Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: February 12, 2002
As Muslim nations, leaders and intellectuals
begin responding to growing international concerns over fundamentalism,
it may be worthwhile for the United Nations and human rights bodies to
consider if the practice of religious-criminal law in several Islamic countries
is consistent with the ethos and values of the modern world. Muslims like
Ibn Warraq crave the right to interpret their faith according to their
sensitivities (ijtihad), without fear of violence from those with differing
opinions. What defeats this endeavour in several countries is the attempt
by both the clergy and the rulers to appear more Islamic than the violent
fundamentalist groups.
Some prominent cases from various
parts of the world throw light on how the Sharia impacts the lives of those
on the wrong side of a religious or ideological divide. The Taliban's arrest
of foreign aid workers last year, on charges of preaching Christianity
in Islamic Afghanistan, could have had a tragic denouement but for America's
carpet-bombing, which ended both the regime and the charade of an in-camera
trial. As apostasy (desertion of the faith) is punishable by death in Islam,
the consequences of the trial could have been extremely grim for both the
alleged proselytizers and the proselytized.
Currently in Sudan, an eighteen-year-old
pregnant Christian, Abok Alfa Akok, has been sentenced to death by stoning,
for adultery. According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, which
has urged the Sudanese President to intervene, the case has several discrepancies.
Foremost of these is the fact that Abok's male co-accused was not tried,
because the court lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute him.
The case belies Sudan's claim that
Sharia would not be applied to Christians, as the sentence is based on
Article 146 of the 1991 Penal Code, which is based on Sharia. Article 146
stipulates that adultery should be punished with execution by stoning when
the offender is married, and one hundred lashes when the offender is unmarried.
Moreover, under the Shari'a, the stones thrown during the execution should
not be so large that the offender dies after a few strikes, nor so small
as to fail to cause serious injury. Although executions by stoning are
not mentioned in the Koran, the Islamic legal scholar Tarik Abdul-Rahman
states they are part of the Hadith (collections of sayings and acts of
the Prophet), and go back to the Pentateuch (first five books of Hebrew
Scripture).
Human rights circles are alarmed
that stoning is making a major comeback in radical Muslim countries, and
that male adulterers fare better than women. In Nigeria, Safiyatu Huseini,
pregnant from alleged rape by a married man, has been sentenced to death
by stoning by a court that acquitted the man!
Last March, the 70-year-old Egyptian
feminist writer, Dr. Nawal el-Saadawi, fell foul of fundamentalists when
she gave an interview to the weekly Al-Midan claiming that the veil was
not obligatory for women. She was also quoted as saying that the Islamic
pilgrimage (one of the five pillars of Islam) "is a vestige of pagan practices;"
and that Islamic inheritance law, which gives males twice the share of
females, should be abolished because nearly 35 per cent of Egyptian families
depend on the woman's income.
Charges of apostasy were filed in
April 2001, and the lawyer who brought the case against her demanded that
her husband divorce her on grounds that she had deserted Islam. An outspoken
critic of Islamic fundamentalists, Dr. el-Saadawi's case caused consternation
in international human rights circles because in 1995, extremist lawyers
initially won a similar case against a university professor, Nasser Abu
Zeid, and ordered him to divorce his wife on grounds of apostasy. Mr. Zeid
ultimately triumphed on appeal, but he and his wife had to leave Egypt
for fear of the fundamentalists. Dr. el-Saadawi has been luckier, and after
the Women Living Under Muslim Laws International Solidarity Network (WLUML)
espoused her cause, the case was dismissed.
However, Dr. Younus Shaikh, a medical
college teacher, has not been so blessed and is currently in a death cell
in Pakistan, on charges of blasphemy. Dr. Shaikh was simply taking a physiology
class in October 2000, when students questioned him about some aspects
of the Prophet's life prior to the Revelation (The New York Times, 12 May
2001).
The doctor's brief, factually correct
remarks about seventh-century Arabia offended his students. They complained
to the Majlis Tahaffuz Khatm-i-Nabuwat (Committee for the Protection of
the Finality of the Prophethood), a conservative organization known to
have harassed and attacked non-orthodox Muslims in the past. The Committee
filed a criminal complaint.
The students claimed that Dr. Shaikh
had inter alia stated that the Prophet was not a Muslim until age 40; that
he first wed at 25 years without an Islamic marriage contract; and that
his parents were not Muslims. He was charged with making derogatory remarks
about the Prophet under Provision 295-C, which provides a mandatory death
sentence, whether or not the offense is intentional.
Associated with the International
Humanist and Ethical Union, which is spearheading the campaign for his
release, Dr. Shaikh hails from a religious family in Bahawalnagar. The
family shunned the human-rights-types while fighting the case, and relied
on their own venerable mullahs. Maulana Abdul Hafiz, who heads the Bahawalnagar
chapter of the Movement for the Finality of the Prophet, declared, "blasphemy
can be committed only if issues are raised about the period after the holy
Prophet declared his prophethood. These issues are pre-prophethood."
During the trial, Dr. Shaikh's lawyers
exploited every technicality - the principal student complainant was proved
absent on the day of the supposedly blasphemous remarks; the cleric-complainant's
testimony was hearsay. The lawyers argued that Dr. Shaikh never said the
things alleged, and even if he did, the words themselves were not blasphemous.
Nonetheless, the trial court pronounced
capital punishment on 18 August 2001. It is said that during the trial,
religious students wearing Taliban-style headdress and uniforms used to
demonstrate against the doctor, whose solicitors felt so threatened that
the court had to be moved to Central Jail, Rawalpindi. Shaikh is now in
a death cell, waiting the outcome of his appeal.
An obvious victim of religious terrorism,
he is only one among hundreds languishing in Pakistani prisons on charges
of blasphemy. Many of the accused are Christians, Ahmadiyas (a Muslim sect
declared non-Islamic by then Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto), and other
religious minorities.
As the world grapples with the external
aspects of Islamic fundamentalism, it can hardly afford to ignore the issues
of internal terror against free thinkers, dissident individuals, and minorities,
by those wielding the levers of power in Muslim countries. In Pakistan,
even Minister for Religious Affairs Mahmood Ahmad Ghazi acknowledges the
need to amend the law as a review showed that most cases filed under the
blasphemy law originated from "ill-will and personal prejudice."
Last year, Gen. Pervez Musharraf
mooted a procedural change whereby local officials would review the merits
of blasphemy cases before making arrests, but was forced to back down after
fundamentalists took to the streets. But as the issue of excessively harsh
laws is not confined to just one country, it is time for Muslim scholars
and statesmen to join the rest of the world in deliberating whether ideas
and beliefs that need the power of the state for their protection and survival
can really be said to posses an ethical quality.
