Apostasy and Religious Freedom

March 16, 2010

Continued from Page 2

Now both hadith statements cannot stand as credible evidence because they contravene numerous Quranic evidence. According to most established juristic schools, a hadith can limit the application of a general Quranic statement, but can never negate it. [4] In addition, the hadiths even contradict the practices of the Prophet who reportedly pardoned Muslims who committed ridda. One well-known example is that of Abdullah bin Sa'd who was pardoned after Osman bin Affan pleaded on his behalf. Ibn Hisham narrated in his Sirah that the Prophet pardoned the people of Quraysh after Muslims entered Makkah victorious in the eighth year of the Islamic calendar. The Prophet excluded few individuals from this general pardon, whom he ordered to be killed if captured, including Abdullah bin Sa'd.

Abdullah was one of the few persons appointed by the Prophet to write the revealed texts. After spending a while with the Muslims in Madina, he renounced Islam and returned to the religion of Quraysh. He was brought to the court of the Prophet by Osman, who appealed for his pardon. He was pardoned even though he was still, as the narration indicates, in a state of ridda and was yet to reembrace Islam. [5] If ridda was indeed a *hadd (*plural hudud), Osman would not be able to plea for him, nor would the Prophet would pardon him in violation of the shari'ah law. Therefore, I am inclined to the increasingly popular view among contemporary scholars, that ridda does not involve a moral act of conversion, but a military act of rebellion, whose calming justifies the use of force and the return of fire. [6]

Theory of Rights

Islamic law (shari'ah) is essentially a moral code with few legal pronouncements, and the question of which precepts are purely moral and which have legal implications are determined through the theory of rights.

The widely accepted theory of right among jurists divides rights into three types: [7]

1) Rights of God (Huquq Allah). These consist of all obligations that one has to discharge simply because they are divine commands, even when the human interests or utilities in undertaking them are not apparent, such as prayers, fasting, hajj, etc.

2) Rights shared by God and his servants (Huquq Allah wa al-'Ibad). These include acts that are obligatory because they are demanded by God, but they are also intended to protect the public, such as hudud law, jihad, zakat, etc.

3) Rights of God's servants (Huquq al-'Ibad). These are rights intended to protect individual interests, such as fulfilling promises, paying back debts, honoring contracts. Still, people are accountable for their fulfillment to God.

As it can be seen, the theory of rights devised by late classical jurists -- around the 8th century of Islam -- emphasizes that people are ultimately answerable to God in all their dealings. However, by using the term "rights of God" to underscore the moral duty of the individual, and his/her accountability before God, classical jurists obscured the fact that rights are invoked to support legal claims and to enforce the interests of the right-holder. Because the Quran makes it abundantly clear that obeying the divine revelation does not advance the interests of God, but only those of the human being, the phrase "rights of God" signifies only the moral obligations of the believers toward God, and by no means should they be taken as a justification of legal claims. [8]

It follows that the rights of God that are exclusively personal should be considered as moral obligations for which people are only answerable to God in the life to come. As such accepting or rejecting a specific interpretation or a particular religious doctrine, and observing or neglecting fundamental religious practices, including prayer or hajj, should have no legal implications whatever. A legal theory in congruence with the Quranic framework should distinguish between moral and legal obligations, and should confine the latter to public law that promotes public interests (constitutional, criminal, etc.) and private law that advances private interests (trade, family, personal, etc.).

Unless the above legal reform is undertaken, there is no way to ensure that takfir (charging one with disbelief) and zandaqa (charging one with heresy) claims would not become a political weapon in the hands of political groups to be used as a means to eliminate rivals and opponents. Indeed there is ample evidence to show that zandaqa and takfir have been used by the political authorities during the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties to persecute political dissidents. [9]

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3/16/2010 4:00:00 AM

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