Will Joseph Nadarkhani get a "nuanced" hanging? This story has been circulating for a few days, but is certainly not the first time CNN has tried to peddle Paper Sharia: that is, Sharia as advertised as what it could, would, should be, as opposed to Sharia as observed. This report virtually ignores the other innumerable cases of apostasy from Islam that have resulted in a death sentence, whether carried out according to a criminal court's sentence, or extra-judicially, and publicly or privately. It alludes to one of two major cases of apostasy in Afghanistan (Abdul Rahman), leaving the defendant unnamed
So much the better to treat it as an isolated case, and as an exception, except... funny how it keeps happening. Of course, as is on fine display below, whenever a non-Muslim notes an unpleasant tenet of Sharia, it becomes a shape-shifting jellyfish. It's "complicated." And no one can really say.
That is, until someone does, and someone dies. "Pastor's possible execution reveals nuances of Islamic law," by Dan Merica for CNN, October 7:
(CNN) – The possible hanging of Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani for converting from Islam to Christianity has exposed a division among Islamic jurists on whether Iran would be violating Islamic law by carrying out the execution.
According to some of these scholars, the Quran not only outlaws the death penalty for the charge of apostasy, but under Sharia law, conversion from Islam is not a punishable offense at all.
"Instead, it says on a number of occasions that God prefers and even demands that people believe in Him, but that He will handle rejection of such belief by punishing them in the afterworld," wrote Intisar Rabb, an assistant professor of law at Boston College and a faculty affiliate in research at Harvard Law School, in an e-mail to CNN.
Utterly absent from this discussion is Sahih Bukhari vol. 9, bk. 84, no. 57, where Muhammad ordered: "If anyone changes his religion, kill him."
Nuance.
But Rabb also acknowledges that there is a more nuanced view to Islamic law, too.
Clark Lombardi, an associate professor of law at the University of Washington, said there is more room for interpretation because the Quran is not the only source of Islamic law.
Islam is not a sola scriptura religion:
"Most Muslims look past the Quran and say the Quran needs to be looked at in the practice of the Prophet. So they look to see what rules the prophet laid down," Lombardi said.
And, according to Lombardi, if you look at literature about the life of Mohammed, "then apostasy is clearly something very bad. And there are examples of apostates being punished."
What emerges from this is a complicated division between whether apostasy is punishable in the first place and, if it is punishable, for what reason.
"Most Muslims, most but not all, believe that apostasy is a deep and terrible sin," Lombardi said. "The question of whether the state should punish deep and terrible sins is in fact something that Muslims do disagree about."
Nadarkhani, the leader of a network of Christian house churches in Iran, was first convicted of apostasy in November 2010, a charge he subsequently appealed. Though news reports from Iran have indicated the pastor is now charged with "security related crimes" and is no longer charged with apostasy, briefs obtained by CNN from the 2010 Supreme Court case show the pastor's original charge was solely apostasy.
"He (Nadarkhani) has stated that he is a Christian and no longer Muslim," states the Supreme Court brief. "During many sessions in court with the presence of his attorney and a judge, he has been sentenced to execution by hanging according to article 8 of Tahrir - olvasileh."
Harris Zafar, national spokesperson of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, does not mince words on the subject, stating in a Huffington Post opinion piece that "Islam prescribes absolutely no punishment for apostasy."
"Chapter two of the Holy Quran emphatically denies this possibility, stating 'there shall be no compulsion in religion," writes Zafar. "This is an unambiguous declaration protecting freedom of conscience and choice."
"No compulsion in religion" is a slippery shell game and instrument of deception: Islamic law itself is replete with various means of coercion for believers and non-believers. In practice, it is not considered incompatible with the imposition of Islamic law over a society.
Mohammad Fadel, associate professor of law at University of Toronto, said that there is a difference, though, between just being a nonbeliever and being someone who is actively preaching a religion other than Islam. Fadel said Nadarkhani's preaching "may be viewed as a kind of treasonous comment."
"Even for people who reject Islam religiously, many still identify them with the religion culturally, even if they aren't religious," Fadel said.
According to Rabb, the idea for punishing apostasy stems from medieval times, when your religious affiliation was the basis for your citizenship. Renouncing your faith was also announcing your intent to no longer regard yourself a citizen of that community - in effect, treason.
But as time went on, your religious affiliation is no longer closely tied to your citizenship. "Now, we have an era of territory-based citizenship," Rabb wrote.
"The problem in the modern period is that contemporary states apply medieval rules in unreflective ways that do not often match the classical Islamic legal tradition to which they are trying to adhere," wrote Rabb.
But Lombardi points out that Iran is formally known as the Islamic Republic of Iran and "being Muslim is part of full citizenship in Iran." Though he couldn't speak for the Iranian justice system, he said there are two grounds for which Iran could give to put Nadarkhani to death for apostasy.
"One of them would be to say traditionally in Shiite Islam, people have interpreted the scripture for apostates to be put to death," Lombardi said. "The other one is that people who apostatize have committed a sin and they are real threat to the Muslim community and as a threat, they are punishable as someone who is a traitor to the country."
The website islawmix, a project through the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, was created to be an authoritarian [sic] voice on the nuances in Islamic law.
Made up of 13 scholars and founded by Rabb, along with Umbreen Bhatti and Kaizar Campwala, the website looks to connect "news readers, media producers, and legal scholars with credible, authoritative information about trends in Islamic law."
Bhatti, a practicing civil rights lawyer, said the nuances of Islamic law are not unique; the same sort of nuanced opinions are regularly found in American law.
"The reality is the 13 scholars on our sites could give you a variety of different responses," Bhatti said. Islamic law has a "rich legal tradition and it is important for us to not convey something definitive or to suggest there is one answer."
The overriding opinion of each scholar was simple - the complication of Islamic law makes it somewhat difficult to predict what Iran will do.
Lombardi recalled a story in Afghanistan, where a man's neighbors hauled him to court for leaving Islam.
"The judge takes a look and says this person is an apostate and therefore the crime should be putting them to death," Lombardi said. "But then the judge said, Islam is such great religion, you could have to be crazy to have to convert from Islam. And therefore, I think this person should get off on ground of insanity."
Moral of the story, according to Lombardi: "There are all sorts of grounds for pardoning someone."
Like public pressure and embarrassment, which saved Abdul Rahman. Iran, for its part, has decided to pile on new charges in order to keep Nadarkhani behind bars any way it can.
its not only the clueless stupidity of this writer, the absolute ignorance of CNN readers in the comments section is equally infuriating.
It could well be, of course, that most of them are Muslims who have nothing better to do than beat the da'awa drum.
Iran wants the rest of the world to know how compassionate they really are. They're experts at taking advantage and orchestrating the world's perception of their many humanitarian gestures. The hostage crisis, the recent hikers' release etc. I'm convinced that this Pastor will be spared, thereby accomplishing yet another media opportunity for Iran's world image. How evil can they be ?
Tehran is my name, orchestrated compassion is my game and hegemony is my aim.
I would advise American members of this forum to write to CNN and suggest that they get in touch with Former Muslims United, and also with Canon Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, apostate from Islam and now a Christian priest within the Anglican Church (he is a non-residentiary canon of the Church of Pakistan, which is a daughter church of the Church of England, founded by English missionaries during the days of the British Raj), and with Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, who is the son of an apostate from Islam, and who had to flee Pakistan in the 1980s because of his outspoken critique of the proposal to introduce the now-notorious sharia-based Blasphemy Law. I would also advise them to get in touch with Magdi Cristiano Allam, MEP, author of 'Europa Libera Cristiana', perhaps one of the most public apostates we have (since he was baptised by Pope Benedict XVI in the course of the Easter Liturgy at St Peter's in Rome, watched by - oh, about a billion people) and with Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Sookhdeo could talk about his book 'Freedom to Believe: Challenging Islam's Apostasy Law', in which he covers the issue of the sharia rules on apostasy, and how they have been applied historically and how they pan out in different parts of dar al Islam today, very fully and thoroughly.
He can also speak of his personal experience as an apostate - what happened when he told his Muslim parents he had become a Christian (they didn't kill him; they disowned him and threw him out onto the streets of London in the clothes he stood up in. He was in his late teens.) As a pastor in inner city parishes of England, he and his wife have seen first-hand what happens to Muslims who leave the Ummah and become Christians. It isn't pretty.
Michael Nazir-Ali, like Sookhdeo, has a very wide and deep knowledge of Islamic law past and present, and how it is practised on the ground, in Pakistan and elsewhere, and how it affects both non-Muslims and ex-Muslims.
Throw in Raymond Ibrahim and Fr Zakaria Botros, both of whom have a full command of both classical and colloquial Arabic. Ayaan Hirsi Ali could join in, because as a teenager/ young adult she experienced Muslim Brotherhood red-hot Muslim revivalism in Kenya...I'm sure that the subject of what to do with apostates would have been covered in those sessions...
And the members of Former Muslims United, as well as the other apostates I have named, could share their personal experiences of what happens when a Muslim declares him or herself publicly to be no longer Muslim.
I think that an hour of no-holds-barred discussion of the subject, with people like Sookhdeo to provide the historical and textual background, would be most illuminating and educational. People would be able to see how closely what is in the texts - and their authoritative interpretations - relate to what happens on the ground.
In fact, you'd really need a mini-series: let's say, three sessions of about an hour each, giving the non-Muslim / ex-Muslim scholars and the apostates (the Defectors from the Ummah, or Mohammedan Mob) plenty of room to share their knowledge and personal experience with the TV audience.
I think it would make for gripping television.
The classic study of what Islam says should be done to apostates, and of what has historically been done to them, is Samuel Zwemer's The Law of Apostasy in Islam.
It has been digitised and can be read online, in its entirety, here.
http://www.answering-islam.org/Books/Zwemer/Apostasy/index.htm
Recommended.
Read Sookhdeo's book 'Freedom to Believe' in conjunction with Zwemer's; they complement each other beautifully. You can get Sookhdeo's book - which is lucid and fully-referenced - at the Barnabas Fund website. It's not expensive.
One book by a great non-Muslim scholar who spent years in dar al Islam, observing, learning the languages, reading their texts, and studying how they behaved; and one book by an apostate from Islam.
This guy is making a Qiyas Baatil by claiming verses in the Qur'an that previously didn't address Ridda' as doing so. That Qiyas is rejected by Islamic scholars and by the Muslim population in general... won't be surprised if he's killed as an apostate for his clear apostasy.
Especially considering Shiah method of formulation of Islamic rulings: according to the Jafari Shii school, the individual scholar has to interpret all of the relevant texts before making a judgement, it's ALWAYS rooted on the original texts and concluded with a personal judgement, the FUNNIEST thing is that the specific unnamed scholar who made that fatwa just HAPPENED (by SHEER COINCIDENCE) to interpret it in the SAME way that EVERY Islamic scholar since the time of Muhammad in ALL OF THE SCHOOLS of jurisprudence have, DESPITE THE FACT, that personal judgement is encouraged in formulation... Must be a Zionist conspiracy.
In other words, the scholar COULD have EASILY made a different judgement based on the Qur'anic texts through personal judgement (Ijtihhad) but decided against it, and choose the apostasy law in Islam. For shame, for shame.
Domenick,
Deception is the name of the Iranian game. Islamization of the world, is it's aim. They really want to kill him and that is the end result they are striving for.
If in Islam there truly was a way to release this man to live according to his beliefs they would have. The new trumped up charges are moot, they serve only to show their determination to put him to death
Joseph Nadarkhani, has insulted both allah and the propher mohammed by leaving Islam. Instead of blind obeidence, he thought for himself and chose Christianity. Once he was a slave, now he is a free man. Islam has only slaves and slavery, must be maintained at all cost.
His belief, faith and choice in Jesus as his Saviour breaks the chains.
Who cares what anyone has to say about sharia? Mo said kill apostates. End of discussion.
CNN says Iranian pastor's death sentence for apostasy shows "nuance" of Islamic law
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What could possibly be more "nuanced" than receiving a death sentence for the peaceful exercise of freedom of conscience? sarc/off
More:
"Instead, it says on a number of occasions that God prefers and even demands that people believe in Him, but that He will handle rejection of such belief by punishing them in the afterworld," wrote Intisar Rabb, an assistant professor of law at Boston College and a faculty affiliate in research at Harvard Law School, in an e-mail to CNN.
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Here's more Taqiyya from Itisar Rabb on Shari'ah law:
"Setting the Record Straight on Sharia"
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/03/rabb_interview.html
It includes such ridiculous whitewashing as this:
"Historically, Sharia served as a means for political dissent against arbitrary rule."
She also claims Muslims have "been in this country [the United States—GI] for hundreds of years"—without giving any indication that that population has been *miniscule* until a decade or two ago. She also claims that anti-Shari'ah laws would make it a felony to pray or fast, which is just a ludicrous lie. She then goes on to *compare Newt Gingrich to Osama bin Laden*. One need not be a particular fan of Gingrich to find this grotesque.
More:
Harris Zafar, national spokesperson of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, does not mince words on the subject, stating in a Huffington Post opinion piece that "Islam prescribes absolutely no punishment for apostasy."
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More Taqiyya. Zafar does not mention that the Ahmadiyya themselves are considered heretics by almost all orthodox Muslims, and are frequently oppressed, attacked, and murdered throughout the Muslim world.
More:
Mohammad Fadel, associate professor of law at University of Toronto, said that there is a difference, though, between just being a nonbeliever and being someone who is actively preaching a religion other than Islam. Fadel said Nadarkhani's preaching "may be viewed as a kind of treasonous comment."
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And how should the civilized West view this? The West is full of Jews who are now Christian, and Christians who are now Buddhist, and many other configurations—all of whom can freely practice their new faith, *including the preaching of it*.
More:
"Even for people who reject Islam religiously, many still identify them with the religion culturally, even if they aren't religious," Fadel said.
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This is sometimes out of laxity, sometimes out of habit, and *sometimes out of fear*, since Muslims may be murdered for leaving Islam.
More:
Bhatti, a practicing civil rights lawyer, said the nuances of Islamic law are not unique; the same sort of nuanced opinions are regularly found in American law.
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Ah, yes—and America is Shar'ah compliant, and Shari'ah is just like American justice, blah blah blah—except that *no American courts are handing down death sentences for apostasy*.
"Nuance" when used by journalists and scholars writing about Islam is a red flag word denoting abject, groveling dhimmitude.
I firmly believe that Joseph Nadarkhani should be allowed to live and continue his pastoral work.
However, in the event that Islam's 'nuanced' brutality has its way, the world will witness yet another example of Islam's true agenda - subjugation through violence and intolerance.
Millions throughout the world will be alerted to the dangers of the so-called 'the religion of peace'. That is a good thing! Hanging Joseph Nadarkhani would work against Islam.
Give Islam enough rope, and it will hang itself!
Buraq wrote:
Millions throughout the world will be alerted to the dangers of the so-called 'the religion of peace'. That is a good thing! Hanging Joseph Nadarkhani would work against Islam.
Give Islam enough rope, and it will hang itself!
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Unfortunately, mostly it would just hang Joseph Nadarkhani.
I always look forward to your posts, Buraq—but I have to disagree with you here.
Islam already has a clearly brutal history—I don't believe the murder of this poor man would do *any* good—least of all for Mr. Nadrkhani himself, of course.
All one has to do, to see what Islam does to a Persian, and what Christianity does to a Persian, is to place side by side any picture of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and any picture of Yusuf Nadarkani.
Yusuf Nadarkhani has a sweet, gentle, open face, full of intelligence.
http://barnabasfund.org/US/News/News-analysis/Iranian-pastor-facing-imminent-execution-after-refusing-to-recant-his-faith.html
As for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - well, all regular jihadwatchers have seen more pictures of him than we ever want to see, and when he's speaking - or ranting - he has the look of a cornered, snarling rat.
Aprilyn,
I do agree with what you have said. However, this Pastor will not be put to death. His death will not serve Iran's diplomatic agenda at THIS TIME. Like Nazism's early years, Theran and it's leaders are practicing a world wooing deception, a stratigic move that later, if not checked, may provide a smoke screen and a favorable early image as it did for the Nazis in WW II. This I believe, is their political strategy, at THIS TIME.
Prayer is what's in order for now.
I wonder how 'nuanced' this useful idiot 'Dan Merica' would consider it if it was *his* neck about to be stretched. Not very, I assume.
And yet, I don't know. Those stupid hikers managed to condemn America and excuse Iran, didn't they ?
The sickening arrogance, lack of empathy,and sheer wilful moral stupidity of these leftist libtard freaks makes me vomit.