A. Rashied Omar
Testimonies from a Multifaith Hearing on Conversion, Lariano (Italy), May 12-16, 2006
In February 2006, an Afghan national, Abdul Rahman, who had converted to Christianity in 1990 while working as a medical assistant for a Christian non-governmental aid group in Peshawar, Pakistan, was arrested and charged with apostasy under what was interpreted to be traditional shari`ah laws. The case received worldwide publicity with an Afghan court threatening to execute Abdul Rahman if he did not repent and revert to Islam. As a direct consequence of the vociferous international outcry over the persecution of Abdul Rahman, he was released after the judge dismissed the case on grounds of insanity. Despite his aquittal the defendant was forced to leave Afghanistan and was given asylum in Italy for fear of social recriminations from Afghan civil society.i
The case of the conversion to Christianity of Abdul Rahman has once again highlighted the urgent need for Muslims to seriously re-examine the restrictive traditional shari`ah laws on religious conversion from Islam. It is not good enough for Muslims engaged in interreligious dialogue to skirt this issue by hiding behind their support for the historic 1976 Chambesy Christian-Muslim state-ment affirming “the right to convince or to be convinced.”ii It is papable from a close reading of the Chambesy discussions that despite their support for the declaration the Muslim interlocutors were equivocating. At one point in the discussions, Bishop Kenneth Cragg was compelled to spell out unambigously the Christian concern about the Muslim position on religious freedom in the following manner: “...we are not talking about freedom of belief, or of religious practice, but the freedom of movement of belief; and there is a radical difference betweeen these two. A faith which you are not free to leave becomes a prison, and no self-respecting faith should be a prison for those within it.”iii
The current reality is that the right to convert from Islam to another religion is held by a minority of Muslim scholars and is not shared by the vast majority of Muslim scholars both past as well as present. The prevailing view of classical and modern Muslim jurists regard apostasy (riddah), defined as an act of rejection of faith committed by a Muslim whose Islam had been affirmed without coercion, as a crime deserving the death penalty. All traditional books of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) deal extensively with the penalties to be imposed on apostates such as the disposition of the apostates property and inheritance and the dissolution of their marriages.iv In light of the preponderance of classical Islamic positions proscribing apostasy the harsh contemporary Muslim responses to apostasy is understandable? Contemporary Muslim jurists are uncritically transporting medieval juristic positions that were negotiated in radically different historical circumstances to present day realities.v How else can one explain the widespread attachment to the death penalty verdict among traditional Muslim scholars and the social ostracization meted to so-called apostates in many Muslim societies?
No doubt, a number of modern Muslim scholars have argued for more lenient and humane positions on apostasy and have marshalled strong evidences in support of their views.vi In this regard the viewpoint issued by Louay Safi of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) in the context of the Abdul Rahman furore in Afghanistan is commendable. Safi espouses an unequivocal position that a “Muslim who converts to Christianity is no more a Muslim, but a Christian and must be respected as such.”vii Notwithstanding these and other tolerant Islamic positions on religious conversion, Muslims engaged in inter-religious dialogue need to be more honest and forthcoming about the enormous challenge they face in reforming the hegemonic traditional Muslim position on apostacy. To use the words of the Muslim scholar, Ataullah Siddiqi, in the context of Christian efforts to curtail aid evangelism, “there is a big gap between our pious hopes and our practical realities, something which we do not perhaps wish to face.”viii
In order to strengthen the Muslim case to reform traditional laws on apostasy will require some Christian help. Their Christian interlocutors might need to labor hard to calm aggressive Christian proseltization efforts. Without such a moratorium on aggressive proselytization, as recom-mended by the Chambsey declaration, it will be hard to convince Muslim hardliners that the reform of apostasy laws are not opportunistic Christian demands to make conversion possible.
A number of Muslim scholars, such as Mahmoud Ayoub, have pointed out that apostasy was a political problem in both early and later Muslim societies with the advent of colonialism and the rise of Christian missionary activity.ix While it would be incorrect to suggest that the harsh shari`ah views on apostasy were first formulated in the colonial era, there can be no doubt that Christian missions during this period definitely influenced a harsher inter-pretation of the law period. In this regard it is instructive that the recent debate triggered by the legal persecution of Abdul Rahman because of his conversion to Christianity had been provoked in a war ravaged context where relief aid for the victims of the war was dispensed by agencies linked to the perceived aggressors. I contend that the issue did not happen inspite of war but precisely because of it. Here the right to religious conversion and the ethics of aid evangelism arise in a war context. There are of course many other instances of religious conversion which do not take place in a the context of aid evangelism, which still incur religious persecution in Muslim societies. However, these cases are regrettably overshadowed by the former.
To its credit both the Office on Interreligious Relations of the World Council of Churches and the Pontifical Council on Interreligious Dialogue have since Chambésy reaffirmed their commitment to eschewing unethical forms of mission including that of aid evangelism. In fact during a 1999 WCC sponsored “Christian-Muslim Consultation on Religious Freedom” held at Hartford Seminary, Connecticut, the participants recommitted themselves to “the relevance and value of the 1976 Chambésy statement” and affirmed the importance of distinguishing between proselytism and witness as the WCC has done within the Christian context, and emphasize the necessity to express an ethics of mission and da'wah to which both Christians and Muslims can agree.”x Yet, more recently, the former President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, proposed that “Christians do not engage in works of mercy as a pretext for preaching about Jesus Christ but, like the Good Samaritan, out of compassion for those who are suffering. So it can be said that interreligious dialogue is not aimed at bringing the partner in dialogue into the Catholic Church.”xi This Catholic understanding of the Christian narrative of the Good Samaritan is not shared by the evangelical relief organization bearing the same name.
In April, 2003 almost exactly one month after the United States of America launched a pre-emptive war against Iraq, Time Magazine reported that a Christian aid organization, the Samaritan’s Purse, was waiting on the border between Jordan and Iraq for a green light from the US military command to enter Iraq in order to engage in what they called “aid evangelism”.xii The Reverend Franklin Graham, son of the influential evangelist Billy Graham and head of the Samaritan’s Purse, justified their actions by claiming that the goal of the aid ministry in Iraq was “to heal people, and hopefully they will see God”. This was, however, not the first time in recent history that Christian evangelists had used a war as a means for spreading the Christian gospel. It is well-known that during the 1991 Gulf war, Rev Franklin Graham’s organization gave US Soldiers deployed in Iraq 30,000 Bibles in Arabic for distribution in Iraq and the neighboring Muslim majority countries.
In conclusion it seems clear that while various Christian denominations disagree about the ethics of aid evangelism in the context of war, Muslims are far more united in their condemnation of it. The reverse is the case on the question of the right to religious conversion. While Muslims are ambivalent about the right of their co-religionists to change their religion, Christians are more affirming of this right. It is clear that the different theological postures adopted by Christian and Muslim scholars are profoundly influenced by historical reality and power relations. Honest dialogue can only begin with recognition of this reality. The challenge for both Christians and Muslims committed to interreligious dialogue and peacebuilding is to go beyond mere declarations of the right of any individual to change his or her religion as long as unfair means are not employed to entice the person to switch his/her faith, but to find creative ways of making such affirmations a key part of the modus vivendi of convivial relations between the two communities.
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Dr. A. Rashied Omar is an Imam from South Africa and Coordinator of the Kroc Institute’s Program in Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (PRCP) at the University of Notre Dame.
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i For a detailed account of the Abdul Rahman conversion and trial in Afghanistan see website: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Rahman_(convert)
ii For the full proceedings of the Chambesy meeting see Christian Mission and Islamic Da’wah: Proceedings of the Chambesy Dialogue Consultation (Leicester, UK: Islamic Foundation, 1977).
iii Christian Mission and Islamic Da’wah: Proceedings of the Chambesy Dialogue Consultation (Leicester, UK: Islamic Foundation, 1977).
iv for a useful summary of the classical Muslim position on apostasy see Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp.121-159.
v This point is well argued by Louay Safi “Apostasy and Religious Freedom,” see website: 1insight.org/articles/Print/Apostasy.htm
vi For a survey of some modern discussions of the topic see Abdullah Saeed and Hassan Saeed, Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam (Ashgate Publishing, 2004). See also Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Freedom of Expression in Islam (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1997), Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na`im “Islamic Law and Apostasy and its Modern Applicability” in Religion (1986) 16, 197-224; and Mahmoud Ayoub, “Religious Freedom and the Law of Apostasy in Islam,” Islamochristiana 20 (1994) 73-91.
vii Louay Safi, “Apostasy and Religious Freedom,” 1insight.org/articles/Print/Apostasy.htm
viii Ataullah Siddiqui, “Fifty Years of Christian-Muslim Relations: Exploring and Engaging In a New Relationship,” paper delivered on the occasion of the Pontificio Instituto Di Studi Arabi E D ‘Islamistica’s (PISIA) 50th Anniversary , 12th May 2000. For text see http://www.islamic-foundation.org.uk/FiftyYearsofChristian-Rev.05.pdf.
ix Mahmoud Ayoub, “Religious Freedom and the Law of Apostasy in Islam” in Islamochristiana 20 (1994), 75-91.
x “Report from the Consultation on ‘Religious Freedom, Community Rights and Individual Rights: A Christian Muslim Perspective,” Current Dialogue (34), February 2000 (Geneva: World Council of Churches). www.wcc coe.org/wcc/what/interreligious/cd34-19.html (accessed March 2006).
xi Unpublished keynote address delivered by Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald at a conference titled “In Our Time: Interreligious Relations in a Divided World, sponsored by Brandeis and Boston College, March 16-17, 2006.
xii Johanna McGeary, “A Faith-Based Initiative,” Time Magazine, April 21, 2003. See also: Laurie Goodstein, Seeing Islam as ‘Evil’, Evangelicals Seek Converts, N.Y. Times, May 27, 2003, at A3.