A Malaysian court has permitted a woman to renounce her conversion to Islam, in effect allowing apostasy.
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razib 10:52 am on May 8, 2008 Permalink |
hm. but the details make it a boundary condition. thin edge of the wedge? but it’s still kind of pathetic that as advanced a nation as malaysia is engaging in these sorts of activities. but hey, not my religion, so not my values i guess….
razib 10:53 am on May 8, 2008 Permalink |
p.s. i don’t believe indonesia does this. i’m pretty sure you can judge change your religion with bureaucratic involvement.
thabet 11:34 am on May 8, 2008 Permalink |
Law, almost everywhere, is very conservative and moves much further behind than society. Better piecemeal change (however imperfect) than violent revolution (what would have happened if British leftists had paid heed to Comrade Lenin? Which of Britain or Russia has a better rights record?).
razib 12:28 pm on May 8, 2008 Permalink |
Law, almost everywhere, is very conservative and moves much further behind than society.
i don’t think that’s true actually. look at race relations in the USA (giving black men the right to vote, brown v. board, loving v. virgina). roe v. wade is another case as well; some states had decriminalized, but if you look at the polls before roe v. wade most americans wanted abortion to remain illegal. i can go on, i take your general point, but there’s a lot of data that elites can and do drag society along if they apply consistent and appropriate pressure and are willing to expend social capital.
and i agree peicemeal change is preferrable to top-down change because of its greater sustainability. but that doesn’t change the status of an apostate within most muslim majority states, does it? a pig is still a pig at the end of the day.
» aprosos of the apostasy post below, God … Talk Islam 12:50 pm on May 8, 2008 Permalink |
[...] of the apostasy post below, God’s Rule – Government and Islam: Six Centuries of Medieval Islamic Political [...]
aziz 5:59 am on May 9, 2008 Permalink |
Ali, can you go into a bit more detail? I don’t see how this is a bad thing, insamuch as it points to progress, though obviously not anywhere close to a desired end-state.
Razib, lets be specific here. Its not a “muslim majority” state that is the problem, its a state that has strict interpretations of Shari’a embedded in its law. And as such it is purely a function of law. Laws can, and are, changed incrementally towards liberalism over time. Holding Malaysia to the curiously high standard of overnight immediate reform, such that apostates are freely recognized to have a right of freedom of faith, is pretty unrealistic – about as unrealistic as expecting Blacks to have the Vote the year after Emancipation. We know it took quite a bit longer than that, though, didn’t it? And even after Jim Crow was abolished, that was just law on the books. Obama’s upcoming resounding loss in Kentucky and West Virginia suggests that the process still hasn’t been fully completed.
perfection is the enemy of the good.
thabet 9:40 am on May 20, 2008 Permalink |
Razib, what I had in mind was ‘conservative’ reading of the law rather than so-called “conservative values”; but point taken.