One Muslims opinion

Mehdi Hasan wants us to believe that Islam has nothing to do with jihad or "terrorism" and that there is but a "Tiny Minority of Extremists" (Thanks to Robert Spencer) who twist the peaceful words of Muhammad and the Qur'an into the violent actions  we see today.  It is nice to see a Muslim taking this kind of stand, the problems with his assessment are twofold.  First, Hasan does not take into account, or willfully ignores the many dictates from the seat of Sunni jurisprudence, Al-Azhar University in Cairo which uphold the various sharia laws and hadiths as right and lawful which Hasan dismisses as false or incorrect.  Secondly, he positions himself as a scholar or cleric of Islam in order to make his positions appear valid, but without using correct Qur'anic examples or quoting hadith passages to bolster and prove his contentions he is just speaking as one man with no authority to extol the peaceful virtues of Islamic ideology.

A nice try, Hasan and I am sure some gullible Westerners will buy into your attempt to whitewash Islam as nothing more than a victim of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred.  His article is not just about a Christian preacher wrongfully accused and convicted of apostasy, it is another blatant attempt at taqiyya and the demonization of those of us who ask the tough questions and demand tough answers.  Hasan waves away any attempt by non-Muslims to understand the context of the problems with this preacher within a Islamic definition, staying the course that it is us, not Islam which needs to change and adapt.

The misdirection is apparant and the pro-Islam propaganda is obvious, Hasan hopes you will not notice and take his words at face value.  Do so at your own risk.


From The Guardian September 30 by Mehdi Hasan

This brutality is not Islam

In 1948, most of the world's Muslim-majority nations signed up to theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights, including article 18, "the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion" which includes, crucially, the "freedom to change his religion or belief". The then Pakistani foreign minister, Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, wrote: "Belief is a matter of conscience, and conscience cannot be compelled."

Fast-forward to 2011: 14 Muslim-majority nations make conversion away from Islam illegal; several – including Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Sudan – impose the death penalty on those who disbelieve. The self-styled Islamic Republic of Iran has sentenced to death by hanging a Christian pastor, born to Muslim parents, for apostasy. At the time of writing, Youcef Nadarkhani, head of a network of Christian house churches in Iran, is on death row for refusing to recant and convert back to Islam.

The decision to execute Nadarkhani beggars belief. For a start, the sentence handed down by judges in the pastor's home city of Rasht a year ago, and affirmed by the country's supreme court in June, is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but Iran's own constitution. Article 23 is crystal clear: "The investigation of individuals' beliefs is forbidden, and no one may be molested or taken to task simply for holding a certain belief."

Holding a belief, as long as you don't tell anyone else or make it known publicly when in an Islamic country is perfectly acceptable and required when you are a dhimmi.  Expressing that belief outside of your home or telling others about your own belief system is what gets one in trouble.  

Pleas for clemency from the archbishop of Canterbury, the UK's foreign secretary and Amnesty International, among others, have fallen on deaf ears in Tehran. Meanwhile the silence from the world's Muslims – especially the UK's usually voluble Muslim organisations and self-appointed "community leaders" – has been shameful. The irony is that I have yet to come across an ordinary Muslim who agrees that a fellow believer who loses, changes or abandons his or her faith should be hanged. Yet frustratingly few Muslims are willing to speak out against such medieval barbarism. We mumble excuses, avert our eyes.

This is probably a true statement but ultimately a useless one, as it says nothing about why Muslims feel this way, or what could change to have that happen.

There is a misguided assumption among many Muslims that such an abhorrent punishment is divinely mandated. It isn't. Classical Muslim jurists wrongly conflated apostasy with treason. The historical fact is that the prophet Muhammad never had anyone executed for apostasy alone. In one well-documented case, when a Bedouin man disowned his decision to convert to Islam and left the city of Medina, the prophet took no action against him, remarking only that, "Medina is like a pair of bellows: it expels its impurities and brightens and clears its good".

Nor does the Qur'an say that a Muslim who apostasises be given any penalty. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by Islam's holy book in the famous verse: "Let there be no compulsion in religion" (2:256). Apostasy is deemed a sin, but the Qur'an repeatedly refers to punishment in the next world, not this one. Take the 137th verse of chapter 4: "Those who believe then disbelieve, again believe and again disbelieve, then increase in disbelief, God will never forgive them nor guide them to the Way" (4:137). This verse, which explicitly allows for disbelief, followed by belief, followed once again by disbelief, suggests any punishment is for God to deliver – not judges in Iran, Saudi Arabia or anywhere else.

 

It is true that there is nothing in the Qur'an that specifically calls for the death of one who leaves Islam, yet it is in the hadith of Bukhari, the most recognized and accepted as right hadiths ever written, and in 9.84.57 it says "Whoever changes his Islamic religion, then kill him".  I wonder why Hasan does not mention this.  Also, the use of 2-256 as a way to show how Islam is a religion of peace through the tolerance and acceptance of all religions is not the complete sura.  Time and again Islamists use 2-256 as the yardstick of justice, yet they, time and again omit the first few words, which change drastically the meaning.  It starts out with "We ordain for the people of the book...", which means the sura as written is directed exclusively at Jews and Christians, and it is a warning for them to convert to Islam or face other, more dire consequences.  It is not the pluralistic and inclusive sura Muslims claim it is. Even as Muslims themselves might believe, it is hegemonic and specific against Jews and Christians for all time, in all places.

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