Threats
to Apostates "Most Severe" in Muslim Countries and Beyond
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
May 4, 2018
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 It was the
traditional Milad un Nabi, when Muslims commemorate the birthday of
the Prophet Mohammed, and the imam in a small Punjab village had a
question.
"Who here does not love the Prophet Mohammed?" he asked. Mishearing the cleric, 15-year-old Anwar Ali
raised his hand.
A shout went up from the crowd, which had gathered to celebrate their
prophet with songs, poems, and the reading of sacred texts.
"Blasphemer!" the imam declared, and pronounced that the boy
should be put to death.
Instead, Ali rushed home and cut his own hand off with a scythe. He
returned later to present the imam, Shamir Ahmed, with the hand placed on a
plate – a sign of his repentance. "What I did was in love for prophet
Muhammad," he reportedly said as his father expressed pride in his
son's actions. While police later arrested Ahmed for "inciting violence,"
Ali was heralded throughout the community as a hero.
In fact, Anwar Ali was one of the lucky ones. Others accused of
blasphemy have been sentenced to lashings, beheading, or both. And it isn't
always by the government: in 2014, a Christian couple, accused of burning
verses from the Quran, was set on fire and thrown into a brick kiln by a mob of
more than 1,000 people. The wife, just 24, was four months pregnant.
Five of the couple's alleged killers have been sentenced to death. But more than 100 others have
been acquitted.
Such is the state of religious law in much of the world, according to
the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU)'s 2017 "Freedom of
Thought" report. A thorough analysis of the rights to freedom of
thought, expression, and religion worldwide, the report examines the rights
and abuses of humanists, atheists, agnostics, apostates, and those
practicing minority religions. Perpetrators named in the report are not
only governments, but members of the general population, such as the
university students who beat Mashal Khan to death after he described himself
on Facebook as "the humanist"; the machete-wielding mobs who
attacked and killed several humanist writers in Bangladesh; and the
slaughterers of blogger and human rights activist Yameen Rasheed, who was
stabbed 36 times in his home in that popular honeymoon destination, the
Maldives.
In all, the report identifies 30 countries as "most severe"
with "grave violations," in which "'apostasy' or conversion
from a specific religion is outlawed and punishable by death" and
"religious instruction in a significant number of schools is of a
coercive fundamentalist or extremist variety." In addition, they
classify 55 others at the second level of severity, marked by
"religious control over family law or legislation on moral
matters," where "'blasphemy' is outlawed or criticism of religion
is restricted and punishable with a prison sentence." Such criteria
includes some surprising culprits, including Germany, Greece, and Denmark.
Notably, however, the report points out that the countries identified as
having the "most severe" conditions also show "a high
prevalence of human rights abuses across various other sectors of society
as well." Further, the list "is predominated by Islamic states,
or countries with mainly Muslim populations, or with highly Islamized
regions within multi-religious nations ... The result of all this – just as
many conservative and extremist followers of Islam would probably agree and
desire it! – is that it is Islamic states, and Islamic populations, which
pose the most prevalent and often the most serious threat to the
non-religious people in their societies today."
Such threats are not limited to the Muslim world, however, as the 2015 killings of the Charlie
Hebdo editors made clear. Non-Muslims perceived to have attacked Islam
as well as Muslim apostates in the West such as Wafa Sultan, Ibn Warraq,
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Salman Rushdie, live under constant threat. For this
reason, in 2015 British-Iranian former Muslim Maryam Namazie began the
hashtag #exmuslimbecause
to lend support to those living with the fear of reprisal for exercising
their freedom of belief. The hashtag eventually morphed into an independent
Twitter
account, which now boasts more than 8,000 followers.
Others have quietly formed secret organizations, such as the Dutch
Facebook groups "Ex-Muslims in The Netherlands" and
"Moroccans Without Religion." According to the Dutch newspaper Trouw, membership in these groups is by
invitation only, and most of the members remain anonymous. Many have hidden
their viewpoints even from their own families. "Ex-Muslims in the
Netherlands" members exchange emotional support, but also recommend
books to one another – including titles by Richard Dawkins and Charles
Darwin, Trouw reports.
Whatever the risks within their own communities, however, such things
are far easier and safer to organize in the West than in the Islamic world,
where the threat comes not just from family and community, but often also
from the state. In Iran, Iraq, Qatar, the Maldives, Saudi Arabia, and the
UAE, for instance, apostasy – either leaving Islam for another religion or
declaring oneself unreligious – is punishable by death. Even advocating
secularism is illegal in these and many other countries, the Freedom of
Thought report points out.
(A series of brief excerpts from the "Freedom of Thought"
report available here demonstrates the force of those perils.)
Even so, Western attitudes toward free thought may be gradually
worsening. German laws against insulting religion, while perhaps
understandable given Germany's Nazi past, nonetheless violate democratic,
post-Enlightenment ideals by imposing prison sentences on those who merely
express an opinion. In the Netherlands, anti-Islam Parliament member Geert
Wilders was prosecuted for a 2014 campaign speech in which he promised
"fewer Moroccans" in the Netherlands. In finding him guilty, the court called his words "demeaning and thereby
insulting towards the Moroccan population."
Similarly, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack and previous
attempts on the lives of Mohammed cartoonists Kurt Westergaard and Lars
Vilks, many international activists – including UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon – have
countered calls for repealing old blasphemy laws with cries to strengthen them, instead arguing that the cartoonists
and others who "provoke" Muslims by "insulting" them
are only asking for trouble.
But humanists and secularists adamantly oppose such moves. They signal a
"pattern of regression on a global scale," warns IHEU spokesman
Bob Churchill, in the Freedom of Thought report's introduction. Similarly,
in an introduction to The Fall And Rise of Blasphemy Law, former Jyllands-Post
editor Flemming Rose, who published the Danish Mohammed cartoons, describes
the idea of strengthening blasphemy laws as "nonsense" that
indicates "a frightening lack of understanding of the basic principles
of a free society."
Tragically, however, that "nonsense" has resulted in immense
suffering in the form of torture, "honor" crimes, imprisonment,
and death – not just in the Muslim world, but also in the West. Hence if we
are going to keep that free society, we will have to do more than understand
its "basic principles." We will need to protect, with all our
laws, ideals, and voices, the freedoms that we cherish from those who
blaspheme against them.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in
the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New
York and the Netherlands. Follow her at @radicalstates.
Related Topics: Free
Speech | Abigail
R. Esman, apostasy
laws, blasphemy,
International
Humanist and Ethical Union, Freedom
of Thought report, Mashal
Khan, Yasmeen
Rasheed, Raif
Badawi, Maryam
Namazie, Lars
Vilks, Flemming
Rose,
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