MAINSTREAM ISLAM REJECTS FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE

In September 2010, the Organization of the Islamic Conference¹ (OIC; now the Organization of Islamic Cooperation), in cooperation with the American Islamic College (AIC), sponsored a program at the AIC's Chicago campus titled “The Role of the OIC and the Scope for Its Relations with American Muslims.”²

Founded in 1969, the OIC is now a fifty-six-state collective which includes every Islamic nation on Earth.

John Laflin, the late (d. 2000) military historian and prolific writer on Islam, warned in 1988 that the Jedda- based OIC, under Saudi Arabia's patronage, was persuading Muslim nations to jettison even their inchoate adoption of “Western models and codes,” and to revert to precolonial era (pre-Western) retrograde systems of sharia, or Islamic law.³ The Saudis proffered sizable loans and grants from their institutions in return for the more extensive application of sharia in these targeted OIC countries. Laffin also noted the unprecedented Saudi distribution of media and print materials which extended to non-Muslim countries, including tens of millions of Korans, translated into many languages for the hundreds of millions of Muslims (and non-Muslims) who did not read Arabic. He concluded at that time: “Propaganda is carried on from Riyadh on a scale comparable to Moscow's effort to spread communism.”⁴

Fast-forward twenty-two years, and two special US envoys to the OIC later (both the former envoy, Sada Cumber, and current envoy, Rashad Hussain, were in attendance at the Chicago OIC program), and one must seriously consider the extent of OIC propaganda efforts aimed at the Islamization of our country.

Elizabeth Kendal, in a commentary about the plight of brutalized Egytpian Muslim “apostates” Maher el- Gowhary and Nagla Al-Imam, made a series of apt observations which illustrate the most salient aspect of Islam's persistent religious totalitarianism: the absence of freedom of conscience in Islamic societies. Egypt, Kendal notes, amended its secular-leaning constitution in 1980, reverting to its precolonial past and designating sharia (Islamic law) as “the principal source of legislation”—an omnipresent feature of contemporary Muslim constitutions, including the new constitutions of Afghanistan and Iraq—rendering “constitutional guarantees of religious liberty and equality before the law illusory.”⁵ This is the inevitable outcome of a sharia-based legal system, because:

Sharia's principal aim concerning religious liberty, is to eradicate apostasy (rejection of Islam) through the elimination of fitna (anything that could tempt a Muslim to reject Islam) and the establishment of dhimmitude— the humiliation and subjugation of Jews and Christians as second class citizens [or non-citizen pariahs]; crippling systematic discrimination; violent religious apartheid.. In Egypt, as in virtually all Muslim states, a person’s official religion is displayed on their identity card. According to sharia, every child born to a Muslim father is deemed Muslim from birth. According to sharia, a Muslim woman is only permitted to marry a Muslim man. (This is the main reason why Christian men convert to Islam, and why female converts to Christianity will risk life and liberty to secure a falsified/illegal ID, for without a Christian ID they cannot marry a Christian.)⁶

Thus Kendal concludes: “There is no religious liberty in Islam, for Islam survives as religious totalitarianism that refuses rejection.”⁷

Islam’s refusal to abide rejection by its votaries—the global Muslim umma’ strident rejection of freedom of conscience—is now openly codified, and has been for two decades.

Both the preamble and concluding articles (24 and 25) make plain that the OIC’s Cairo Declaration¹⁰ is designed to supersede Western conceptions of human rights as enunciated, for example, in the US Bill of Rights¹¹ and the United Nations’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.¹²

The opening of the preamble to the Cairo Declaration¹³ repeats a Koranic injunction affirming Islamic supremacism (Koran 3:110—“You are the best nation ever brought forth to men, bidding to honour,

and forbidding dishonour, and believing in God. Had the People of the Book believed, it were better for them; some of them are believers, but the most of them are ungodly”¹⁴), and states:

Reaffirming the civilizing and historical role of the Islamic Ummah which Allah made the best nation.¹⁵

The preamble continues:

Believing that fundamental rights and universal freedoms in Islam are an integral part of the Islamic religion and that no one as a matter of principle has the right to suspend them in whole or in part or violate or ignore them in as much as they are binding divine commandments, which are contained in the Revealed Books of God and were sent through the last of His Prophets to complete the preceding divine messages thereby making their observance an act of worship and their neglect or violation an abominable sin, and accordingly every person is individually responsible— and the Ummah collectively responsible—for their safeguard.¹⁶

In its last articles, 24 and 25, the Cairo Declaration maintains:

[Article 24] All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Sharia.. [Article 25] The Islamic Sharia is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification to any of the articles of this Declaration.¹⁷

These statements capture the indelible influence of the Islamic religious law sharia: the Cairo Declaration claiming supremacy based on “divine revelation,” which renders sacred and permanent the notion of inequality between the community of Allah and the infidels.

Enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Bill of Rights is the guarantee that laws may not be made that interfere with religion “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”¹⁸ Absent the right to freedom of thought or conscience, other rights such as the right to freedom of speech¹⁹ are rendered meaningless. US Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo²⁰ reasoned elegantly in Palko v. Connecticut (1937):

Freedom of thought...is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom. With rare aberrations a pervasive recognition of this truth can be traced in our history, political and legal.²¹

This principle of freedom of conscience is also upheld in Article 18 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which further makes explicit the fundamental right to change one's religion:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance.²²

The gravely negative implications of the QIC’s sharia-based Cairo Declaration are most apparent in its transparent rejection of freedom of conscience in Article 10, which proclaims:

Islam is the religion of unspoiled nature. It is prohibited to exercise any form of compulsion on man or to exploit his poverty or ignorance in order to convert him to another religion, or to atheism.²³

Ominously, Articles 19 and 22 reiterate a principle stated elsewhere throughout the document, which clearly applies to the “punishment” of so-called apostates from Islam:

[19d] There shall be no crime or punishment except as provided for in the Sharia.

[22a] Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Sharia.

[22b] Everyone shall have the right to advocate what is right, and propagate what is good, and warn against what is wrong and evil according to the norms of Islamic Sharia.

[22c] Information is a vital necessity to society. It may not be exploited or misused in such a way as may violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, undermine moral and ethical values or disintegrate, corrupt or harm society or weaken its faith.²⁴

Punishment by death for apostasy from Islam is firmly rooted in Islam's foundational texts, both the Koran (verses such as 2:217, 4:89, and their classical exegesis by renowned Koranic commentators such as Qurtubi and Baydawi),—and the hadith (i.e., collections of the putative words and deeds of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, as compiled by pious Muslim transmitters), as well as the sacred Islamic law (the sharia). For example, Muhammad is reported to have said “kill him who changes his religion,” in the canonical hadith collections.²⁶ There is also a consensus by all four schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (i.e., Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, and Shafii), as well as Shi'ite jurists, that apostates from Islam must be put to death.²⁷ Averroes (d. 1198), the renowned philosopher and scholar of the natural sciences who was also an important Maliki jurist, provided this typical Muslim legal opinion on the punishment for apostasy:

An apostate...is to be executed by agreement in the case of a man, because of the words of the Prophet, “Slay those who change their din [religion].”...Asking the apostate to repent was stipulated as a condition.prior to his execution.²⁸

Moreover, the much-lionized “Sufi” theologian al- Ghazali (d. 1111) promoted a broader definition of apostasy, accompanied by unforgiving punishment. For al-Ghazali, the application of the principle of charitable or lenient repentance in cases of apostasy by Islam's foundational jurists (such al-Shafii [d.

The meaning of “repentance” of an apostate is his abandoning of his inner religion. The secret apostate does not give up his inner confessions when he professes the words of the shahada [the Muslim profession of faith]. He may be killed for his unbelief because we are convinced that he stays an unbeliever who sticks to his unbelief.³⁰

Ultimately al-Ghazali's thought evolved to this more draconian view because he believed Islamic law could not remain on the same level it was in the times of Muhammad (and the nascent Muslim community) to combat the threat posed to the Islamic community by the activities of such “secret apostates.”³¹

The contemporary (i.e., 1991) Al Azhar (Cairo) Islamic Research Academy-endorsed manual of Islamic law, Reliance of the Traveller (Umdat al-Salik), states:

Leaving Islam is the ugliest form of unbelief (kufr) and the worst.. When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostasizes from Islam, he deserves to be killed. In such a case, it is obligatory.to ask him to repent and return to Islam. If he does it is accepted from him, but if he refuses, he is immediately killed. There is no indemnity for killing an apostate (or any expiation, since it is killing someone who deserves to die).³²

This doctrinal and historical legitimacy of sharia- mandated killing of apostates from Islam is affirmed by Heffening in his scholarly review for the authoritative, mainstream academic reference work, the Encyclopedia of Islam:

In Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), there is unanimity that the male apostate must be put to death.. A woman, on the other hand, is imprisoned.until she again adopts Islam...[or] she also is put to death.³³

As noted by historian David Littman, Adama Dieng, then a prominent Muslim Senegalese jurist, alerted the international community to the Cairo Declaration’s profoundly dangerous impact, which under the rubric of sharia deliberately restricted certain fundamental freedoms and rights—most notably, freedom of conscience.³⁴ He also argued that the Cairo Declaration introduced “in the name of defense of human rights,” unacceptable discrimination against non-Muslims and women, while sanctioning the legitimacy of heinous practices—sharia-compliant punishments (from corporal punishments to mutilation and stoning) —“which attack the integrity and dignity of the human being.”³⁵

Pew survey data published August 13, 2009, and December 2, 2010, starkly reflect the depth and prevalence of popular support among the Muslim masses for these hideous views, sanctioned by their theo-political Islamic leadership within the OIC,³⁶ and contrary to our foundational Western freedoms. Specifically, the August 13, 2009, Pew findings reveal that among Pakistani Muslims:

78% favor death for those who leave Islam [apostates];

80% favor whippings and cutting off hands for crimes

like theft and robbery; and 83% favor stoning adulterers.³⁷

The question arises as to why 78 percent of Pakistani Muslims sanctioned such draconian punishment circa August 2009. Key explanatory evidence can be found in the mainstream, widely disseminated teachings of Maulana Mufti Muhammad Shafi.³⁸

A graduate of the Darul Ulum Deoband, Maulana Mufti Muhammad Shafi (1898-1976) taught for twenty-seven years until 1943. During this period, approximately thirty thousand students from all over the world experienced his discourses. He also managed the Darul Ifta department of Darul Ulum Deoband, where juristic questions from across the world were discussed, and he served as the grand mufti of India prior to the Partition of India. After the creation of Pakistan in 1947, Mufti Muhammad Shafi moved to Karachi, where he established Darul Ulum Karachi in 1950. After only a few months, it had more than two thousand students. His two sons, Mufti Muhammad Rafi Uthmani and Justice (R) Mufti Muhammad Taqi Uthmani currently teach at the institute. Mufti Muhammad Shafi is the author of Maariful Qur'an, which is the best-known work of tafsir (Koranic commentary) in Urdu. He also wrote more than three hundred books. In addition to his literary works, Mufti Muhammad Shafi broadcasted tafsir of the Koran on Radio Pakistan for a number of years.³⁹

His commentary on Koran 2:217 makes plain how this verse sanctions the killing of apostates:

Towards the end of the verse (Koran 2: 217), it has been said that the act of turning into an apostate after having become a Muslim shall be dealt with under the injunction...that is, they shall be those whose deeds have gone waste in this world and in the Hereafter. Here are some injunctions relating to the apostates:

1) Some examples of “deeds going waste in this world” are that the wife of an apostate goes out of the bond of marriage; if a relative of an apostate dies a Muslim, he gets no share in the inheritance; all obligations such as prayers and fasting fulfilled in one's state of Islam are reduced to nothing; for such a person funeral prayers are not offered and he or she is not buried in the graveyard meant for Muslims “Deeds going waste in the Hereafter” means that one gets no reward for acts of worship and enters the Hell to stay there for ever.

2) Should an apostate become a Muslim once again, at least this much is certain that he could hope to salvage himself away from Hell in the Hereafter, while during the remaining tenure of his life in the mortal world, the injunctions of Islam will be operative for him. But, there is a difference of opinion among jurists about what would happen to a person who has already done his Hajj— would it be obligatory on him, given the capability, to do it all over again, or would it not? Similarly, in the Hereafter, would the reward for his previous religious performances, such as prayers and fasting, revert back to him, or would they not? Imam Abu Hanifah says that it is obligatory on him to do his Hajj again and he does not subscribe to the opinion that he will be rewarded for his previous prayers and fastings while Imam Shaf'i differs on both issues.

3) For one who is basically a disbeliever, the position is that the reward for his good deeds in a state of disbelief is held in abeyance. If there comes the time when he embraces Islam, he gets a matching reward for all such deeds, but in the event that he dies an infidel, everything goes waste. The hadith statement: “You have embraced Islam with all the good deeds which you have performed earlier,” means just this.

4) In short, the fate of an apostate is worse than that of an original disbeliever. This is why Jizyah can be accepted from an original disbeliever while a male apostate who does not return to Islam is killed. If the apostate is a woman, she is imprisoned for life. The reason is that their conduct insults Islam and the insult of such a binding authority deserves no less a punishment.⁴⁰

Sharia-sanctioned killing of presumably “unrepentant” apostates from Islam was also favored by 86 percent of Jordanians, 84 percent of Egyptians, 51 percent of Nigerians, and nearly a third (i.e., 30 percent) of Muslims from ostensibly “tolerant” Indonesia. No data were provided, however, regarding the extent to which global Muslim populations favored nonlethal punishment for apostasy, including imprisonment until “recantation,” loss of parental rights, and disinheritance.⁴¹ However, it is quite reasonable to assume that even greater percentages of Muslims would favor these less draconian, nonlethal punishments for apostasy from Islam—a “crime” that does not even exist in non-Muslim societies free of sharia-based jurisdiction.

The universality of these Islamic attitudes affects Muslim communities in the West, including North America. Syed Mumtaz Ali,⁴² the late architect of Canada's sharia (Islamic law) tribunal,⁴³ and law professor Ali Khan⁴⁴ both have openly advocated extending Islamic apostasy laws to the West. Mumtaz Ali, in a disturbing essay, affirmed the traditional Islamic legal viewpoint that apostates must “choose between Islam and the sword,” arguing further that if Canada were to act in accord with its own Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Canadian government must grant the country's Islamic community authority to punish those Muslims who apostasize or malign their faith.⁴⁵

Washburn University law professor Ali Khan, another practicing Muslim, provided a more original, but no less chilling rationale for Muslims in the West to violate, fatally, the basic freedom of conscience of their co-religionists. Khan argued in the Cumberland Law Review⁴⁶ that apostasy from Islam is an “attack” upon “protected knowledge,” which if deemed (i.e., by some Islamic tribunal one must assume!) to be “open, hostile, and voiced contemptuously,” justified punishment by death. Ali Khan is convinced that traditional Islamic law precepts antipodean to freedom of conscience nevertheless trump this foundational Western freedom:

Islam is the truth beyond doubt. [These] rules preserve the dignity of protected knowledge, discouraging an “easy in, easy out” attitude toward Islam.⁴⁷

In April 2009 Harvard Muslim chaplain Taha Abdul- Basser explained approvingly to a Muslim student that the traditional Islamic practice of executing apostates from Islam remained both venerable and applicable:

There is great wisdom (hikma) associated with the established and preserved position (capital punishment), and so, even if it makes some uncomfortable in the face of the hegemonic modern human-rights discourse, one should not dismiss it out of hand.⁴⁸

The Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA),⁴⁹ consistent with modern fatwas⁵⁰ published by Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, president of the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS),⁵¹ and other prominent, mainstream Muslim clerics in Egypt (Al Azhar University),⁵² Lebanon,⁵³ Iran,⁵⁴ and Malaysia,⁵⁵ has also mandated lethal punishment for apostates from Islam. AMJA's mission statement maintains the organization was “founded to provide guidance for Muslims living in North America.. AMJA is a religious organization that does not exploit religion to achieve any political ends, but instead provides practical solutions within the guidelines of Islam and the nation's laws to the various challenges experienced by Muslim communities.”⁵⁶ Moreover, AMJA was deemed a laudable, mainstream Muslim organization for North American-imam training by the (US) Muslim Observer in October 2010,— despite AMJA's imams having issued the following public rulings on “apostasy” from Islam, in 2006 and 2009:

Dr. Hatem al-Haj 2006-04-17⁵⁸ “As for the Sharia ruling, it is the punishment of killing for the man with the grand Four Fiqh Sharia scholars, and the same with the woman with the major Shari'ah scholars, and she is jailed with Al-Hanafiyyah scholars, as the prophet, prayers and peace of Allah be upon him, said: ‘Whoever a Muslim changes his/her religion, kill him/her,' and his saying: ‘A Muslim's blood, who testifies that there is no god except Allah and that I am the Messenger of Allah, is not made permissible except by three reasons: the life for the life; the married adulterer and the that who abandons his/her religion.’”

Dr. Main Khalid Al-Qudah 2009-01-0259 “Under the authority of the Muslim state, the People of the Book have the right to stay on their belief without being compelled to embrace Islam. But if one of them has embraced Islam, it would not be acceptable from him to go back to his original religion. The same rule applies to those who are born into Muslim families. According to the Islamic Law, they cannot commit apostasy.”

Dr. Main Khalid Al-Qudah 2009-04-10— “As for the second one, the ‘people’ in this hadith means either the apostates who had become Muslim and then retreated to disbelief thereafter, or the polytheists who do not attribute themselves to any divine religion. This second possible meaning has been mentioned in Imam Al-Nasa’i’s narration: ‘I have been commanded to fight against the polytheists until they.’ In Islam, neither of these categories of people is allowed to remain on their religion. The fact that there is no compulsion in religion does not negate the other fact that someone who has embraced Islam cannot change his mind afterward and embrace polytheism.”

The issuance of such “rulings” by a so-called council of Muslim jurists in North America—antithetical to the protection of freedom of conscience enshrined in American law—is mirrored by the overwhelming refusal of mainstream Islamic organizations to sign a simple, unequivocal pledge composed and distributed one year ago by ex-Muslims living in America:

To repudiate the threat from authoritative Sharia to the religious freedom and safety of former Muslims.⁶¹

Sadly, the OIC may find fertile grounds for any planned Islamization campaign in America, spearheaded by likeminded American Muslims.

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