Review of: Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Laws are Choking Freedom Worldwide
“Apostasy is, in principle, subject to sharia hudud rules, which means that the punishment–death–is believed to be fixed by divine order and not subject to judicial discretion…,” write Paul Marshall and Nina Shea in chapter two of Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Laws are Choking Freedom Worldwide (p. 23), without further explanation.
Silenced falls far short of the landmark study it might have been, had the authors honestly addressed foundational Islamic principles, history and texts that support offending modern codes, and stated the stupefyingly consistent and pervasive use of sharia laws throughout Muslim history. Specifically, hudud refer to Islamic behavioral limits thought divine since Mohammed established the creed. Sharia’s heavenly status and its stubborn exercise rest squarely on Koran (considered sacred and immutable) and sunnah, or “traditions.” The latter includes hadith and sira, Mohammed’s recorded speech and deeds; and his life (usually, the Ibn Ishaq biography). Apostasy–rejecting Islam–is but one offense to divinity. Adultery similarly requires capital punishment, and theft demands amputation.
To assert that hudud are rarely enforced, or fearing them is “lunacy,” as do Sadiq Reza and other Islamic law professors, is sheer absurdity. But readers of Silenced will not learn here that the horrors the book describes represent unadulterated use of classical hudud and sharia laws, as always practiced.
Abdurahman Wahid (Gus Dur)
In order “to show that such temporal punishments are not required by Islam,” the authors deliberately avoid discussing the history of apostasy and blasphemy laws and “systematic treatment in Islamic jurisprudence and theology” (p. 287). They leave that topic to “three noted Muslim scholars” whose essays they include. The Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) party provided the forward by the late Indonesian president, reputed Muslim reformer Abdurahman Wahid (1940-2009). Wahid misleadingly casts the “original” meaning of apostasy (as named in the index), and its required punishment–death–as only:
“the legacy of historical circumstances and political calculations stretching back to…early …Islam, when apostasy generally coincided with desertion from the caliph’s army and/or rejection of his authority and thus constituted treason…. [E]mbedding (i.e. codification) of [its] harsh punishments…into Islamic law [is] a…byproduct of these circumstances, framed [by] human calculations and expediency, [not] the eternal dictate of Islam sharia on the issue….
“The…development and use of the term sharia to refer to Islamic law often lead those unfamiliar with [it] to conflate man-made law with its revelatory inspiration, and…to elevate to Divine [status] products of human understanding, … necessarily conditioned by space and time.
Wahid further attempts to distinguish sharia and its purported embodiment of “perennial values” from Islamic law. He says the latter resulted from “itjihad (interpretation),” and depends on circumstance (al hukm yadur ma’a al’illah wujudan wa ‘adaman). They must be “continuously reviewed” to adapt and prevent Islamic law from obsolescence, rigidity and failing to connect with contemporary Muslim lives and sharia’s own “perennial values.” He thus claims that Islam’s greatest fiqh (jurisprudence) scholars were “deeply grounded in tassawuf,” Islamic mysticism, and balanced “the letter of the law with the spirit” of accommodation to differing culture and practice across the Maghreb, Sahara, sub-Saharan Sahel region, southern Africa, Persia, Asia, the East Indies and the former Roman empire.
Reformer or not, Wahid headed an Islamic party which was co-founded in 1926 Java by his grandfathers (both members of its sharia council), which purveyed strict Islamic law according to Dr. Andrew Bostom. It required that members follow one of four Sunni schools of (Islamic) law–of “Muhammad bin Idris As-Shafi, Imam Malik bin Anas, Imam Abu Hanifa or Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal–and to do everything beneficial to Islam.” Al-Shafi’i (d. 820) himself interpreted Koran 2:217 “to mean that the death penalty should be prescribed for apostates,” the scholar Ibn Warraq explains in Leaving Islam. [1] Moreover, all Sunni sharia schools had closed the “gates of itjihad,” freedom to interpret, 500 years ago. Lately, a few conservative Sunnis favor its reinstatement. Yet the Shi’a kept “benefits of ijtihad” alive, and witnessed no modern reforms. Iran maintains draconian sharia-based laws. Its current-day effects are detailed in chapter three.
Unsuccessful reformists
Ultimately, Wahid failed to improve Indonesia’s political landscape. Educated at Islamic schools, he joined NU at his grandfathers’ behest and took over in 1984, planning a secular “religious movement” to give social progress to all. He opposed Islamic supremacism. Muslims reacted violently. In 1998, as Suharto stoked anti-Chinese riots, Wahid sought calm to no avail. Hardline Muslims burned Chinese homes and shops, raped hundreds and killed at least 1,00o — just as they had 100,000 ethnic Chinese in the mid-1960s. Wahid opposed East Timor’s secession but before its 2002 independence, he apologized for Indonesia’s 1978 occupation and atrocities. Yet, jihadis continued to attack Javanese and Maluku Christians (often with military aid), raided dozens of villages, forced thousands to convert and killed at least 5,000. Genocide has raised Indonesia’s Muslim population to nearly 90% of its total.
The late Muslim reformer Nasr Hamid Abu-Zayd (1943-2010) wrote “Renewing Quranic Studies in the Contemporary World.” Although director of the International Institute of Quranic Studies (IIQS), he was declared an apostate by Egypt’s Court of Cassation (its highest). He fled. His marriage was forcibly dissolved. He viewed the Koran from an “objective historical perspective.” He asked how it “was transmitted, propagated, codified, and ultimately canonized,” and sought “interpretive diversity.” He condemned blasphemy and apostasy laws projecting Koran as “eternal and uncreated,” and opposed those who were against modern concepts and life principles of freedom, justice, “human rights and dignity of man….”
Indeed, apostasy and blasphemy laws embedded in 1400 years of Islamic jurisprudence prohibit such thoughts. In Sept. 1978, the fatwa council at Cairo’s al-Azhar University, the closest Muslim equivalent to the Vatican, issued an official ruling on the case of an Egyptian emigre and convert to Christianity:
“…This man has committed apostasy; he must be given a chance to repent and if he does not then he must be killed according to Shariah.
“As far as his children are concerned, as long as they are children they are considered Muslim, but after they reach the age of puberty, then if they remain with Islam they are Muslim, but if they leave Islam and they do not repent they must be killed and Allah knows best.”
Finally, a chapter on reform of classical Muslim apostasy and blasphemy laws came from Maldives-native Abdullah Saeed, the Sultan of Oman Arab and Islamic studies professor at Australia’s University of Melbourne. He includes an internet fatwa by Muhammad Salah al-Munajjid on punishment of a murtadd, referencing the classical Bukhari hadith, “if someone changes his religion, kill him.” Like Wahid, Saeed insists on the socio-political genesis of apostasy’s prescribed punishment that specified those “in a state of war against Muslims.” It was more “akin to treason” than a simple matter of changing one’s belief. He also argues that “clear textual proofs that guarantee certainty of knowledge (‘ilm qat’i) were lacking in this debate.” If any, his second thought would most likely gain limited acceptance by Muslim jurists in 2011. Ordinary Muslims and non-Muslims in Islamic regions increasingly oppose classical apostasy laws and other religious restrictions, he writes, increasingly pressuring them to comply with human rights standards like the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Yet Saeed’s own homeland banned the 2004 book on apostasy, co-authored with his brother and former Maldives attorney general Hasaan Saeed, on which he based this chapter.
How ready are Muslim jurists to change? The evidence suggests, not very.
“They ask thee concerning fighting in the Prohibited Month. Say: “Fighting therein is a grave (offense); but graver is it in the sight of God to prevent access to the path of God, to deny Him, to prevent access to the Sacred Mosque, and drive out its members.” Tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter. Nor will they cease fighting you until they turn you back from your faith if they can. And if any of you Turn back from their faith and die in unbelief, their works will bear no fruit in this life and in the Hereafter; they will be companions of the Fire and will abide therein.”