M. Cherif Bassiouni, Distinguished Professor Of Etc., writes as follows:
"It is my position that the application of the death penalty for apostasy, meaning a conversion to another faith or a loss of faith, should under no circumstances be subject to criminal sanctions, let alone the death penalty."
This statement, if read as written, is a declaration by M. Cherif Bassiouni, Distinguished Prof., Etc., that the "application of the death penalty for apostasy" should "under no circumstances be subject to criminal sanctions" -- meaning, if Muslims carry out a death sentence on apostates from Islam, those Muslims who follow what M. Cherif Bassiouni, Dist. Etc., agrees is the unanimous view of the four schools of Sunni Jurisprudence, they should not be punished, least of all be subject "to the death penalty."
I know what you are thinking. You are thinking he did not really write that, that I have misunderstood. No, I don't think so.
And the main point remains: Islam, the Four Main Schools of Sunni Jurisprudence, prescribe the death penalty for apostates. The fact that M. Cherif Bassiouni, D. Etc. does not agree means nothing, changes nothing about the beliefs of more than a billion people, and M. Cherif Bassiouni knows this. He is substituting his wish, his veiled velleities, for the reality of Islamic doctrine. This he is not entitled to do. This cuts no ice in the Muslim world, and it should come as no relief whatsoever to worried non-Muslims.
As for M. Cherif Bassiouni's expression of deep dismay that his interlocutor, "David," would find the fact that Muslims -- whether, through no fault of their own, born into Islam, or whether, through assorted inveiglings and self-inveiglings, converts to Islam -- cannot leave Islam without running the risk of being killed, at least if those wishing to leave Islam live in countries where Muslims now rule, that is itself extraordinary. He alludes to similar terrible things in Judaism and Christianity, yet offers no examples. And he offers no examples because, as he knows perfectly well, in neither case can he find -- nor could be have found, for the past thousand years at least -- anything nearly as horrifying or as objectionable.
What is a cult and what is a religion? Hard to say. Is a religion merely a cult that has enough members to avoid being called a cult? Or is a cult something that requires constant reinforcing brainwashing, constant discouragement of free and skeptical inquiry, constant insistence that the individual Believer is a mere slave of the deity he is asked to worship, and that he owes his loyalty to the collective, and to the faith itself, and if he dares to begin to question it, that very act is one of disloyalty, and if he questions it enough so as to desire to leave that faith, having not received or discovered answers that he deems satisfactory, then he can be killed.
That is not a minor matter. That is perhaps the single most important thing to know about Islam. If you know nothing else, know this: you can get in, but you can't get out without putting yourself in mortal danger.
What else do you need to know?
One more thing anent M. Cherif Bassiouni.
Note this remark that remains unelaborated but clearly means that there is a kind of Apostasy Plus which amounts to Treason and therefore, in M. Cherif Bassiouni's view, is punishable by death:
"I take the position that a sound interpretation of the Shar’ia leads to the conclusion that apostasy is not a crime punishable on earth and certainly not punishable by the death penalty, unless apostasy is defined as high treason (and has the legal elements of that crime), in which case it would be punishable by death. Almost every country in the world has a law or statute to that effect. We do in the U.S in Title 18 United States Code and in the Uniform Code of Military Justice."
He is attempting to smuggle in the notion, that other Muslims have also suggested, one that while they can accept the idea of not killing apostates, it all depends on how the apostates behave. In other words, if an apostate is noisy about his apostasy, if he (or she) writes articles, or a book, about why she (or he) left Islam, if he or she were to write as Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Wafa Sultan or Ibn Warraq or Ali Sina have all written, about Islam, then this -- I am quite sure that this is what M. Cherif Bassiouni is slyly hiding as he simultaneously slyly reveals -- can be considered "treason" to Islam.
In other words, you must observe the Code of Silence, the omerta of the Sicilian Mafia (and the Parthenopean Camorra, and the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta). If, however, you dare to give heart, or weapons, to the Enemy -- the Enemy being, implicitly in M. Cherif Bassiouni's slippery formulation, non-Muslims (he's a past master at this kind of thing, as all Muslims living, and speaking, and writing in the West must eventually come to be, for the job of defending and protecting by hiding the essential contents of the texts, and the tenets, and the attitudes, and the atmospherics, of Islam is a tall order, and requires work) -- by telling too much, spilling too many beans, then this, I feel M. Cherif Bassiouni would agree, amounts to Treason, and is punishable by death. And so he says, in a kind of mick-mockery of Sura 5.32 (Giving) which is immediately followed by Sura 5.33 (Taking), he makes the following astonishing sly and false equivalence. He slips in, in the usual cunning way, what if you think about it is quite astonishing:
"[I don't agree that apostasy, tout court, should be punished by death] unless apostasy is defined as high treason (and has the legal elements of that crime), in which case it would be punishable by death. Almost every country in the world has a law or statute to that effect. We do in the U.S in Title 18 United States Code and in the Uniform Code of Military Justice."
Got that? Islam is like a country, and Islam can define "apostasy plus" -- that is, apostasy plus saying bad (even if perfectly true) things about Islam -- as "treason" and, in that case, according to M. Cherif Bassiouni, Dist. Pr. Etc., he apparently would find nothing wrong with application of the death penalty. And then he quite irrelevantly drags in the fact that countries, states, all define Treason, and punish treason. But the whole point is that Islam is not a country, but a belief-system. No other religion, or ideology called, faute de mieux, a religion, threatens to kill apostates -- including apostates who say terrible things about Judaism or Christianity or any other religion they jettison. And I think that M. Cherif Bassiouni would be horrified if, say, Christians and Jews were to dare to punish by death those who ceased to be Christians and Jews, but became Muslims and, in doing so, said all kinds of bad things about Judaism and Christianity -- the very same thing that Muslims normally say.
In Islam the apostate who says bad things, and the apostate who does not say bad things, about Islam, are equally punished. And M. Cherif Bassiouni knows this. But he would like you to focus on the fact that he doesn't think the apostate who remains absolutely silent after his apostasy should be punished. On the other hand, it is clear that M. Cherif Bassiouni thinks that the apostate who does not remain silent, who is willing, and even perhaps eager, to warn non-Muslims about the contents of Islam, and what Islam inculcates, and what Muslims believe as opposed to what they pretend to non-Muslim audiences to believe, should indeed be killed, as a traitor, as one guilty of Treason. And M. Cherif Bassiouni notes that all the countries in the world -- why, see U.S.C. Title 18, for god's sake -- contain, in their legal codes, condign punishment for what is defined as treason.
Or have I misunderstood M. Cherif Bassiouni? I don't think so. I think I understand him perfectly.
And now, having read all of the various articles and postings about M. Cherif Bassiouni and his slippery attempts -- with that outrage that comes when one has been caught out, and not let go -- to persuade us that we should be more impressed by the fact that M. Cherif Bassiouni does not believe apostates from Islam should be punished with death, as long as they remain very quiet after their apostasy, then by what the four schools of Sunni jurisprudence teach, and that we should read hastily, and not take in, in his mention of "Apostasy Plus" -- apostasy plus talking too much, revealing too much, about Islam – is that M. Cherif Bassiouni thinks it perfectly legitimate to punish by death.
Oh, he can bake cookies all he wants for visiting students, and he can exercise all his long-practiced wiles and guiles, that have gotten him this far. But the texts are there, the Qur'anic commentators are there, the historians of Islam are there, and the daily Jihad News that comes in from all over the world, has forced people, nolens-volens, to learn about Islam, and they no longer have the stomach, or the patience, to pretend to fall for the mixture as before, the blague and the rodomontade and the sly nonsense aimed at confusing and distracting. No, those days are over.
We've all had quite a bit -- articles and postings -- about M. Cherif Bassiouni, Dist. Res. Prof. Emer. Etc.. And now, having reached this far, I feel that I understand M. Cherif Bassiouni perfectly. And, possibly with the help of some observations made at this site, including mine (it pleases me to think so) so -- at this point -- do you.
i.e. don't put sour cream on sh-t and tell me its blintzes
The bit on equating western legal justice withe religious justice did not go unnoticed. I swear that the intellectual thesis capacity of Bassiouni barely meets the standard set by some of JW's most prolific trolls under IntenseDebacle.
Freudian slip. His taqiyya skills must be slipping. He probably meant to write, to an infidel, that "The application of the death penalty should under no circumstance be applied to apostates." I guess he accidentally wrote how he really feels.
Good catch, Hugh! It must drive people like Bassiouni insane having to constantly pretend to oppose some of uglier aspects of Islam. Eventually, slip-ups happen and the truth comes out. But that's why he would never debate Spencer, because he, himself, doesn't believe what he says and he knows that Spencer is correct. He cannot, and no apologist for Islam can for that matter, can risk the truth coming out.
Users of Bassiouni's credit have whored out his steet cred without actual debate to discredit JW bloggers and fired a direct assault at Hugh for speaking his mind, and assosciating his missives as representative of Spencer's thoughts and equated it to hate speach. Bring it on young commie guppies and feel the wrath of intellectual debate. Oh wait, your grand hero Bassiouni won't stoop that low, so neither will you (abducters of my national single dollar symbole!).
http://www.loonwatch.com/2009/08/m-cherif-bassiouni-rips-fake-scholar-robert-spencer/comment-page-1/#comment-887
Here's an excerpt from Andrew Bostom's article at www.americantheinker.com, on Rifqa Bary, on all the Muslim authorities who claim that the killing of apostates in Islam is licit:
"There is also a consensus by all four schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (i.e., Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, and Shafi'i), as well as Shi'ite jurists, that apostates from Islam must be put to death. Averroes (d. 1198), the renowned philosopher and scholar of the natural sciences, who was also an important Maliki jurist, provided this typical Muslim legal opinion on the punishment for apostasy:
"An apostate...is to be executed by agreement in the case of a man, because of the words of the Prophet, ‘Slay those who change their din [religion]'...Asking the apostate to repent was stipulated as a condition...prior to his execution."
The contemporary (i.e., 1991) Al-Azhar (Cairo) Islamic Research Academy-endorsed Shafi'i manual of Islamic Law, 'Umdat al-Salik (pp. 595-96) states:
"Leaving Islam is the ugliest form of unbelief (kufr) and the worst.... When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostasizes from Islam, he deserves to be killed. In such a case, it is obligatory...to ask him to repent and return to Islam. If he does it is accepted from him, but if he refuses, he is immediately killed."
The media's ignorance (or denial) of relevant Islamic jurisprudence on apostasy is compounded by its obliviousness to public pronouncements by North American Muslim legal scholars and clerics urging draconian punishments for Muslims who renounce Islam in Canada, or the US.
Syed Mumtaz Ali, the late architect of Canada's Sharia (Islamic Law) tribunal, and law professor Ali Khan, for example both advocated extending Islamic apostasy laws to the West. Mumtaz Ali, in a disturbing essay, affirmed the traditional Islamic legal viewpoint that apostates must "choose between Islam and the sword," arguing further that if Canada were to act in accord with its own Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Canadian government must grant the country's Islamic community authority to punish those Muslims who apostasize, or malign their faith.
Washburn (Topeka, Kansas) University Law Professor, Ali Khan, another practicing Muslim, provided a more original, but no less chilling rationale for Muslims in the West to violate -- fatally -- the basic freedom of conscience of their co-religionists. Khan argued in The Cumberland Law Review that apostasy from Islam is an "attack" upon "protected knowledge," which if deemed (i.e., by some Islamic tribunal one must assume!) to be "open, hostile, and voiced contemptuously," justified punishment by death. Ali Khan is convinced that traditional Islamic law precepts antithetical to freedom of conscience nevertheless trump this foundational Western freedom, because,
"Islam is the truth beyond doubt. [And] [t] hese rules preserve the dignity of protected knowledge, discouraging an ‘easy in, easy out' attitude toward Islam."
Just this April, Harvard Muslim chaplain Taha Abdul-Basser explained approvingly to a Muslim student that the traditional Islamic practice of executing apostates from Islam, remained both venerable, and applicable:
"There is great wisdom (hikma) associated with the established and preserved position (capital punishment), and so, even if it makes some uncomfortable in the face of the hegemonic modern human-rights discourse, one should not dismiss it out of hand."
__________________
Please take special note of Ali Khan, who is apparently a Professor of Law at Washburn (Kansas) School of Law. In the article he published inthe Cumberland Law Review (presumably, his "tenure" article?), Ali Khan argued that it was perfectly licit to kill apostates if they revealed special information, the "protected information" about Islam that insiders, i.e. Musims themselves, find out about, and must not share -- but how else can they possibly proselytize, if they are to honestly expound the faith to would-be converts? --on some kind of crazed theory that attempts to mix up a knowledge of Islam with intellectual property law ("protected knowledge"). This is exactly the kind of thing that I explained above Cherif Bassiouni does, when he attempts to make "Apostasy Plus" -- that is, apostasy plus a sharing of information about the innermost secrets of Muslims and Islam, with Infidels, in a spirit of criticism -- and this, Bassiouni clearly wants us to believe, and goes part-way there (but for the audience he now has to contend with, doesn't quite dare to say so openly), that such Apostasy Plus -- apostasy, plus critical discussion of Islam, revealing what it inculcates, and even Muslim strategies for dealing with too-inquisitive Infidels -- should be treated as Treason, and punished by death.
So choose between the two Muslims who have been employed by American law schools -- can either of them possibly be entrusted to teach American students anything about the law of an advanced Western state? -- one of whom, Cherif Bassiouni, likens the behavior of someone who leaves Islam, and then speaks out against it, as that of a traitor, who deserves to be killed, and the other of whom, Ali Khan, likens the person who leaves Islam, "taking with him" some of its secrets and revealing them to those of other faiths (presumably, "the competition") to someone who has stolen "protected knowledge" and, as we all know, whenever anyone violates the laws of intellectual property in this country, we think nothing of putting them to death. Or so, apparently, Ali Khan of Washburn School of Law would have some of us believe.
Good God. Can American law schools, can their faculty members, please realize that Islam is a Total Belief-System, that in spirit and letter the Holy Law of Islam, the Shari'a, flatly contradicts in every major way the American Constitution, and that Islamic Law itself is not man-made law (as is, for example, "European law" or "Chinese law")but, rather, a branch of theology, with the "laws" teased out by Qur'anic commentators from the Qur'an and Sunnah. Few would hire Canon Lawyers to teach full-time in American law schools, but at least those versed in Canon Law are part of the West. Those who the naive hire at their law schools because they think "it would be nice" to have someone teach "Islamic Law" do not really know what Islamic Law is. And judging by the views expressed by Cherif Bassiouni, and by Ali Khan, two professors allowed to teach at American law schools, these people, who think that for apostasy from Islam "under certain conditions" it is perfectly right to kill those apostates, surely are unfit to teach students preparing to be lawyers in the United States.
Re: Hugh and Bostom above: These savage Bedouins are allowed to teach these barbaric things in the very heart and bowels of the West throughout our Academic, government and media institutions for only one reason: they are deemed to be privileged "ethnic" people, and thus Noble Savages, and thus according to the deformed PC MC dogma of Reverse Racism, have been granted virtual immunity from normal common sense proscriptions we would apply to white Western people in similar situations.
This is the main reason why all this madness keeps flourishing throughout the West. If all these Ali Khans and Boobalabalus were white Westerners, they would have been shut down decades ago.
"It is my position that the application of the death penalty for apostasy, meaning a conversion to another faith or a loss of faith, should under no circumstances be subject to criminal sanctions, let alone the death penalty."
.....................
This statement is clear as mud.
It can be read either as Bassiouni's belief--or wish--that killing apostates is not right, and that leaving Islam should not merit the death penalty.
It can also be read--probably with a bit more logic, as Hugh read it--that no one should be punished--especially, should not receive the death penalty--for killing apostates.
In other words, this poorly-written passage may mean one thing--or its exact opposite.
As for this passage:
"I take the position that a sound interpretation of the Shar’ia leads to the conclusion that apostasy is not a crime punishable on earth and certainly not punishable by the death penalty, unless apostasy is defined as high treason (and has the legal elements of that crime), in which case it would be punishable by death. Almost every country in the world has a law or statute to that effect."
This reminds me of nothing so much as the new constitutions of some Muslim countries, which spell out all sorts of marvelous freedoms and guarantees of human rights--unless they happen to conflict in any way with Shari'ah.
Many westerners neglect to notice this at all, or, if they do, neglect to understand its significance--that it in effect cancels out all those human rights, because *none of them* are compatible with Shari'ah, which trumps them all.
So--when is apostasy also treason? Is it when the apostate is loud about his apostasy--when, as Hugh notes, the apostate writes a book, or goes on a speaking tour, spelling out why he left Islam? Is it when an apostate leaves Islam for something else--and loudly compares Islam--to its detriment--with Christianity, say, or some other faith, or for atheism? Is that treason?
Or is the mere unmolested existence of an apostate, freely and quietly living his life sans Islam--serving, perhaps, by that very continued existence, as an example for his relatives and acquaintances that it is possible to leave Islam--treason?
How many will ask that last question? Is leaving Islam ever *not* seen as an act of treason?
Bassiouni's moral comparison of 18 USC and Islam's "mischief" law is another demonstration of his ignorance of, or perhaps disrespect for, the Constitution. There have only been six persons convicted of treason against the US since the Constitution was ratified, and only one was executed. In fact, of the other five, only one served life. The accused must be directly involved in active warfare with and the killing of Americans, or they must encourage, aid or support others in doing so. Would Bassiouni compare the crimes of Adam Yahiye Gadahn, the only person since 1952 to be charged with treason and who encouraged an American president be greeted in Israel with bombs, with the writings of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Ibn Warraq or Ali Sina? Neither of whom have ever made a call to arms.
Mick_n_NYC,
What about the Rosenbergs?
graven image,
You commented on Bassiouni's statement -- "It is my position that the application of the death penalty for apostasy, meaning a conversion to another faith or a loss of faith, should under no circumstances be subject to criminal sanctions, let alone the death penalty."
-- that:
1) It can be read either as Bassiouni's belief--or wish--that killing apostates is not right, and that leaving Islam should not merit the death penalty.
2) It can also be read--probably with a bit more logic, as Hugh read it--that no one should be punished--especially, should not receive the death penalty--for killing apostates.
Actually, it can only be read one way -- #2. There is no leeway in the semantic substance and structure of Bassiouni's statement for the interpretation of #1. There are only two conclusions we can draw from this:
a) Bassiouni had a momentary mental lapse while he was typing that, akin to dyslexia where someone writes the reverse of what they mean
or
b) Bassiouni really meant the meaning of #2, but had a more subtle mental lapse while writing that statement, where his near-constant filter by which he tries to be on guard, whenever communicating with Infidels in the Dar-al-Harb, to avoid letting certain truths slip out, had a momentary lapse. At the end of the day, however, it's no biggie for him, because he seems to enjoy an immunity in our society from his beliefs and from his perpetual sophistry in dancing around the implications of his beliefs -- indeed, we reward him with Distinguished Titles for it!
So, if he now realizes, after the fact, that his mask slipped for a moment there by his own negligent hand, if he has any brains at all he will not be too worried about it -- though that doesn't mean he doesn't feel the need nevertheless to press the PC MC buttons of aggrievement at "bigotry" and the tough row he and his fellow ethnic brothers have to hoe whenever and wherever "bigots" like Spencer might try to take advantage of American freedoms to discriminate against Muslims, just to make sure his far more mainstream, numerous and powerful benefactors and protectors around him -- not only in the Catholic DePaul University, not only in Chicago, not only in Illinois, not only in the U.S.A., not only in North America, but in the entire West -- continue to favor him while they vilify his critics.
Hesperado,
The Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage. Treason is so hard to prove, let alone get a death sentence, that they could not risk trying them on that charge.
Rosenberg defense arguments would have included:
Did the Rosenbergs engage in warfare against the US?
Was there a declared war with the Soviet Union as required by the definition, at that time, of the term "enemy"?
Did their action aid the enemy in the killing of Americans in their declared war against the US?
Under the definition of treason, as intended by the founders, the Rosenbergs would have been acquitted.