Here’s an Egyptian cleric talking about apostates. He says:
There are two types of apostates. The first is the one who hides his apostasy and he doesn’t do anything against Islamic teachings. We have nothing to do with that kind… we only judge people by what they show and the rest is up to allah.
The second kind is the one who declared his apostasy… This person has broken the limits of personal freedom and started creating temptation in society and hence he must be punished…. and judged by the law.
I’m the second kind of apostate. The one who publicly renounces Islam, and calls on others to do so if they want via the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain.
I have been asked many times why there is a need to ‘provoke’ and do it publicly? Well mainly because it is punishable by death under Sharia law as the cleric so helpfully explains. In such a situation, renouncing Islam publicly is a form of resistance – like gays coming out of the closet. It’s personal but not when you can be killed for it.
Public renunciation also helps to break the taboo and provides hope for those who are desperate and alone in their apostasy.
If I’m completely honest, it doesn’t hurt that it annoys arses like this cleric right here.
If you’ve got the stomach for it, you can watch his video on good and bad apostates. But just one thing before you do – the good apostate is merely an exercise in PR so that post-modernists and apologists for Islamism can blame us ex-Muslims for our death sentences and fatwas. In fact, the cleric and his brethren want all types of apostates killed and do just that when they have power.
I’m the first type of apostate but I must be killed as well. This clerical chap is just sugar coating the matter.
Yes, how nice, stay quiet and we won’t kill you. I hate it when they say: “Oh it’s only those who fight Islam that should be executed.” The definition of fighting Islam is: Opening your mouth.
Exactly. It is words they are afraid of, not bombs.
We will never be quiet.
Re the extremely shameless ‘shut up and be a quiet unbeliever’ message, tho’, I’m vaguely amused to see it spelled out so very, very bluntly, here.
It really is revealing, and this is, more or less, the game of all religions. Make the notion of dissent unthinkable by attempting to suppress any expression of the same. It’s the same basic impulse behind all those who try to silence vocal unbelievers in the west–tho’ there, of course, lacking the ability to compel the state to apply the death penalty, it’s more often about trying to bully and badger unbelievers into silence through various avenues of social pressure.
The truth is: I don’t think most religions actually give a rat’s ass if you really believe, so long as you publicly give the impression you may. As, critically, their primary targets–children, especially–they want those unable to realize there’s anyone they might know who doesn’t believe as they’re being told they themselves must. And those who are doubting, let them stew in silence and anxiety, thinking they’re alone, some kind of mutant, somehow flawed, somehow defective, the lone doubter in this chorus of certainty. If they can talk to each other, if they can see each other, if they realize they’re not alone, they’ll be much, much more trouble.
And given, especially, the challenges of the modern world, in which the doctrine seems ever more risible, year after year, in the context of what else our species is learning about the universe, I suspect this fear becomes ever more and more pronounced. Contemporary religions, therefore, are more and more focused not on keeping people believing, but on keeping vocal expressions of doubt or disbelief–the doubt or disbelief they should properly fear may well be epidemic within their communions–properly suppressed.
You may find the following book review in the New York Times amusing:
Defending Muslim Law From Those Invoking It
‘Heaven on Earth,’ by Sadakat Kadri
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/books/heaven-on-earth-by-sadakat-kadri.html?_r=2&ref=global-home
I think you are a brave woman; I do not think I would have the courage to do what you do.
Thanks’ Maryam Namazie for your text.
I quote you …
“I have been asked many times why there is a need to ‘provoke’ and do it publicly? Well mainly because it is punishable by death under Sharia law …”
“Public renunciation also helps to break the taboo and provides hope for those who are desperate and alone in their apostasy.”
—-
I, Paulo Filipe Matias Alves Reis am an apostate.
… because I believe that everybody have the right to be an apostate and to say it, and to shout it, and to convince others to be.
Hear, Hear.
Maryam, first let me say that had I ever been a believer I would also be the “second” type of apostate, and AM that second type of apostate in the religion I was raised in (protestant christianity). The members of many sects of my birth religion are happy to condemn me to hell, and it is these same folks who condone the murder of abortion doctors.
Watching this video I begin to understand Christopher Hitchens’ support for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. I’m still not sure I agree, not because of some naive progressive liberalism, but because I’m not sure it works. But that these people are a threat I have no doubt. And, to further clarify, I work in a field and in an area of the US that has a large Muslim population, mostly refugees from Somalia and Ethiopia. The greatest majority of these people are honest, kind and loving mothers and fathers, daughters and sons. We are whatever religion we are mostly by virtue of where we were born.
But among them are certainly those who buy the fundamentalist line in all it’s forms, and we, in the democratic nations, provide a fertile ground for them to propagate their hateful theology. As with the neo nazis and other right wing movements, we ignore these threats at our peril, and to the detriment of brave people such as yourself.
Your comment made me remember a question:
“In a democratic society the people should or should not allow political party’s and associations that in their ideology propose the end of democracy?”
—–
The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were not for implementing democracy.
USA leaders speeches defending wars are always for the protection of democracy and human rights values, but that is not the truth.
They defend their own vision of national interests, normally the interests of a few Americans, by the way the very rich and powerful ones.
America is a Democracy…?
What about all the problems in the presidential elections (like counting votes)?
Is democracy voting for a college that is going to vote for the president?
On the other hand what is Democracy in our XXI century?
Who control the medias, who have more money for the campaign and who builds a good image (in the politic showbiz) is the one that wins.
But if Islamism is a threat and not Muslims per se, then bombing a country doesn’t really address the issue. Should we bomb Norway to deal with Breivik and the rise of the far-Right? No because it’s a political problem that demands a political solution, and western governments would never contemplate bombing Norway but Iraq or Iran – well the possibilities for them are endless. The reality is that there are many people in Iran and Iraq and everywhere that oppose Islamism, are fighting it, or are just trying to survive and live their lives despite a brutal regime. Bombs would kill many of them – including possibly political prisoners in jails, my family members, or even the Iran stoning case, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani – people who are loved and beloved. To think that bombing is a solution to a political far-right movement that the west itself helped bring to centre stage is to me not only absurd but inhuman.
I notice this is the same kind of argument given in many places as to why women should wear a burqa. What this cleric is saying is that everyone, especially the males, in Islamic society are nothing but puppets to reactionary thinking and need a violent or sexually violent outburst at any perceived offense. I may be a bit crazy in my thinking, but aren’t enlightened and peace-loving societies supposed to be working to go beyond that kind of response? And wasn’t the cleric’s imaginary friend supposed to have given everyone free will, so you needn’t be the reactionary puppet? And if they are so confident in the greatness of their imaginary friend, why do they need to be the one with the reactionary response if their friend is so keen on meting out punishment for the offense in the afterlife?
I’m beginning to think that…THEY’RE MAKING IT ALL UP AS THEY GO ALONG!!!!1!111111one!!11exclamationmarks!
Or maybe they just love excuses for violence. Whatever the case, his argument isn’t a good advertisement for recruiting potential new believers. I’m even more skeptical now.
I should clarify that what I aiming at was the idea that this is completely ‘blame the victim’ mentality. A woman who exerts some sort of personality or will is suddenly a target for acid baths, group beating and sometimes rape, imprisonment…whatever tortures their sick bee-keepers can imagine. The same applies for someone publicly suggesting that an obviously self-conflicting and perverse belief system is self-conflicting and perverse.
It’s an Orwellian tragedy where the truth results in the person making the declaration becomes the criminal. This is true also of women making a declaration of personhood and human passion for learning and expression. The truth demands they be allowed to have this, and a perversion of reality demands they become mindless chattel.
A religious system that requires the murder of anyone skeptical of the system or not in full accordance with the system is obviously false. If it can’t stand alone on its own merits it is nothing more than a totalitarian, extremist construct aimed at giving a small group power over the rest of the population. No system, political or religious, existing in the twenty-first century should be this blatantly against its own populace. Fear of death, fear of the unknown because of being ignorant of science, and fear of Islam’s tattletale system keep it in place.
With the huge number of lives affected, and even lost, this is as great or greater a disaster as any tsunami or earthquake.
I am the second kind of apostate too.
If I were the first kind then I would be a munafiq – which is what the Muslims are supposed to be on guard against.
I cannot help my belief or non-belief. It is not my fault. If someone wants me to believe something then it is up to them to prove it to me. If I don’t buy what they say, or I don’t buy it any longer, then it is because the arguments are nor convincing enough. If they don’t convince me then it is impossible for me to believe. It is not a question of choice. I cannot choose whether to believe or not.
I also cannot choose whether to speak out or not. If something is wrong I have to speak out against it in whatever way I can. If I do not then I can never be comfortable with myself. I would be complicit in the silence which allows terrible things to continue. As the Muslims are so eager to say when they talk about women’s consent to marriage “silence means consent”.
It is no more possible to choose what to believe or to speak out about it than it is to choose one’s sexuality. To be punished for something about which one has no choice is the gravest injustice imaginable.
Just watching this ghastly nonsense – surely the clearest reason for anyone with an ounce of humanity or sense to leave Islam forthwith – it struck me that he was saying two contradictory things at the same time. 1. If you are a hypocrite and hide your apostasy then it is OK – as long as you don’t make a fuss about having “Muslim” on your ID card! 2. If you an apostate you are automatically a hypocrite and must be killed because you are a hypocrite. There are not two types of apostasy at all.
Having what you think (or are forced to pretend to think) on your ID card is the gravest discrimination and totally unjustifiable. ID cards themselves are bad enough. My fingerprints or DNA or iris scan may not change. My thoughts will keep changing as long as I am alive.
I don’t think many of these clerics believe half the rubbish they claim to Rafiq.
With all his talk what he is pretty much saying is that the first kind of apsotate is easier to control than the second kind.
And control is all they want, regardless.
I have to salute all the ex-muslins apostates.
You have courage; you are great
You make the world change in the right direction.
Thanks Rafiq Mahmood for your text.
I love this that you have written
“I cannot help my belief or non-belief. It is not my fault.”
“I also cannot choose whether to speak out or not. If something is wrong I have to speak out against it in whatever way I can. If I do not then I can never be comfortable with myself.”
I think this is a dishonest statement from the cleric. Islamic jurisprudence (Fiqh) doesn’t make any distinction between the “two types”. In Islam you can be guilty of thought crimes, that is, for abandoning the faith in the privacy of your own mind. They don’t need any excuses (like trying to change other people’s minds) to seek to kill you.
This is how Islamists have been selling it here in the west especially. That doing it publicly is treason and treason is punishable in many countries and so on. As you say, though, it’s a false distinction. You don’t even need to leave Islam to be sentenced to death for apostasy.
He really doesn’t like apostates, does he? (Unless I misunderstood what he was saying??)
Yep.
It isn’t trolling, like some people insist it is. When what we object to demands we be killed for not believing, what sense does it make to find common ground? Why build bridges? To make it easier for them to get us?
Fuck that.