Author: Andrew G. Bostom
Publication: FrontPageMagazine.com
Date: February 10, 2003
URL: http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=6066
"In Islam, apostasy is a flagrant
sin and guilt for which certain punishments have been specified in Shari'a
(Islamic law). Apostasy means, to renounce the religion or a religious
principle after accepting it. In other words, one's departure from Islam
to atheism is called apostasy. A person who abandons Islam and adopts atheism
is called an apostate . . . Apostasy is the escape from the pattern of
creation and nature and that is why the word "voluntary" has been adopted
for such an apostate..Can the penalty of escaping from the path and pattern
of nature and creation be anything other than annihilation? This is the
same thing that has been crystallized in the penal code of Islam. The anti-apostasy
punishments of Islam are proper laws to rescue mankind from falling into
the cesspool of treason, betrayal, and disloyalty and to remind the human
being of his ideological commitments." - Kayhan International, March 1986
(Tehran, Iran).
"I have kept my (true) name secret
for obvious reasons.it is difficult for Muslims to think of leaving Islam,
which prescribes the death sentence to people who leave it . . . they (apostates)
are the ones most dangerous to Islam, because they have seen the dark alleys,
and they know it inside out." - 'Sheraz Malik' (an ex-Muslim "apostate"),
2001.
Shortly after Ayatollah Khomeini
issued his infamous "fatwa" (decree) sentencing Salman Rushdie to death
for the novel The Satanic Verses, in March 1989, London's Observer newspaper
published a letter from a Pakistani Muslim. The writer, who remained anonymous,
stated that "Salman Rushdie speaks for me," saying:
". . . mine is a voice that has
not yet found expression in newspaper columns. It is the voice of those
who are born Muslims but wish to recant in adulthood, yet are not permitted
to on pain of death. Someone who does not live in an Islamic society cannot
imagine the sanctions, both self-imposed and external, that militate against
expressing religious disbelief. "I don't believe in God" is an impossible
public utterance even among family and friends . . . So we hold our tongues,
those of us who doubt."
The Khomeini decree so outraged
"Ibn Warraq" (a pen name) that he wrote a book Why I Am Not A Muslim that
far transcended Rushdie's lyrical The Satanic Verses as a trenchant critique
of Islamic dogmas and myths. It is profoundly disturbing that the author's
reasoned, scholarly arguments are viewed as so incendiary that he must
continue to write under a pseudonym to preserve his physical well-being.
Warraq contends that Muslims promoting modernization confront Islam itself,
whose fixed, regressive orientation renders change exceedingly difficult:
"All innovations are discouraged
in Islam-every problem is seen as a religious problem rather than a social
or economic one . . . Islam, in particular political Islam, has totally
failed to cope with the modern world and all its attendant problems-social,
economic, and philosophical . . . The major obstacle in Islam to any move
toward international human rights is . . . the reverence for the sources,
the Koran and the Sunna (words and deeds of Muhammad recorded by Muslim
chroniclers)."
Warnings about the all encompassing
oppression of body and spirit intrinsic to Soviet-style Communism appeared
in The God That Failed, a collection of testimonial essays by ex-Communist
intellectuals, including Arthur Koestler. As revealed by Richard Crossman,
who edited this essay collection (originally published in 1950), it was
inspired by Koestler's comment, "You hate our Cassandra cries and resent
us as allies, but when all is said, we ex- Communists are the only people
on your side who know what it is all about."
In his forthcoming book, Leaving
Islam: Apostates Speak Out, Ibn Warraq notes that the testimony of these
ex-Communist "Cassandras" appears eerily similar to the ex-Muslim apostates
whose testimonies he has compiled. Warraq concludes:
"Communism has been defeated, at
least for the moment; Islamism has not, thus far, and unless a reformed,
tolerant, liberal kind of Islam emerges soon, perhaps the final battle
will be between Islam and Western democracy. And these ex-Muslims, to echo
Koestler's words, on the side of Western Democracy, are the only ones who
know what it is all about, and we would do well to listen to their Cassandra
cries."
Truly intrepid Muslim intellectuals,
such as Ibn Warraq, Taslima Nasrin, Salman Rushdie, and Anwar Shaikh support
a profound Reformation of Islam. These individuals openly acknowledge the
ugly living historical legacy of jihad and dhimmitude, and the incompatibility
of the Shari'a with the principles of equality embodied in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. As Ibn Warraq keenly observed a month after
the September 11, 2001 attacks:
"It is perverse for the western
media to lament the lack of an Islamic reformation and willfully ignore
. . . rational discussion of Islam . . . (W)hat will emerge [then] will
be the very thing that political correctness and the government seek to
avoid: virulent, racist populism. If there are further terrorist acts then
irrational xenophobia will be the only means of expression available. We
also cannot allow Muslims subjectively to decide what constitutes 'incitement
to religious hatred,' since any legitimate criticism of Islam will then
be shouted down as religious hatred."
Clearly, there are genuine, courageous
Muslim reformers in our midst, but their voices are being ignored in favor
of those of disingenuous, politically correct "revisionists." This is a
very dangerous phenomenon, which will retard any true Reformation of Islam,
with potentially catastrophic consequences for tens of millions of Muslims
and non-Muslims alike.
(Andrew G. Bostom, MD, MS is an
Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University Medical School, and
occasional contributor to Frontpage Magazine.)
