Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians
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PART THREE
ISLAM’ S WAR ON CHRISTIAN FREEDOM
The precarious status of churches and other forms of Christian expression under Sharia law is emblematic of Islam’s innate hostility to Christianity. But Islamic law goes further, denying freedom of speech to all Christians and even freedom of conscience and conviction to Christian converts. Sharia curtails these freedoms by means of three laws that, though separate, often overlap: the laws against apostasy, blasphemy, and proselytism. For example, the Muslim who converts to Christianity is guilty of apostasy. But he can also be seen as a blasphemer, whose very existence is an affront to Islam. And when he speaks about Christianity—as enthusiastic new converts are wont to do—around Muslims, he exposes himself to charges of proselytism. These three Islamic laws effectively ban freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and even freedom of thought.
None of these three laws applies solely to Christianity. Muslims can apostatize to any or no religion; people from any non-Muslim religion can theoretically proselytize Muslims; and non-Christians, including Muslims, can be charged with blasphemy. For a number of reasons, however, Christians are by far the most likely to fall afoul of Islam’s anti-freedom laws.
First we will examine the doctrinal background of these three laws. Then we will consider how and why it is that Christians are most likely to break them. And finally we will look at how the Islamic doctrines enshrined in these laws have played out in practice—by examining some historical patterns and then looking at current applications of the laws. Once again we will see remarkable continuity—from one end of the Islamic world to the other, and from the earliest beginnings of Muslim history to today—in how these laws are understood and enforced.
APOSTASY
Irtidad, or apostasy from Islam, is one of the most reprehensible crimes—if not the most reprehensible crime—in Islamic law, deserving of great punishment, including execution. So great a crime is it that if several people apostatize at once, the Muslim state is obligated to proclaim an official jihad against them.1 Moreover, because he has actively left or “betrayed” Islam, the apostate is seen as worse than the born infidel. The absolute condemnation of apostasy in Islam is so well known that it is almost redundant quoting sources. Nevertheless, some striking passages from Islamic authorities follow.
According to the entry on the apostate (or murtadd) in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, long considered to be the standard reference work in the field of Islamic studies, “In Fikh [or fiqh, Islamic jurisprudence], there is unanimity that the male apostate must be put to death, but only if he is grown up. . . . A woman, on the other hand, is imprisoned, according to Hanafi and Shi’i teaching, until she again adopts Islam.” According to other schools of law, “she also is put to death.... Execution should be by sword . . . apostates must sometimes have been tortured to death.” As for those apostates who manage to escape death, they “are not sure of their lives, as their Muslim relatives endeavor secretly to dispose of them by poison or otherwise.”
The late Majid Khadduri, “internationally recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on Islamic law and jurisprudence,” wrote in his War and Peace in the Law of Islam,2 “Both jurists and theologians agree that apostasy constitutes a violation of the law punishable both in this world and the next. Not only is the person denied salvation in the next world, but he is also liable to capital punishment by the state.” Khadduri quotes the various Koranic verses—2:214, 5:59, 16:108—that condemn apostates and then focuses on 4:90-91, which calls for the killing of the apostate from Islam, and concludes,Although only [verse 4:90–91] specifically states that death sentence should be imposed on those who apostatize or turn back from religion, all the commentators agree that a believer who turns back from his religion (irtadda) openly or secretly, must be killed if he persists in disbelief. The traditions are more explicit in providing the death penalty for everyone who apostatizes from Islam. The Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said: “He who changes his religion [Islam] must be killed.” Cases of those who apostatized and escaped punishment are few, but the rule was certainly more strictly enforced after Muhammad’s death as a result of the victories won during the wars of the ridda (secession). The law of apostasy endorsed by the practice of the early caliphs has been sanctioned by ijma [that is, consensus among Islam’s scholars], and there is no disagreement as to its validity.
The murtadd [apostate], however, is not to be executed at once; he is warned and given three days of grace to afford him time to choose between Islam and death. Except the Hanafi and Hanbali jurists, the authorities treat women on the same footing as men. Abu Hanifa maintained that women should be forced to return to Islam by such punishment as beating and imprisonment. Children and the insane are not liable to be killed until the latter recover and the former come of age. The killing of the murtadd must be done by the sword.... [Emphasis added.]
What is amazing is that not only are apostates still being attacked and killed around the Islamic world, but the smallest details of their persecution are consistent across the whole history of Islam, from its beginnings to today. For instance, note the Sunni traditions, explained above, that maintain female apostates should not be executed but rather “forced to return to Islam by such punishment as beating and imprisonment.” The Shia position is similar: “The woman guilty of apostasy is not punished with death, even if she was born in the Muslim faith, but she is condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and is to be beaten with rods at the hours of prayer. . . .” None of this is mere theory. In the 1800s, a Muslim in India confessed to what he did to his sister who had converted to Christianity: “I began persecution. I starved her; I locked her up for days together. Look at her now—her weakness and her loss of flesh are due to my treatment of her. But nothing shook her determination to be a Christian.”3 And this identical pattern of abuse is still ongoing today. For example, as recently as December 2012 in Kyrgyz—a nation seldom associated with “radical Islam”—after a young Muslim girl converted to Christianity, her parents beat her “until she fell unconscious.” Next, because she still refused to renounce Christ, her parents trapped her in a cold room for days and later scorched her face on the stove.4
In August 2011, in distant Uganda, a Muslim father imprisoned and starved his fourteen-year-old daughter, Susan Ithungu, because she converted to Christianity. According to Susan’s younger brother, their father had earlier warned them “not to attend church or listen to the gospel message. He even threatened us with a sharp knife that he was ready to kill us in broad daylight in case we converted to Christianity.”
When Susan refused to recant, her father “locked her up in a room of the semi-permanent house for six months without seeing sunlight.... The younger brother was warned not to tell anyone that Susan was locked up in a room and was not given any food.” Susan’s brother smuggled scraps of food to his sister, though “most days she could only feed on mud.” He also dug a hole under the door, pouring water through it, which she had to lap up with her tongue. When she was finally rescued, she “was bony, very weak, and not able to talk or walk.... Her hair had turned yellow, she had long fingernails and sunken eyes, and she looked very slim, less than 20 kilograms [44 pounds],” requiring over a year of hospitalization.5 Susan has “forgiven her father,” and is thankful to all the strangers who have supported her. Meanwhile, she says, “none of my family members has come to see me. . . . My own people have abandoned me” for converting to Christianity.6
These examples of Muslim family members torturing female converts to Christianity come from three widely separated countries—India, Kyrgyz, and Uganda—that have little in common: neither language, nor race, nor ethnicity, nor culture. What, then, binds them together, explaining these identical patterns of abuse? What is the one thing they do have in common? Honesty requires that we give one answer: Islam.
There are many more examples of how even the subtlest aspects of Sharia law against apostasy are still in full force today. Recall how in Islamic
law mentally retarded apostates are not to be executed. Accordingly, when it is expedient for an Islamic state to release an apostate from prison, the authorities usually portray the apostate as “retarded,” sometimes justifying this claim by arguing that the act of leaving Islam for Christianity is itself proof that the renegade is retarded. This was the case in Afghanistan, where in 2006 one Abdul Rahman was exposed as an apostate to Christianity and subsequently arrested, incarcerated, and sentenced to death. Because his story received widespread media attention and international condemnation—and thus embarrassment for the U.S.-empowered Afghani government—Abdul Rahman was released under the pretext that he was mentally retarded, though most sources said he was not .7 It is quite common, in the cases of apostates and blasphemers under attack around the Muslim world, for any Muslims seeking to exonerate the accused to portray them as retarded.
BLASPHEMY
From Year One of the Muslim calendar (AD 622), Islam and its prophet have brooked little opposition—not even verbal opposition. In the words of Koran 33:57: “those who abuse Allah and His Messenger—Allah has cursed them in this world and the Hereafter and prepared for them a humiliating punishment.”
Similarly, Koran 5:33 decrees that “the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] mischief is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land.”
Islam’s scholars agree that “wage war” most definitely includes verbal war. In fact, verbal attacks on Islam are often perceived as worse than physical attacks. As Ibn Taymiyya put it,Muharaba [waging war against Islam] is of two types: physical and verbal. Waging war verbally against Islam may be worse than waging war physically—hence the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) used to kill those who waged war against Islam verbally, while letting off some of those who waged war against Islam physically. This ruling is to be applied more strictly after the death of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). Mischief may be caused by physical action or by words, but the damage caused by words is many times greater than that caused by physical action; and the goodness achieved by words in reforming may be many times greater than that achieved by physical action. It is proven that waging war against Allah and His Messenger (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) verbally is worse and the efforts on earth to undermine religion by verbal means is more effective.8
This is not merely a medieval interpretation; many if not most of today’s Islamic scholars agree. After quoting the aforementioned crucifixion verse of the Koran (5:33), Dr. Zakir Naik asserted in Islamic Voice in 2006, “In Islam, a person who has committed blasphemy can either be killed or crucified, or his opposite hands and feet can be cut off, or he can be exiled from that land.”9
These brutal penalties are based on the fact that, as Taymiyya points out, Muhammad himself—who once declared “whoever curses a prophet, kill him”—ordered the execution of many people simply for criticizing, questioning, or mocking him. Among those killed were women, such as Asma bint Marwan. According to the prophet’s earliest biographer, after Muhammad heard some of her poetry, which portrayed him as a murdering bandit, he called for her assassination, exclaiming:“Will no one rid me of this woman?” Umayr, a zealous Muslim, decided to execute the Prophet’s wishes. That very night he crept into the writer’s home while she lay sleeping surrounded by her young children. There was one at her breast. Umayr removed the suckling babe and then plunged his sword into the poet. The next morning in the mosque, Muhammad, who was aware of the assassination, said, “You have helped Allah and his Apostle.” Umayr said, “She had five sons; should I feel guilty?” “No,” the prophet answered. “Killing her was as meaningless as two goats butting heads.”10
Likewise, Ka’b bin Ashraf’s anti-Islamic poetry so annoyed the prophet that he called for his assassination. When a young Muslim stepped up, saying he would be happy to kill the poet, provided he be permitted to lie and deceive his victim so as to win his confidence, Muhammad agreed—in one of the many precedents Muslims point to as justifying the use of deceit in Islam. After befriending the assassin, Ka’b was ambushed, killed, and decapitated, all to the prophet’s approval. 11
Unsurprisingly, there is consensus among all four schools of Islamic law that whoever curses Muhammad must be killed. 12 Fatwas litter the Internet calling for the death of those who “belittle,” “criticize,” or “mock” Muhammad. 13
All of this is echoed in The Conditions of Omar. Honoring Islam and Muslims was a condition imposed on the Christians, and subsequently on all dhimmis. Any violation of that condition would void the pact. The conquered Christians were commanded “to honor the Muslims, show them the way, and rise up from our seats if they wish to sit down.”14 If Christians were to “honor” Muslims in such a slavish manner, it went without saying that they were never to criticize Islam or its prophet.
Islam’s blasphemy codes are probably the aspect of Islamic intolerance best known in the West today—because mayhem and murders routinely break out whenever Western people criticize Islam and its prophet. YouTube videos and European cartoons about Muhammad, academic papal speeches, and even teddy bears have occasioned mass riots, death, and destruction all around the Islamic world. These incidents may seem surprising, but they are nothing new. A thirteenth-century text written by a European Christian tells how the “Saracens treated with great cruelty those Christians who spoke ill of the law of Muhammad.”15
PROSELYTISM
Not only is preaching to Muslims about Christianity and thus tempting them to convert clearly banned in Islam, but it is also closely associated with Islam’s apostasy and blasphemy laws. If apostasy from Islam is a terrible crime worthy of death, clearly those responsible for enticing Muslims to apostatize are also guilty. If speaking against the prophet is a reprehensible crime worthy of death, then clearly preaching to Muslims about Christ, the resurrection, the Trinity, and salvation through grace and faith—all doctrines that contradict and thus give the lie to Islam and Muhammad’s teachings—is great blasphemy.
As with apostasy and blasphemy, the Islamic ban on proselytism is so well known that it is almost pointless quoting sources. But consider The Conditions of Omar on preaching Christianity to Muslims. Conquered Christians were ordered,Not to produce a cross or [Christian] book in the markets of the Muslims. . . .
Not to display any signs of polytheism [that is, belief in the Trinity], nor make our religion appealing, nor call or proselytize anyone to it.... Not to prevent any of our relatives who wish to enter into Islam.
All these points are still in full force around the Islamic world today: 1) Christians are not to produce any Christian books—especially the Bible—around Muslims, lest they cause doubt and temptation; 2) Christians are not to make Christianity “appealing, nor call anyone to it”; and 3) in complete contradiction to Islam’s own position concerning apostates from Islam, who must be killed, Christians are not to prevent any of their relatives from converting to Islam.
To appreciate the continuity of Islam’s ban on Christian proselytism, consider how closely—nearly verbatim—even those Muslim nations that are hailed in the West for being “moderate” follow the points above. For example, “according to the Maldives Religious Unity Regulations, it is illegal in the Maldives to propagate any faith other than Islam or to engage in any effort to convert anyone to any religion other than Islam. It is also illegal to display in public any symbols or slogans belonging to any religion other than Islam, or creating interest in such articles.”16 Violating the Religious Unity Act carries stiff penalties—fines and imprisonment for two to five years. This is the position of a modern and moderate Muslim nation.
History has seen many Christians share the Gospel with Muslims, only to pay the ultimate price for it. One of the most memorable stories concerns St. Francis of Assisi, who traveled with fellow Franciscans to the Middle East in 1219 during the Crusades,
specifically to challenge Islam and convert Muslims to Christianity.
Early sources indicate that Malik al-Kamil, the Egyptian sultan who granted audience to the medieval missionaries, was interested in what they had to say; he even asked Islam’s clerics to debate them. However, just as Muslim clerics do today, the latter “instead insisted that they [the Christians] be killed, in accordance with Islamic law.” When St. Francis pointedly asked the sultan to convert to Christianity, al-Kamil confessed, “I could not do that. My people would stone me.” (Indeed, the sultan was eventually attacked “for his tolerant attitude towards Christians and was accused of failing to be a ‘fervent Muslim.’”)17 This is a theme that recurs regularly throughout Muslim history. Centuries earlier, as recorded in the “Dialogue of the Monk of Bet Hale with an Arab Notable,” the latter is recorded as saying, “I testify that were it not for fear of the government and of shame before men, many [Muslims] would become Christians.”18
While St. Francis managed to enter the lions’ den and emerge alive, other monks sent to the Muslim world—such as the six “Moroccan Martyrs,” who were imprisoned, tortured, and beheaded by Morocco’s sultan himself for preaching Christ in 1220—did not fare as well.
Nearly a millennium after the meeting between the Christian saint and the Egyptian sultan, there is still little freedom for Christians who wish to share the Gospel with Muslims. Consider, for instance, the life and exploits of Father Zakaria Botros.19 A Coptic Christian priest who has spent his life proselytizing Muslims—as his elder brother before him did, until he was murdered and his tongue severed—Father Zakaria’s experiences mirror those of St. Francis. According to Defying Death: Zakaria Botros, Apostle to Islam, after the priest began preaching to Muslims in Egypt, he was imprisoned and tortured; when he began baptizing Muslims, his life was deemed forfeit. He eventually managed to escape to the West. 20