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Daveed Gartenstein-Ross in this Commentary piece emphasizes that even those ex-Muslims who live in the West have very real security concerns. He also points out that some Muslims residing in the West are all too willing to use the West's liberal institutions to advocate the barbaric Sharia punishment of death for apostates. He discusses in particular Syed Mumtaz Ali, the architect of Canada's Sharia tribunal, and law professor Ali Khan, both of whom have advocated extending Islamic apostasy laws to the West -- to yawns from Western authorities.
In the Islamic world, there is a broad consensus, both popular and scholarly, that apostates deserve to be killed. A rich theological and intellectual tradition, stretching as far back as Muhammad and his companions, supports this position. Though official proceedings against those who reject Islam are fairly rare—in part, no doubt, because most keep their conversion a closely held secret—apostasy is punishable by death in Afghanistan, Comoros, Iran, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Yemen.1 It is also illegal in Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, the Maldives, Oman, and Qatar.The greatest threat to apostates in the Muslim world derives not from the state, however, but from private individuals who take punishment into their own hands. In Bangladesh, for example, a native-born Muslim-turned-Christian evangelist was stabbed to death in the spring of 2003 while returning home from a film version of the Gospel of Luke. As another Bangladeshi apostate told the U.S. Newswire, “If a Muslim converts to Christianity, now he cannot live in this country. It is not safe. The fundamentalism is increasing more and more.”
Because of this ideological environment, every apostate in the Muslim world must live in constant fear of death. And unfortunately, as harsh recent experience has taught us, Islamist ideology is hardly confined to the Muslim world alone. Advocates of jihad, to say nothing of actual terrorists, can be found in every corner of the West. More disturbing, because of what it says about our own ideological self-defenses, is the respectability that has been granted to spokesmen for Islamic fundamentalism who have learned to promote their agenda in our own idiom, even as they argue that mere conversion out of Islam should be considered a crime.
A prime example in this connection is Syed Mumtaz Ali, the president of the Canadian Society of Muslims. The Indian-born Mumtaz Ali was the first South Asian lawyer in Ontario when he set up practice more than 40 years ago, and has been the intellectual force behind the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice, a group dedicated to applying shari’a (Islamic law) to certain civil disputes in the province. Ontario’s Arbitration Act, passed in 1991, paved the way for this campaign—and for Mumtaz Ali’s emergence as a respected public figure—by granting religious authorities the power to arbitrate in family and property matters so long as the parties involved gave their consent (and with the proviso that the decisions can be appealed to Canadian courts).
Instituting even so restricted a version of shari’a has been controversial in Canada, especially among feminists rightly worried about its effects on Muslim women. But for Mumtaz Ali, this first, modest concession to the claims of Islam has been just the beginning. As he declared in defending the shari’a tribunal, “freedom of religion as guaranteed under Canada’s constitution means not only freedom to practice and propagate religion but also to be able to be governed by one’s religious laws in all aspects of one’s life—spiritual as well as temporal.”
What Mumtaz Ali meant by this portentous remark is made clear in an astonishing essay under his name that can be found on the website of the Canadian Society of Muslims.2 Not only does he affirm there the traditional proposition that apostates must “choose between Islam and the sword,” but he argues that, if Canada is to be true to its own Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it must allow the country’s Muslim community to punish those of its members who renounce or traduce their faith.
[W]hat such a large segment of the Canadian minority believes as a precept of their faith/religion ought to be fully recognized if the Charter’s provision respecting freedom of religion are [sic] to have any real meaning. . . . Failing [to incorporate Islamic law concerning apostasy and blasphemy into the laws of Canada] will be a flagrant breach of equality rights. . . . Failing to interpret the guaranteed rights and freedoms of Muslims in accordance with the true spirit of multiculturalism results in the effective denial of this fundamental philosophy of the Canadian constitution. This is a tragic departure from that cherished “tolerance” (the real tolerance) which is the distinguishing quality of a cultured people.
Mumtaz Ali allows that recognizing Islamic law in this context “does not necessarily entail any obligation to enforce the Islamic punishment for blasphemy/apostasy within the Canadian jurisdiction” (emphasis added). Apostates, that is, will not have to be stoned or beheaded. But plainly some punishment by the community itself is in order, and Canada, as Mumtaz Ali would have it, has no right to stand in the way.
A still more original apologist for the harsh treatment of apostates who reside in the West is Ali Khan, a law professor at Washburn University in Kansas. In a recent issue of the Cumberland Law Review, Khan suggested that Islam can be seen as a form of intellectual property, and Muslims as “trustees” who have vowed to protect their faith’s “knowledge-based assets.”
These assertions, on their face, seem innocuous enough, if a bit absurd. But Khan’s argument quickly takes an ominous turn. If Islam is understood as intellectual property, he contends, the faith should enjoy what he calls “the right to integrity”—that is, its trustees should be able to safeguard “the protected knowledge from innovations, repudiation, internal disrespect, and external assaults.” Thus, Khan continues, apostasy should be punished because it is aimed at dishonoring the protected knowledge of Islam. The murtad (apostate) is akin to a corporate insider who discloses the secrets he has undertaken to protect; he is akin to a state official who turns traitor and joins the ranks of the enemy; he is akin to a custodian who destroys the very monument he was safeguarding on behalf of the community. All legal systems punish insiders who breach their trusts; Islam punishes murtaddun [apostasy] too, sometimes severely.
Khan does not specify what punishment should be meted out to those Muslims in the West who compromise the “intellectual property” of Islam, and perhaps he has something in mind for them that falls short of capital punishment. After all, as he surely knows, American law generally does not countenance the execution of corporate spies and inside traders. The key point, however, is not the outlandish substance of Khan’s argument. Rather, it is the fact that he was able to use an American law review as a soapbox from which to advocate the licensed punishment of apostates—and that his grossly illiberal views were never rebutted in its pages.
Read it all. This piece should be required reading for every elected official in North America and Europe.
Posted by Robert at February 2, 2005 9:28 AM
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More about ex-Muslims here:
http://www.apostatesofislam.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=661
Posted by: Ali Dashti![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at February 2, 2005 10:07 AM
Ali Khan, described as a "law professor at Washburn University," writes an article using terms ("intellecutal property") he has picked up from the American legal system, but has utterly failed to understand, and that failure itself is telling. He then compounds that failure by misapplying the terms and uses them in defense of intellectual and moral oppression, as an argument for permitting Muslims to punish, in unspecified ways (but historically the punishment has been death, and that rule is still applied in many Muslim countries today), those who are born into Islam, but choose to leave it.
In other words, this "professor of law" does not believe in the right of free exercise of conscience -- or at least not for Muslims. Now one of the requirements for becoming a citizen is to swear to an oath of allegiance to the American Constitution.
And surely, it should be minimally required that those who teach in an American law school are not immutably hostile to the individual rights enshrined in that Constitution, and perhaps above all, those in the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
One wonders if this was Ali Khan's so-called "tenure article" -- that piece, written so often in boredom and despair, for the sole purpose of having a line-item on one's famous resume, so that colleagues -- and the campus public relations office on the website -- can be proudly informed that one has "written the article."
It would be heartening to think that the actual content of the article were to be read, and pondered. Since this article clearly shows a nonsensical mind, employing Western legal concepts in a completely idiotic, and one might add, spirit that goes entirely against the grain of Anglo-American law, just how intelligent is it to keep such a person on a faculty to supposedly enlighten unwary and innocent students about the entire corpus of American law -- which this particular man, so ill-informed, so illogical, and so obviously hostile to the spirit of liberty -- he is a kind of proud McCarthyite, an anti-Learned Hand, but one whom, apparently, because he can wrap himself in a mantle of religion, manages no doubt to buffalo a good many colleagues.
One imagines his hiring. Where was it, exactly? Was it at some AALS meeting in early November, at that hotel at Woodley in Washington, where the members of the interviewing committee sit in that room and wait for the next contestant -- or applicant -- hurriedly refreshing their memories of his or her C.V., and then in walks Ali Khan, and he is polite, and soft-spoken.
And someone has the bright idea that what Washburn U. really needs is a real Muslim. Islam is a hot topic, and what better way to inform ourselves, and our students (and who knows? can government grants be far behind, they so wronlgy guess), then to have one on the faculty itself. Diversity! New opinions!
And he is hired, and someone else -- someone who might actually have understood the genius and quidditas of American law and the legal system, someone who might have helped students because of that understanding, instead of offering a written example both of profound mental confusion and of deep hostility to the kinds of understandings which ought to be a sine qua non for teaching law in an American law school, or for that matter college.
Jobs in academic life are precious. They should not be handed out like confetti, because a few people complacently believe that Islam is "hot" and who better to "teach about Islam" than a Muslim. Who worse? For the defensiveness, and dissimulation, and total hostilty to the principles that make the Western world what it is, make it highly unlikely that any True Believer in Islam (there are pseudo-believers, and to the extent that such people, simply born into Islam, but as a career move do not declare their apostasy -- Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek comes to mind (how far would he get if he had long ago declared himself an "ex-Muslim"? That is an honorable category, but so far in the Western world one greatly underappreciated, and certainly the glamor of having a "good" Muslim is much diminished if that "good" Muslim is really just an "ex-Muslim" whose views, thus, are more readiy discounted as those of a personally "bitter" and "disenchanted" individual, and not the views of an intelligent dissident from a system that bears, in many of its aspects, a distinct resemblance to Fascism.)
The colleagues of Mr. Ali Khan should really read his article, and understand what it tells them about his understanding of American legal concepts, and his view of what individual freedom of conscience should mean for Muslims (answer: Nothing). Then they should really ask themselves if that phantom faculty hire they did not make, that person who went away because they were so eager, or some of them were (the most vocal ones at the faculty meeting -- you know th type, the kind who actually like faculty meetings?) would have been better. And if this was his "tenure article," instead of just checking off "Tenure article -- done that," read it, judge it, and come to conclusions that Holmes, Brandeis, and Learned Hand would have cdome to. Not one of them suffered fools gladly.
Posted by: Hugh at February 2, 2005 10:17 AM
"A rich theological ... tradition", you expletive. There's nothing intellectual about it.
Posted by: Walker Colt at February 2, 2005 12:21 PM
Sorry, didn't mean to call names to Daveed Gartenstein-Ross. My vitriol is reserved for the muslims he's quoting.
Posted by: Walker Colt at February 2, 2005 12:23 PM
Gee, kids, does this mean that Canada will now start executing Christians if they were born as Muslims?
Posted by: Kepha1 at February 2, 2005 1:18 PM
Khan's arguments are blantant rationalizations of a vicious fascism. How in the world can he get away with this? And, why in the world aren't these arguments blasted in the national and international media?
Imagine a Christian law professor who argued that Christians who reject Jesus can be punished (and perhaps killed) on similar grounds. What would happen? ABC primetime specials, big story in the BBC with provocative, unflattering pictures of the professor 'the Church', world exposure: and, of course, such arguments would have no support in biblical traditions, whereas Khan works within a long tradition in Islam. This should make the story even more alarming to the media and to us all, because Khan is not an isolated thinker with odd ideas; he is one fascist apologist and advocate among thousands and millions.
Where is the press? Where is the outrage? Where is our sanity?
Posted by: JTF at February 2, 2005 1:20 PM
O.T.
For all the fans of Ayn Rand. Happy 100th Birthday Ayn!
Ayn Rand's Contribution to the Cause of Freedom
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1738
Posted by: Sheik Canuck (swt) at February 2, 2005 2:55 PM
Not only does he affirm there the traditional proposition that apostates must “choose between Islam and the sword,” but he argues that, if Canada is to be true to its own Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it must allow the country’s Muslim community to punish those of its members who renounce or traduce their faith.
Hmmm... I am not sure if that is what the framers of the constitution meant when they wrote the Charters of Rights and Freemdoms... as flawed as it is.
at February 2, 2005 2:58 PM
One cannot be granted "rights" that infringe upon someone else's rights, period. That is not the meaning or intent of a Bill of Rights.
Giving Muslims the right to kill ex-Muslims in the West would be equivalent to granting primitive groups who believe in human sacrifice the right to sacrificially kill their victims in the West.
These creeps know full well that they are twisting and distorting our Western legal traditions to their own sick Islamic views; it's just they just don't care.
In their dogmatic minds, the bloodthirsty Allah moongod must be appeased at all times no matter how much misery it creates here on earth.
Really little difference between that attitude and throwing virgins into volcanoes.
But I bet this pair of lovelies would be horrified if you compared them to human sacrificers.
at February 2, 2005 5:12 PM
For all the fans of Ayn Rand. Happy 100th Birthday Ayn!
Ayn Rand's Contribution to the Cause of Freedom
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1738
Posted by: Sheik Canuck (swt) at February 2, 2005 02:55 PM
From both George Mason and cubed: Thank you, Sheik Canuck! Sure wish she were still around!
Somehow I missed the "mises" site; I'm going to look at it right now--loved that man, too.
Posted by: cubed at February 2, 2005 6:02 PM
And Suzan, you are so right about "rights." One of our biggest problems is that so few people understand what a "right" is. They think it is something like a "privilege," that it's something that a government or organization can give, grant, rescind, or take away.
It's a big part of our problem. If more people knew what a "right" was, it would be a lot easier for them to think about Islam and why it's so flawed.
Boy, do we ever have our work cut out for us!
Posted by: cubed at February 2, 2005 6:09 PM
From both George Mason and cubed: Thank you, Sheik Canuck! Sure wish she were still around!
Somehow I missed the "mises" site; I'm going to look at it right now--loved that man, too.
Posted by: cubed
You are welcome cubed, I was hoping that you and the rest of the 6thcolumners would see this posting.
Posted by: Sheik Canuck (swt) at February 2, 2005 6:27 PM
And Suzan, you are so right about "rights." One of our biggest problems is that so few people understand what a "right" is. They think it is something like a "privilege," that it's something that a government or organization can give, grant, rescind, or take away.
Posted by: cubed
Positive and Negative rights
http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2004/06/dear_eugene_do_.html
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/000446.html
http://www.mises.org/misesreview_detail.asp?control=93&sortorder=issue
http://www.mises.org/misesreview_detail.asp?control=262&sortorder=issue
Posted by: Sheik Canuck (swt) at February 2, 2005 6:33 PM
cubed, I agree with you, but it isn't just that. Even more horrifying is the trend to apportion "rights" by group affiliation instead of individually. That is what the Muslims are after; they want to be able to kill or punish apostates as a statement of the supremacy of group rights (the Ummah) over individual rights (that of an individual person who happens to be born in the Ummah).
Western civilization is founded on individual rights, not group rights. Group rights are nothing more than tribalism and will lead to the same result that tribalism always leads to: war, poverty, and unrest. When we do away with individual rights -- as we are doing now through affirmative action and many other insidious initiatives -- we will cease to be part of Western civilization.
at February 2, 2005 6:46 PM
"The point to remember is that what the government gives it must first take away".
John Strider Coleman
In the U.S. our second amendment assures that
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.(Bejamin Franklin)
This one is scarry, U.S. Homeland security,patriot act.
Posted by: Chuck at February 2, 2005 7:32 PM
"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities"
Ayn Rand
http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Silvester at February 2, 2005 8:10 PM
For those who are interested, the Blog is up and can be accessed through www.co-jet.org.
Posted by: Susanp at February 3, 2005 12:14 AM
"In Bangladesh, for example, a native-born Muslim-turned-Christian evangelist was stabbed to death in the spring of 2003 while returning home from a film version of the Gospel of Luke."
BANGLADESH AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
More than six years after the signing of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord, the tribal [BUDDHIST] inhabitants of the area continue to live in fear of attacks from [MUSLIM] Bengali settlers often carried out with the apparent connivance of army personnel. This paper highlights one of these attacks which took place in August 2003 in the Mahalchari area of the Khagrachari District. According to testimonies given to Amnesty International by eyewitnesses, nine women were sexually assaulted, one of whom was subjected to gang rape; a man was killed in front of his family, a nine month old baby was strangled to death and several people sustained serious injuries; hundreds of houses were burnt down and dozens were looted.
According to witnesses, police initially refused to accept complaints from the [NON-MUSLIM] tribal people but filed complaints on behalf of the Bengali settlers against thousands of tribal inhabitants of the area, highlighting long standing discriminatory practices in the administration of justice.
In the village of Kerenganala similar lootings occurred and houses were burnt indiscriminately. Kala Sona Chakma, a forty-year-old [Buddhist] woman, intervened to save her daughter and grandson who were being beaten by [Muslim] settlers. The woman took her grandson from her daughter and ran, allowing her daughter to also escape. Down the road she was reportedly surrounded by [Muslim] settlers among whom were some soldiers in civilian clothes. Her nine-month-old grandson, Kiriton, was taken from her arms and strangled to death. She was then gang raped by five [Muslim] settlers in the presence of soldiers. Her daughter hiding a few meters away reportedly saw both the killing of her son and the rape of her mother.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/bangladesh/document.do?id=963107EAB94D6D7B80256E620057FD8A
at February 3, 2005 2:44 AM
BANGLADESH AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Attacks against Hindus
In an apparently planned arson attack on a Hindu family in Banskhali Upazila near Chittagong around midnight on 19 November [2004], 11 members of the family were burned to death. The government called it an act of banditry, but evidence suggested it was a motivated attack against the family because of their identity as Hindus. Police filed a case but despite repeated demands from civil society groups, no independent inquiry was set up.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/bangladesh/document.do?id=FED784A847ED140880256E9E005A96B7
at February 3, 2005 2:57 AM
A few notes for the above...
The border of modern Bangladesh was drawn in 1947 by Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a lawyer who knew nothing about India. He arrived in India on the 8th of July 1947 and was told that he had just over a month to draw the border of East Pakistan (modern Bangladesh). He decided that Calcutta, being majority Hindu, should go to the new Republic of India. Calcutta (founded by the British in 1690) had a fine port and contained all the jute mills vital for eastern Bengal (Bangladesh). The Muslims screamed that East Pakistan (Bangladesh), a flood plain with no natural resources, could not function without Calcutta. To shut them up, Sir Cyril Radcliffe gave them the Chittagong Hill Tracts. This was not a Muslim area, it was however a rich, fertile and sparsely populated province which the Muslim League accepted in exchange for Calcutta.
The Chakma were confused and shocked when Pakistani soldiers then entered their areas, tore down the Burmese flag and raised the Islamic banner of Pakistan.
The British made Pakistan promise to look after and respect the Chakmas. In all fairness, the Pakistanis did (more or less). Then in 1971 there was a general uprising against Pakistani rule. The Buddhist Chakma saw the writing on the wall, and sided with Pakistan, and proved effective scouts and soldiers. After Indian intervention they found themselves under the governance of Bangladesh. The new regime hated them for their "collaboration" and immediately opened up their traditional territory to wholesale Muslim immigration.
The Chakma resisted and a campaign of systematic Islamist genocide ensued. Tens of thousands fled into India. The Indian government did not know what to do with this influx. The Chakma ("a very handsome race") do not look like Indians and their customs and language are quite alien to India. To get rid of them, so they would not become insurgents attacking the Bangladeshi Army from Indian territory, many were transported to distant lands near the Chinese border so they could at least be with other Buddhists - an arrangement which seems to have worked.
The human rights abuses have continued for decades now, and with every passing year the noble and persecuted Chakma become more and more of a minority in their own land.
at February 3, 2005 3:51 AM
I find this very telling:
--------
"Thus, Khan continues, apostasy should be punished because it is aimed at dishonoring the protected knowledge of Islam. The murtad (apostate) is akin to a corporate insider who discloses the secrets he has undertaken to protect ..."
--------
Proves why Muslims are so anxious to kill people who have the sense to leave Islam - they're afraid of them telling the non-Muslim the disgusting truth about Islam.
What "secrets", Khan?
The one about where Islam says Muslims should LIE to non-Muslims in order to promote Islam??
To keep from us the fact that you actually hate non-Muslims and want us dead, subjugated or converted? The secret of the true meaning of peace to Islam? That it's not the nice, warm and fuzzy thing us non-Muslims think it is? That it would actually mean nothing short of an unbearable hell on earth?
Yes, I'm sure you don't want everyone informed of these filthy secrets.
Posted by: feralee at February 3, 2005 3:56 AM
The Muslims of Bangladesh have always been attacking their non-Muslim neighbours
.
Sylhet (northern Bangladesh) 1782:
At this last place the Mussulmen had become uncommonly violent. The period of the Moharum, or annual festival of the Islam faith, was approaching, when a deputation from the Hindu inhabitants came privately to inform me that they had certain intelligence that the Mahometans meditated an assault upon our government on that day, and that it would likely commence by an attack on the Hindu temples in the town. I told them that I could not believe it, as they had hitherto shewn no indication of riot.
My military force, at that time, being a good deal scattered in the province, not more than forty or fifty men could be mustered fit for duty; and I desired my Jamautdar, or black officer, to have all in readiness in case of a fray. Nothing occurred during the day of festival until five in the evening, when the Hindoo inhabitants rushed into my house in numbers, covered with marks of violence they had received from the Mahometans. I went into my room for a few minutes, dressed my pistols, and gave them to my favourite black servant, desiring him to keep near me, and, if he saw me in danger, to put them into my hand. I carried a light horseman's sword under my arm. There was no time for delay, as the town was on fire in different directions. With my small force I marched to the place where the crowd was collected, and found, to my surprise, that the numbers were much more considerable than I expected. As I advanced, they retired to a strong position upon a hill, and there took post. I followed them to the top and drew up my sepoys [Indian troops] on a table-ground directly opposite to them, where they stood with shouldred arms.
I then went forward, with my black officer, to hold a parley on the spot. I found their leader a priest of considerable rank, at the head of three hundred men. He was insolent in his manner; I was perfectly calm. I told him that I presented myself before him in the capacity of head-Magistrate that I was informed a fray had happened, which I would investigate the next day, and render justice where due - that my object at that moment was to compel him to lay down his arms and retire peaceable. He immediately drew his sword, and, exclaiming with a loud voice, "This is the day to kill or to die; the reign of the English is at an end!" aimed a heavy blow at my head; this I was fortunate enough to parry, but he struck so hard that my sword was broken, and little more than the hilt remained in my hand. My black servant at the same moment thrust a pistol into my hand, which I instantly fired, and the priest fell - and so close were we in contact that his clothes were set on fire.
My sepoys in the rear, seeing my dangerous situation, discharged a platoon while I stood in front, from which I miraculously escaped. My black officer and I rushed back into the ranks in time to prevent their giving way; we then charged with bayonets, and drove the armed multitude over the hill. At that moment there lay an old man wounded at my feet, and a sepoy was on the point of transfixing him with the bayonet, when I diverted the point with my foot, and saved the poor man.
My next duty was to convey the wounded men home, and dress their wounds; having no medical assistance, my situation for the night was not a little alarming; my rope-maker, of the name of Job Hinton, was an able hand with the needle, and he was busily employed in sewing up the wounded men lying in my hall. I was ignorant at that moment as to the extent of the revolt in the town, and demanded the immediate attendance of the principal Mahometan inhabitants as hostages during the night; and I had them all in the house, when a person of the name of Beck and several other Europeans came running into my room for protection, assuring me that the people were assembling in force, and coming to burn my house,- but it proved a false alarm; the people were marching in solemn procession to bury their dead by torchlight. I now thought it my duty to send out a military force, and let it be known that no honours could be allowed to those who had thus rebelled against the existing government.
Anecdotes of an Indian Life
Robert Lindsay
(Part of Lives of the Lindsays, Vol. III, 1849)
at February 3, 2005 4:30 AM
For much more on the murder, over several hundred years, of between 60-70 million Hindus, by the Muslims who conquered India, see the works of Indian historians -- K. S. Lal, and Sir Jahundath Sarkar, and many others who have proven immune to the fashion among some of the Hindu elite to mock, as part of "Hindutva," the work of these historians.
Akbar the syncretist, who managed for a time to abolish the jizya, was the odd man out in Mughal India. There were many more merciless Aurangzebs.
The kind of people who like not history but boudoir history, with love affairs and immense luxury -- the Barbara-Cartland-school of historiography, when it comes to the Mughal princes always have a field day, and forget on what all that luxury and swank was built.
Frances Robinson and William Dalrymple both come to mind. Neither one seems to have had the slightest idea of what Islamic conquest meant for India. V. S. Naipual, and Nirad Chaudhuri, on the other hand, did. Take your pick.
Posted by: Hugh at February 3, 2005 9:24 AM
For all we know, it's no different from the Mafia, the Mob or Cosa Nostra: If you want out, if you break the code of 'omerta' then you will be 'silenced'.
The Muslim apostate is a danger to the Mob since he knows the inside of this criminal organization and therefore he must be killed before he gives it away.
If we can prove that these are indeed the inner workings of this
-admittedly- rather large crime gang and provided we can produce enough witnesses and converts, then our legal system should have no more excuses not to act.
But then there is always Saudi money that buys influence in politics and in the judiciary, so my hopes are again depressed when I come to think more about it...
Posted by: Terminator at February 3, 2005 9:32 AM
Ali Khan:The murtad (apostate) is akin to a corporate insider who discloses the secrets he has undertaken to protect; he is akin to a state official who turns traitor and joins the ranks of the enemy; he is akin to a custodian who destroys the very monument he was safeguarding on behalf of the community. All legal systems punish insiders who breach their trusts; Islam punishes murtaddun [apostasy] too, sometimes severely.
This makes perfect sense if muslims are regarded as soldiers in the army of mohammed; an army moreover that is at war at all times. Then most definitely, a muslim who left the army of mohammed at a time of war, to join the ranks of the enemy, should be regarded as a traitor. The punishment for such an act is most definitely execution.
The prof does indeed make sense according to his own lights.
I wonder who makes professorial appointments in the US? Have these boards no idea of the mental calibre of those they make professors.
at February 3, 2005 6:59 PM
Publications by prof ali
http://washburnlaw.edu/faculty/khan-a-pub.htm
Read some on islam, democracy in iran, 9/11 and its causes etc.
How is it that such people, while claiming loyalty to the USA, then go on to despise and vilify her. And why is that they continue to retain their posts and their citizenship at a time of war. Surely the same criteria, in his own words " he is akin to a custodian who destroys the very monument he was safeguarding on behalf of the community. All legal systems punish insiders who breach their trusts" - should not be applied to him.
at February 3, 2005 7:29 PM
The focus is on the punishment of/for apostasy.
But look closer at Mr. Khan's thesis.
...(I)ts trustees should be able to safeguard the protected knowledge from innovations, repudiation, internal disrespect, and external assaults.
He seeks to innoculate Islam from any form of critical study.
Anyone who says
"Islam is evil", or
"The qur'an is a historical document", or
"Islam desparately needs a reformation to enable muslims to live in peace with their neighbors."
would be guilty of at least one of these "crimes".
Islam can not prevail where intelligent, critical analysis can pierce its' veil of bull.
This is the true nature of the threat the west posts to Islam. Not McDonald's, not bare navels, but EXEGESIS. The critical study of historical documents, combined with a free and global communication network that Imams cannot filter is the end of Islam. And they know it.
Be watchful for anti-blasphemy type laws.
at February 4, 2005 12:01 AM
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