Dispatches investigates the violence and intimidation facing Muslims who convert to Christianity in Britain. Dispatches reporter Antony Barnett meets former Muslims who now live under the threat of reprisals from their former communities. Many are still living in fear. He interviews a family who have been driven out of their home and a convert whose brother was beaten close to death.
The investigation uncovers a network of churches supporting converts from Islam who have to worship under a veil of secrecy. It is estimated there are as many as 3,000 Muslims who have converted to Christianity living in Britain.
Converting to another religion for a Muslim is not just considered a taboo act by some believers. Certain Islamic texts demand converts - also known as apostates - be punished severely for deserting their faith. In several Islamic states, the death penalty is imposed. Here in Britain, Dispatches discovers a form of mob justice is taking place on our streets. A concerned Christian bishop tells Dispatches that it may not be long before a British convert is killed, and implores Muslim leaders to take action.
Dispatches discovers the situation for converts from Islam in Britain is a tinderbox waiting to explode. Increasingly asylum seekers from Islamic countries are exploring different faiths in Britain while a new strand of evangelical Christianity is targeting Britain's Muslims for conversion.
With radical British Islamic groups calling for apostates to be executed if they achieved their goal of a worldwide Islamic state, it's a potentially dangerous cocktail that has been exacerbated by the silence of both Muslim and Christian leaders on the subject.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ali_eteraz/2007/09/supporting_islams_apostates.html
Supporting Islam's apostates
Ali Eteraz
September 17, 2007 7:30 PM
A recent article in the Times about Muslim apostates - those who renounce Islam - discusses a Dutch organisation called the Committee for Ex-Muslims and speaks of their mission in a supportive manner. Since I once considered myself an atheist, the question of how one leaves Islam - and how one might be punished for it - has long fascinated me.
It is deplorable to me that vast parts of the Islamic legal corpus, and vast numbers of Muslims, actually believe that Islam sanctions killing its apostates. In a pamphlet that I previously wrote, I developed an Islamic legal argument that there is no penalty for leaving Islam.
My argument was not rooted in an appeal to universal human rights, but rather in the Quran. My assumption was that an extremist Muslim is not likely to be swayed by appeals to natural law, but has more chance of reacting favourably to Islamic law. It was written in a conversational style, and I would advise any public figure who is a Muslim but wishes to renounce Islam to put in in his or her rhetorical arsenal. It cites all Quranic verses which unambiguously counter the extremist view about the death penalty for apostasy, while also undermining the various hadith narrations which are used to justify it.
In one respect, the Times article paints too rosy a picture because it discusses only apostates in the west. Here, no one recognises a punishment for apostasy, and therefore, any violence against those who abandon Islam is already illegal. The real battle over the death penalty for apostasy is in the Muslim world. There, apostates aren't winning; they aren't even close to starting to show their faces. The Muslim world suffers from institutionalised violence against apostates. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia and Egypt all have laws on the books that punish apostasy with death.
Reading about a 22-year-old in a western country publicly renouncing Islam - and living to tell about it - is good. But, quite frankly, for every Ehsan Jami in a western country, the Muslim world is replete with hundreds and thousands of closet apostates: people who, but for the violence that the state promises them for leaving Islam, would not be Muslims; people who are therefore forced to live a life of extreme duplicity and mental stress.
I suppose I feel strongly about the social hypocrisy of being an apostate because at the height of my collegiate atheism I took a trip to Pakistan and had to engage in a series of dissimulations that took an immense metal toll. In any event, that the Muslim world needs to do more with respect to the apostasy issue.
But what does doing more even mean? How does one challenge an idea that become so entrenched? My suggestions are two-fold.
First, the primary argument against the death penalty for apostasy needs to be an Islamic one. This makes sense from a pragmatic perspective because prosecutors and jurors are all Muslims. The case of Hussein Ali Qambar, a Muslim who openly converted to Christianity in Kuwait and was condemned even by liberals, demonstrates that until vast numbers of Muslims are educated about apostasy being OK from an Islamic perspective, even liberal Muslims will not be helpful to making headway in this area.
Couching the issue as an Islamic one also makes sense from an ethical perspective, because it has the effect of shaping the future of Islam in a positive manner. One useful effort comes from the Apostasy and Islam website, which is run by Muslims. It lists Muslim authorities from all eras of Islamic history that oppose the death penalty for apostasy (the number is more than 100 now) - and it includes some very impressive Muslim authorities.
While more Muslim jurists are now coming out against the death penalty for apostasy, they are - regrettably - simultaneously allowing the crime of "sedition" to be punishable. Sherman Jackson, a respected Islamic jurist in the US, buys into this position. He says:
What is developing into the going opinion among modern jurists is that apostasy carries no earthly sanction at all, unless it is engaged in as an act of sedition, where the point is not simply to assert one's freedom of conscience but to make a political statement with the aim of undermining the basis of Muslim society.
Muslim jurists ought to realise that a charge of "sedition" is going to be used against anyone who converts away from Islam, whether the intention was actually seditious or not. This is because almost all Muslim societies hold prejudiced views against converts and will punish such individuals at every opportunity. Unequal application of laws is a reality, and jurists have to be sensitive to that fact.
Muslim jurists also have to recognise that a person who wishes to convert should not have to live under the threat of being brought before a court. Conversion should be allowed as a matter of natural right. If "Muslim society" might be up in arms about a conversion, it is the society - not the person converting - that needs to be regulated.
Further, Muslim jurists have to be asked on what Quranic basis they are sanctioning the crime of sedition. There is no Quranic verse related to sedition. Are they basing it on a hadith? In which case they have to demonstrate why the hadith trumps the fact that the Quran has said nothing about sedition. Are jurists simply extracting the crime out of thin air? Are they relying on the "fasad fil ardh" (disorder in the land) verse of the Quran? If that is the case, how do they reply to the fact that under traditional Islamic law the "fasad" verse is supposed to apply to acts such as terrorism? Are they making the ridiculous argument that terrorism and conversion are one and the same? That position is not tenable under any interpretation of Islamic law.
My second suggestion for moving forward on the apostasy issue, is that commentators of all religions and ideologies the world need to become smart enough to recognise when a particular Islamic reform has the effect - somewhere down the road - of assisting in repealing the death penalty for apostasy. This way, these reforms can be celebrated and pushed in the the media for positive reinforcement.
I have written previously about one such reform in an article entitled Islam's organic liberalism: when the Mufti of Egypt came out and said that one's choice of religion was something between man and God. While the Mufti's fatwa did not go as far as I would have liked, I pointed out that it did create the conditions for later advancement in this area.
Another example about a reform that, down the road, will help in repealing the death penalty for apostasy is the Amman Message from the king of Jordan, which I have written about, too. The Amman Message created a massive list of heads of states and religious scholars the world over who said that one Muslim could not declare another Muslim out of the fold of Islam. The Message did not go so far as to say that people who renounce Islam should not be punished. But it did make a very positive push in the area of freedom of thought. Both the fatwa by the Mufti and the Amman Message should be celebrated by western media.
Unfortunately, western media coverage in this area is often very unhelpful. The Times article, for example, tries to show that the death penalty for apostasy is based in the Quran, citing verse 4.89:
Whosoever turns back from his belief, openly or secretly, take him and kill him wheresoever ye find him, like any other infidel. Separate yourself from him altogether. Do not accept intercession in his regard.
That is simply wrong. First of all, the English translation is atrocious, with Pickthall, Shakir and Yusuf Ali all offering much clearer (and more honest) interpretations. Second, and most importantly, the verse refers to a particular set of deserters from Muhammad's army who were effectively engaged in treason.
If the Times' aim is to provide enlightenment on the issue of apostasy, it really should be more careful with its Quranic quotations. The lives of apostates are already under such duress that they do not need the media turning into unwitting promoters of regressive readings of Islam.
From The TimesSeptember 11, 2007
Young Muslims begin dangerous fight for the right to abandon faith
A group of young Muslim apostates launches a campaign today, the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America, to make it easier to renounce Islam.
The provocative move reflects a growing rift between traditionalists and a younger generation raised on a diet of Dutch tolerance.
The Committee for Ex-Muslims promises to campaign for freedom of religion but has already upset the Islamic and political Establishments for stirring tensions among the million-strong Muslim community in the Netherlands.
Ehsan Jami, the committee's founder, who rejected Islam after the attack on the twin towers in 2001, has become the most talked-about public figure in the Netherlands. He has been forced into hiding after a series of death threats and a recent attack.
The threats are taken seriously after the murder in 2002 of Pim Fortuyn, an antiimmigration politician, and in 2004 of Theo Van Gogh, an antiIslam film-maker.
Speaking to The Times at a secret location before the committee's launch today, the Labour Party councillor said that the movement would declare war on radical Islam. Similar organisations campaigning for reform of the religion have sprung up across Europe and representatives from Britain and Germany will join the launch in The Hague today.
"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," Mr Jami said. "In Islam you are born Muslim. You do not even choose to be Muslim. We want that to change, so that people are free to choose who they want to be and what they want to believe in."
Mr Jami, 22, who has abandoned his studies as his political career has taken off, denied that the choice of September 11 was deliberately provocative towards the Islamic Establishment. "We chose the date because we want to make a clear statement that we no longer tolerate the intolerence of Islam, the terrorist attacks," he said.
"In 1965 the Church in Holland made a declaration that freedom of conscience is above hanging on to religion, so you can choose whether you are going to be a Christian or not. What we are seeking is the same thing for Islam."
Mr Jami, who has compared the rise of radical Islam to the threat from Nazism in the 1930s, is receiving only lukewarm support from his party which traditionally relies upon Muslim votes. His outspoken attack on radical Islam has led to a prelaunch walk-out from fellow committee founder Loubna Berrada, who herself rejected Islam.
She said: "I don't wish to confront Islam itself. I only want to spread the message that Muslims should be allowed to leave Islam behind without being threatened."
There have been suggestions that Mr Jami might defect to the right-wing Freedom Party, led by Geert Wilders, the most outspoken politician in the Netherlands, who has called for the Koran to be banned. But Mr Jami said: "I have respect for Wilders but we do not have the same ideology. I am for the freedom of religion.
"Banning something is not going to help. I am the opposite – everyone should read the Koran." Mr Jami is being compared to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali refugee who became a prominent Dutch politician campaigning for the reform of Islam but who left eventually for an academic career in the United States.
Jannie Groen, a writer for De Volksrant newspaper, said: "[Among Muslims] he is getting the same reaction as Ayaan Hirsi Ali that he is too confrontational but you are seeing other former Muslims now coming forward. So he has been able to put this issue of apostasy on the agenda, even though they do not want to be in the same room as him and he has had to pay a price."
By the Book
— 14 passages in the Koran refer to apostasy
— According to Baidhawi's commentary, Sura 4: 88-89 reads: "Whosoever turns back from his belief, openly or secretly, take him and kill him wheresoever ye find him, like any other infidel. Separate yourself from him altogether. Do not accept intercession in his regard."
— The hadith, tradition and legend about Muhammad and his followers used as a basis of Sharia, tells of some atheists who were brought to "'Ali and he burnt them. The news of this reached Ibn Abbas who said: 'If I had been in his place, I would not have burnt them, as Allah's Apostate forbade it . . . I would have killed them according to the statement of Allah's Apostate, 'Whoever changed his [Islamic] religion, then kill him'."
— According to hadith, a special reward in Paradise is reserved for the killer of apostates
Source: Times archives; Barnabas Fund
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