Five Talk Islam blog posts that have enduring high interest and have continued to draw readers to this blog.
Latest Updates: apostasy RSS
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johnpi
A former Muslim turned atheist says he is receiving death threats in Oklahoma.
Sabri Husibi, a former Muslim who is now an atheist, says he has been ostracized and threatened with death since publication of a Tulsa World article Saturday in which he was critical of Islam and all other religions.
The article was written to promote a talk he gave the next day to the Tulsa Atheists organization.
Husibi, who has an unlisted telephone number, said he received about 30 calls Saturday from people who were cursing him, calling him a traitor and threatening him.
Most were foreign-born, Tulsa-area Muslims whom he knows, he said. He also received angry calls from friends and relatives in Syria.
One caller, whom Husibi would not identify, said that if he spoke at the meeting and said anything against Shariah (Islamic law), he would be killed.
Another caller offered Husibi’s young Muslim wife $10,000 to leave him and return to her native Syria, he said.
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johnpi
Israeli government program asks Jews to inform on other Jews outside of Israel who might “be in danger of assimilating by dating or marrying non-Jews.”
About 100 of the callers reported unmarried Jews aged 18-30 living in France, the United States and New Zealand. Callers also left their acquaintances’ Facebook and Twitter names as well as email addresses so that MASA people could contact them.
What next, religious enforcers?
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johnpi
Moderate Malaysia’s image bruised over beer caning.
The case of Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, a former model and nurse, drew the attention of international media and rights groups and presented a harsh view of the kind of Islamic justice dispensed in one of the world’s most moderate and stable Muslim-majority countries.
“It is pretty embarrassing,” Marina Mahathir, a leading women’s activist and the daughter of former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, told The Associated Press in an interview.
Kartika was charged with violating a law prohibiting Muslims from drinking alcohol. Marina said it raised a key question about how Islamic laws are applied in Malaysia. “Are they working to dispense justice or to provide moral lessons for the rest of us?” she said.
Malaysia follows a dual-track justice system. Shariah laws apply to Muslims, who make up about 60 percent of the 27 million population, in all personal matters. Non-Muslims — the Chinese, Indian, Sikh and other minorities — are covered by civil laws, and are free to drink.
Often the two sets of laws collide and the winner usually is the Islamic system. For example, a Muslim who converts from Islam is guilty of apostasy under Shariah laws — punishable by jail and fine — even though freedom of religion is guaranteed by the constitution.
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johnpi
The bizarre hadith of Bukhari and Abu Dawud.
From Introduction to The Book of Hadith:
It cannot be denied that there has been an unwarranted elevation over time of the Hadith as a source of guidance in competition with the Qur’an itself, to the extent that verses of the Qur’an which appear to conflict with favourite Hadith may be declared to be abrogated by other verses which agree with the Hadith in question. This idolization of Hadith contradicts the incontrovertible truth that the Qur’an alone should always be referred to as infallible guidance even if the Hadith have been second only to the Qur’an as the basis of Islamic law.One striking example will suffice to show the many conflicts between the Qur’an and the Hadith: The Qur’an clearly allows freedom of religion, but both Bukhari and Abu Dawud include the bizarre Hadith, If anyone leaves his religion, then kill him. (Bukhari 52:260). Similarly, a very early source, the Al-Muwatta’ of Malik ibn Anas (d.179/795), states that anyone who leaves Islam for something else and divulges it is called upon to repent, but if he does not turn in repentance, he is killed. The penalty of death for apostasy is repeated elsewhere in Bukhari: Whoever changes his Islamic religion, then kill him (Bukhari 84:57). Another Hadith (Bukhari 83:37) holds that death is required in three cases: for a murderer, for a married person committing illegal sexual intercourse, and for one who deserts Islam. In this last case, historical evidence makes it clear that the apostates referred to here can be identified with those who are waging war against the Muslim community, and I will return to this critical point in due course.
The most oft-quoted Hadith in Bukhari, If anyone leaves his religion, then kill him, can be questioned on the grounds that its chain of transmission (isnad) goes through a source whose narrations were rejected by Imam Muslim because of the accusations of some scholars that the man concerned (‘Ikrimah) was a liar who also accepted gifts from various political authorities.
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johnpi
Stupid things you hear about Islam in the US media – Quote of the day:
“She says her life is in danger and she could be killed in an honor killing. Unfortunately it happens every day in the U.S.”
– Rosa Gonzalez, attorney for an Ohio teenager who converted from Islam to Christianity and ran away to Florida to live with a family she met on the Internet.
It’s disappointing that in order for the lawyer to win the case, she feels she has to villify and misrepresent the entire US Muslim community.
Despite the preposterous comments of the attorney (Honor killings “every day”!), I would support emancipating the daughter under the “No compulsion in religion” Quranic injunction, and because she is a non-citizen of Sri Lankan origin who fears her father will send her back to Sri Lanka where her life could be at risk either from family members or ‘murtadd’-hating stateless vigilantes.
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johnpi
The best conversation we’ve had here at Talk Islam about apostasy was in the Taha Abdul-Basser thread, but of course it was emotional and incomplete.
Suhaib Webb has translated a work by Dr. Ahmad Ar-Raysouni on apostasy. Dr. Ar-Raysouni received his PhD in Shariah in 1992. He concludes:
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johnpi
‘Islamic Protestantism’ and the call to not blindly follow Islamic clerics, 2002.
Natasha Chart at Open Left recounts the story of another less well-known but widespread upheaval in Iran in 2002 when the regime sentenced a popular reformist professor to death for apostasy for a speech he gave on Islam urging Iranians to “not blindly follow” Islamic clerics and calling for “Islamic Protestantism.”
Once again, America screwed the popular unrising.
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johnpi
Muslim NGOs criticize Malaysian government’s decision to require both parents consent before allowing a child to change religion.
Pembela, (link to website and article explaining the organization’s goals) a coalition of Muslim NGOs, believes the cabinet ruling will deny the parent who converts to Islam his or her right and responsibility over the future of the children. They feel that the decision is not fair to those who want to convert to Islam.
The decision was described earlier as an attempt to ease interfaith conflicts that have strained race relations after an estranged father got a ruling from a Malaysian Shariah court that his children must be converted to Islam over the objection of the non-Muslim mother. This has led to much criticism from non-Muslims that their rights cannot be adequately and fairly protected in Islamic Shariah courts.
Prominent Muslims are on the defensive that non-Muslims can obtain fair arbitration in Shariah courts. Former Mufti Mohamad Asri Zainul Abidin, who is described as popular with young Muslims, “defended the role of Syariah courts in arbitrating these matters,” according to the Malaysian Insider, “stating that the problem in Malaysia was not the fairness of Islamic jurisprudence but the inefficiency of the Syariah courts locally.”
“The problem is not Islam but Syariah courts not reflecting true Islam,” he said, and then goes on to discuss the lack of timeliness of the Shariah courts, which I’m not sure what has to do with this case.
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johnpi
Race and faith and children in Malaysian divorces.
In an attempt to ease interfaith conflicts that have strained race relations, Malaysia on Thursday banned the conversion of children without both parents’ consent.
The predominantly Muslim nation’s decision follows the highly publicized case of Indira Gandhi, a 34-year-old ethnic Indian Hindu woman whose estranged husband embraced Islam and then converted their children to the religion as well.
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razib, murtad fitri
the taha abdul-basser story in forward:
Abdul-Basser’s e-mail was circulated through an e-mail list and subsequently posted April 3 on the blog Talk Islam, from which it was picked up by several other blogs. On April 14, The Harvard Crimson, a student-run daily, published an article about the controversy. One week later, on April 21, it remained the paper’s most viewed, most commented-upon article online.
they quote aziz….
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Kawthar
Hamoud Saleh Al-Amri, a Saudi blogger who was arrested in January for converting to Christianity, has been released. He attributed the release to pressure from the Arab Network for Human Rights Information
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razib, murtad fitri
Chaplain’s E-mail Sparks Controversy. talk islam brings results….
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muse
I received the following question from a law professor. What’s your guys’ opinion? Is it credible to claim that she’s at risk of death for apostasy? Considering the circumstances from which she fled, my instincts say yes.
A client from Burkina Faso in an asylum claim who was sold into a forced marriage as a 3d wife to a guy old enough to be her grandfather. She was also forced to convert from Christianity to Islam. After lots of beatings, rapes and threats, she managed to escape (pregnant) and, incredibly, get to the US. She has now returned to Christianity and had her baby daughter baptized a Christian. Can we credibly assert that she is at risk of death as an apostate from Islam? Suggestions for expert to say so?
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johnpi
On the listservs, there is an uproar developing over comments made by Harvard Muslim Chaplain Taha Abdul-Basser (his blogger profile here) in response to an email query about apostasy stating that apostates should be killed – though they can only be killed by a legitimate “Muslim governmental authority and can not be performed by non-state, private actors.”
Concerned Muslims who are Harvard alums (or not) are being encouraged to write to Harvard and complain. Some are calling for his removal. Below the fold, the message fragment that is being forwarded around:
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aziz
blogger Sameer Parker has left Islam, deleted all his old posts, and posted an apology to Robert Spencer. I wish him well, but I do wish he’d left a more detailed discussion for his decision.
On a somewhat related note, blogger Rasheed Gonzales has a very detailed post about how he came to embrace Islam.
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johnpi
Muslim population multiplied 10 times faster in UK.
Earlier, I excerpted Imam Rios stating that apostasy is one of five major concerns of Muslims in the West. But is that true? According to this article, “Immigration, higher birthrates and conversions to Islam are considered as major factors behind rise of the Muslim population in the UK by more than 500,000 to 2.4 million in just four years.”
I infer from this that UK Muslims have more growing pains than apostasy issues. Is apostasy a greater issue in the US than in the UK, and if so, why?
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johnpi
Imam Rios says that Western Muslims are suffering from a “disorientation crisis” and presents these five points as major concerns (and I’ve added my further questions and responses):