Seeing Real Life Sharia In Action (Part III)

A continuation of the review of: Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Laws are Choking Freedom Worldwide

Read Part I and Part II here.

Victims in the West

In addition to additional Muslim reformers, the book covers several other cases of apostates, Christian converts and former Muslim critics, including the especially heroic Ibn Warraq and former Syrian physician Wafa Sultan (280-286), most of them fairly. It cannot go without comment, however, that the authors seriously insult Dr. Sultan: “She maintains that many verses in the Koran say that you must kill those who do not believe in Allah,” they write (p. 283). Or, Koran may not say it, she just thinks so.

To set the record straight, Koran 2:217 states:

“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.”

If commentary by the founder of Sunni Islam’s Shafi school (cited above) insufficiently explains its classical meaning, consider the exegesis on 2:217 by 13th century Maliki jurist Qurtubi (d. 1273):

“Scholars disagree about whether or not apostates are asked to repent. One group say they are asked to repent and, if they do, they are not killed. Some say they are given an hour and others a month. Others say they are asked to repent three times, and that is the view of Malik [founder of the Maliki school of Islamic Law]..It is also said they are killed without being asked to repent.”[3]

Additionally, Islamic jurists routinely cite Koran 4:89, which states:

“They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of God (From what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks;”

Baydawi (d. 1316) writes on 4:89: “Whosoever turns his back from his belief [irtada], openly or secretly, take him and kill him wheresoever ye find him, like any other infidel.”[4]

The OIC role

One hopes Silenced will spur readers to question the founding purpose of the OIC, which the authors do not detail. The Saudis established the it in 1969 to follow classical shariaand Muslim Brotherhood principles, and in 1973 created the Islamic Development Bank to advance the “Islamic way of life.” Its biggest project: the 1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, which 57 members signed.

Significantly, the preamble opens with the ummah’s keen awareness of “the place of mankind in Islam as viceregent of Allah on Earth,” a clear reference to Koran 3:110 and expected Islamic supremacy:

“Ye are the best of peoples, evolved for mankind, enjoining what is right, forbidding what is wrong, and believing in Allah. If only the People of the Book had faith, it were best for them: among them are some who have faith, but most of them are perverted transgressors.” [6]

Not coincidentally, the OIC convened for the so-called Cairo declaration shortly after the Feb. 1989 fatwa of Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, calling upon Muslims worldwide to track down U.K. citizen Salman Rushdie and execute him. Members agreed, the declaration would serve as their guide on “human rights.” These rights, its preamble specified, reaffirm the “civilizing and historical role of the Islamic ummah [nation]” divinely made “as the best community” to give “humanity a universal and well-balanced civilization” and to establish “harmony between” temporal and the afterlife and fulfill Muslim “expectations…to guide all humanity,” confused by conflicting beliefs and ideologies.

The OIC Cairo declaration proposed to contribute to global assertion of “human rights, to protect man from exploitation and persecution, and to affirm his freedom and right to a dignified life,” but only in accordance with sharia. Briefly, it supports the opposite of “human rights” in the West: unequal rights. The OIC then chiefly functions as a rising barricade–dangerously invisible to Western leaders, journalists and educators–to cow and herd free-thinking Western democracies on every continent into ever-tightening iron-clad boundaries to guard Islam against free speech. The authors understand this, despite their seemingly wishful thinking.

The book paints a global landscape, exposing a decades-long campaign to silence Islam’s internal and external critics via modern legal principles that clearly offend basic human rights. Example after example shows Muslims, through acts, expressing the belief that their creed, alone, is beyond criticism. Their actions suggest that many Muslims feel specially licensed to demand “cultural respect,” plus suppress infidels in their homelands, and everywhere else. Particularly those wanting equal human rights for all, even freedoms of faith and speech–free enough to criticize Muslim theology and Islam.

Further examples continue to accumulate daily. In Iran, Christian pastor Yousef Nadarkhami, now 32, has lived precariously under a sword of Damocles since his 2009 arrest for apostasy–and converting from Islam at age 19. In 2010, he was convicted of apostasy and sentenced to death, though Iran now claims he was sentenced for rape. The mainstream press has remained largely silent over this outrage, albeit among many in Iran. Meanwhile in Paris, Islamic thugs bombed the office of satire magazine Charlie Hebdo (a Gallic version of Britain’s Private Eye) after its latest cover changed its name to Charia Hebdo and listed Mohammed as a “guest editor” to mock Tunisian and Libyan Islamic law. Yet The Daily Beast (in the U.S.) headlined the satirical cover –not the bombing — as “shocking.”

I’m choking.

Sadly, however, Silenced does not address the most important fact: Egregious violations of basic human rights, heretofore, have stemmed directly from Islamic texts–the Koran, hadith and sira — not only “human interpretation” thereof. In the Koran itself (3:110) originated the claim that Muslims are the best of peoples, notes Australian writer Geoff Dickson. Muslim jurist Ibn Kathir (1301-1373) in his tafsir (exegesis) explains the verse to mean:

“You are the best of peoples ever raised up for mankind; you enjoin Al-Ma`ruf (all that Islam has ordained) and forbid Al-Munkar (all that Islam has forbidden), and you believe in Allah. And had the People of the Scripture (Jews and Christians) believed, it would have been better for them; among them are some who have faith, but most of them are Fasiqun (rebellious).”

Theoretically anything is possible. So, theoretically, is Islamic reform. The rest of humanity, meanwhile, deserves and needs the truth about Islamic expansionism and irredentism, including where and how those beliefs and practices originated.