom_detail.html?country=/KW0001/KW0004/KW0091/&year=1998; Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), “Ongoing Government Harassment of Cairo Times Magazine,” June 5, 1998, http://www.ifex.org/fr/content/view/full/6418/.

  55. Max Rodenbeck, “Witch Hunt in Egypt,” New York Review of Books, November 16, 2000.

  56. For these and other examples, see “Egyptian Government Censors Books and Writer—Confiscation of Dozens of Publications Reported at Cairo International Book Fair,” February 7, 2001, http://canada.ifex.org/es/content/view/full/12641; http://www.thefileroom.org/documents/dyn/DisplayCase.cfm/id/1066; Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), “Book Confiscated, EOHR Alarmed by Religious Institutions’ Increasing Censorship,” November 4, 2003, http://www.ifex.org/eng/content/view/full/54830/; “Behind the Ban,” Al-Ahram Weekly, No. 767, November 2–9, 2005, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/767/cu2.htm; “Al-Azhar: The Book ‘Modern Clerics and the Industry of Extremism,’ Contains Blatant Insults to Islam,” Al-Sharq al-Awsat, October 19, 2006; Cairo, by Ayman al-Qadi and Muhammad Khalil; Jennifer Bryson, “Freedom in Muslim Countries: An Endangered Species,” Public Discourse, March 27, 2009, http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2009/03/75; “Leading Woman Novelist Condemned for ‘Insulting Islam,’” Index on Censorship, March 2, 2007, http://www.indexonline.org/en/news/articles/2007/1/egypt-leading-woman-novelist-condemned-for-i.shtm. After some strange rulings on Islam, breast-feeding, and drinking urine by senior Al-Azhar figures, Al-Azhar Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawy had to issue a statement that Al-Azhar does not review its own books; see Yasmine Saleh, “Al-Azhar Claims Not to Be in Charge of Reviewing Its Books,” Daily Star Egypt, June 5, 2007, http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=7542.

  57. Human Rights Watch 1999 Report, http://www.hrw.org/worldreport99/mideast/egypt.html; Committee on Academic Freedom on the Middle East and North Africa (CAFMENA), letter of May 21, 1998, http://fp.arizona.edu/mesassoc/CAFMENAletters.htm.

  58. Rasha Saad,
“Labyrinths of the Sect,” Al-Ahram Weekly, No. 817, October 19–25, 2006, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/817/sc1.htm; International Religious Freedom Report 2007.

  59. “New Report Documents Arrests and Torture of Shiite Muslims in Egypt,” Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, August 3, 2004, http://eipr.org/en/report/2004/08/01/570; International Religious Freedom Report 2005 (n. 53 above).

  60. “Mohamed Ramadan Mohamed Hussein El-Derini v. Egypt, Working Group on Arbitrary Detention,” U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/2006/7/Add.1 at 25 (2005), http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/wgad/5-2005.html; International Religious Freedom Report 2005; Yasmine Saleh, “Courtroom Dramas: The Lawsuits and Docks of 2007,” Daily News Egypt, December 30, 2007, http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=11056. In December 2007, twenty-five members of the Al-Ahbash group were arrested for membership in an illegal organization and contempt for religion. Al-Ahbash combines Sunni and Shia elements and is Sufi in outlook. In February 2008, they were released without charge. The non-Egyptian members were reportedly deported; see International Religious Freedom Report 2008, U.S. State Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2008/108481.htm. From the report: “In 2005 the Maadi misdemeanor court issued a verdict in a blasphemy case involving Ibrahim Ahmad Abu Shusha and 11 of his followers, who had been detained absent an arrest warrant since 2004. The court sentenced Abu Shusha to 3 years’ imprisonment for claiming to be divine and denigrating Islam. The court sentenced the 11 other defendants … to 1 year of imprisonment.… The court also asserted that freedom of belief does not include permission to deny the principles of heavenly religions. An appeals court reaffirmed the Abu Shusha sentences in July 2005.” In May 2006, two Azharites—Abdul Sabur al-Kashef and Mohammed Radwan—were tried for blaspheming Islam. Al-Kashef was sentenced to eleven years’ imprisonment for claiming to have seen God and Radwan three years for denying the existence of heaven and hell. In mid-January 2007, El-Gamaleya Misdemeanor Court of Appeals reduced Kashef’s sentence to 6 years and upheld 3 years for Radwan.” See International Religious Freedom Report 2008, cited earlier in this note.

  61. Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Bastion of Impunity, Mirage of Reform.

  62. Maurits S. Berger, “Apostasy and Public Policy in Contemporary Egypt: An Evaluation of Recent Cases in Egypt’s Highest Courts,” Human Rights Quarterly 25 (2003): 731; “Book Confiscated, EOHR Alarmed by Religious Institutions’ Increasing Censorship.”

  63. “Human Rights Abuses by Armed Groups,” Amnesty International, September 1, 1998, http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE120221998?open&of=ENG-EGY; Azza Khattab, “All God’s Children,” Egypt Today, September 2004, http://www.egypttoday.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=2257.

  64. Ghassan Abdullah, “New Secularism in the Arab World,” http://www.ibn-rushd.org/forum/Secularism.htm. There is available on the Web, with no provenance, “Faraj Fodah, The Hidden Truth,” trans. Ian Hunt of Farag Foda, Al-hakika al-gha’iba, Cairo, 1986.

  65. See the Web site http://www.thefileroom.org/documents/dyn/DisplayCase.cfm/id/1052; Khattab, “All God’s Children.”

  66. Abdullah, “New Secularism in the Arab World”; “Human Rights Abuses.”

  67. “Human Rights Abuses”; “Censorship and Persecution in the Name of Islam,” Assyrian International News Agency, http://www.aina.org/news/20070108191217.htm; “El Ghazali: A Tender Heart and a Righteous Tongue,” Islamonline, http://ww1.islamonline.net/arabic/in_depth/ghazaly/articles/07.shtml.

  68. Ahmed Subhy Mansour, Penalty of Apostasy: A Historical and Fundamental Study (Cairo: Tiba, 1992; English translation, Toronto: International Publishing and Distributing, 1998), http://www.ahl-alquran.com/English/show_article.php?main_id=523.

  69. “Who Is Gamal Al-Banna?” Egypt Today, January 2005, http://www.egypttoday.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=3349; Gamal Al-Banna, “The Islamic Renaissance Fellowship: A Position Paper,” http://www.islamiccall.org/irfellowship.htm (Islamiccall.org is Al Banna’s Web site); Gamal Al-Banna, “An Experiment of Islamic Renovation: The Call for Islamic Revival,” http://www.islamiccall.org/Islamic_Revival.htm; “Gamal Al-Banna: A Lifetime of Islamic Call,” http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/941/intrvw.htm; International Religious Freedom Report 2005.

  70. Gamal Al-Banna, “An Experiment of Islamic Renovation”; Gamal Al-Banna, “Our Faith,” http://www.islamiccall.org/our_faith.htm; Yasmin Moll, “Gamal Al-Banna,” Egypt Today, September 2004, http://www.egypttoday.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=2269.

  71. Y. Yehoshua, “A Cairo Conference Calling for Reform Raises the Ire of the Egyptian Religious Establishment,” October 22, 2004, http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=ia&ID=IA19204); “Banna Family Illustrates Complexities of Modern Islam,” http://www.utusan.com.my/utusan/content.asp?y=2004&dt=1101&pub=Utusan_Express&sec=Features&pg=fe_05.htm.

  72. Yehoshua, “A Cairo Conference Calling for Reform Raises the Ire of the Egyptian Religious Establishment.”

  73. “Gamal El-Banna Discusses Freedom of Thought and Expression in Islam at the BA,” http://www.bibalex.org/english/media/NewsDetails.aspx?NewsID=1607; Gamal Al-Banna, “Our Faith,” http://www.islamiccall.org/our_faith.htm; Gamal Al-Banna, “The Islamic Renaissance Fellowship.”

  74. “You Ask and Gamal Al-Banna Answers about the Truth of Bahá’ís,” October 25, 2006, http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.almasry-alyoum.com%2Farticle2.aspx%3FArticleID%3D34264&sl=ar&tl=en.

  75. Pierre Loza, “Christian Convert Says He’ll Stay the Course, Despite Threats,” Daily News Egypt, August 9, 2007, http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=8706.

  76. Moll, “Gamal Al-Banna.”

  77. Ibid.; Daniel Williams, “Aging Egyptian Says Religion Allows Freedom of Thought and Evolution,” Washington Post Foreign Service, March 7, 2005; Michael Slackman, “Hints of Pluralism in Egyptian Religious Debates,” New York Times, August 31, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/world/africa/31cairo.html?_r=1.

  78. See his Web site, “Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd,” http://www.answers.com/topic/nasr-abu-zayd.

  79. “From Confiscation to Charges of Apostasy,” The Center for Human Rights Legal Aid (CHRLA), September 1996, http://www.wluml.org/node/262; “Writer Dr Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid-Branded an Apostate,” IFEX, 1996, http://www.ifex.org/fr/content/view/full/77664/.

  80. Mary Anne Weaver, “Revolution by Stealth,” New Yorker, June 8, 1998, http://www.dhushara.com/book/zulu/islamp/egy.htm; El-Magd, “When the Professor Can’t Teach.” On May 31, 1995, two weeks before the divorce ruling described below, the Cairo University Council promoted Abu-Zayd to a full professorship.

  81. Weaver, “Revolution by Stealth”; “From Confiscation to Charges of Apostasy.”

  82. Weaver, “Revolution by Stealth.” See also Baber Johansen, “Apostasy as Objective and Depersonalised Fact: Two Recent Egyptian Court Judgments,” Social Research 70, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 687–710.

  83 Warr, “The State of Freedom of Expression in Egypt”; Nadia Abou El-Magd, “When the Professor Can’t Teach.”

  84. Warr, “The State of Freedom of Expression in Egypt”; Mona El Tahawy, “Lives Torn Apart in Battle for the Soul of the Arab World,” The Guardian, October 20, 1999, http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,260766,00.html.

  85. Weaver, “Revolution by Stealth”; El-Magd, “When the Professor Can’t Teach.”

  86. “Writer Dr Nasr Hamed Abu-Zeid Branded an Apostate”; “From Confiscation to Charges of Apostasy”; “Egypt—Religious Freedom Profile.”

  87. CHRLA, “From Confiscation to Charges of Apostasy.”

  88. “Human Rights Abuses by Armed Groups”; Warr, “The State of Freedom of Expression in Egypt.”

  89. One of the most serious cases was brought against Abu-Zayd’s mentor, Hassan Hanafi, professor of philosophy at Cairo University. See Weaver, “Revolution by Stealth.”

  90. Weaver, “Revolution by Stealth.”

  91. Amira Howe
idy, “Out of Eden,” Al-Ahram Weekly, January 1999, http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/ahr.htm; “Writer Dr Nasr Hamed Abu-Zeid Branded an Apostate”; Mona Eltahawy, “Meanwhile: Giving Muslims the Tools to Take on Shariah” December 14, 2006, http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/14/opinion/edelta.php.

  92. “Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd,” http://www.answers.com/topic/nasr-abu-zayd; Susan Stephan, “Intellectual Censorship in Islam: A Matter of Life and Death,” http://iranscope.ghandchi.com/Anthology/Islam/intelislam.htm; International Religious Freedom Report 2005; Gamal Nkrumah, “To Freely Express Themselves,” Al-Ahram Weekly, No. 709, September 23–29, 2004, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/709/eg3.htm; El-Magd, “When the Professor Can’t Teach”; Kamal Hasani, “A Great Muslim Hero: Nasr Hamed Abuzayed (1943–2010),” Hudson Institute, July 20, 2010, http://www.hudson-ny.org/1421/muslim-hero-nasr-hamedabuzayed.

  93. On other works by El-Qimni, see p. 136 of his Thank You … Bin Laden!, unpublished English translation of Arabic Shukran … Bin Laden! ed. Abdul Munim Fahmi (Cairo: Dar Misr Al Mahroosa, 2004). Thanks to Jennifer Bryson for passing on this translation. Al Qimni contributes to the Arab liberal Web site, http://www.middleeasttransparent.com/, which started by publishing a petition calling for “a treaty banning religious incitement to violence and specifically names ‘Sheikhs of Death’ (such as Yusuf Al-Qaradawi of Al-Jazeera television), demanding that they be tried before an international court.” He also maintains a blog: http://quemny.blogspot.com/.