The instructive and revealing piece was published about ten weeks ago, but with Mustafa Akyol again spreading his deceptions around Christmastime, it is worth recalling: “Lecture explores religious freedom in Islam,” by Thomas Murphy, The Observer, October 24, 2018:
Mustafa Akyol, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity and a self-described “Islamic modernist,” gave a lecture titled “Religious Freedom in Islam” on October 22 at the Eck Visitors Center, during which he promoted religious tolerance throughout the world.”
Akyol began the lecture by retelling a recent incident between him and the Malaysian religious police following a lecture he gave on apostasy in the country. Following his lecture on religious freedom, Akyol said, he was placed in front of a Sharia court for reciting the Qur’an without a permit, and was only released because of connections between his father, the Turkish former president and the Malaysian monarchy.
The verse that maddened the religious police in Malaysia was 2:256: “There is no compulsion in religion,” which they interpret to mean, Akyol said at the time, “There is no compulsion in religion while you are holding onto Islam.” In other words, as long as you do not become an apostate from Islam, you may disagree with other Muslims at the outer edges of the faith, on minor matters, but there will be “no compulsion” to make every Believer agree exactly on everything. That does not amount to apostasy. As for other religions, apostasy from them in favor of Islam is, of course, to be encouraged.
The irony of this story provided a basis from which Akyol spoke on the need for more religious toleration in the Muslim world. Though many Westerners may feel that Islam is medieval and incongruent with toleration, Akyol said, there are many precedents for religious tolerance in its history.
“Islam has strong assets for religious freedom,” he said. “But also we have issues in Islam that we have to deal with and we have to reinterpret. … Muslims are proud to say at a time when in medieval Spain … the Catholics at the time were not very liberal … at that time in the Islamic world because it accepted the rights of Jews and Christians to remain as Jews and Christians — it was more liberal.”
“Islam has strong assets for religious freedom”? What can Akyol be thinking? Muslims themselves, as he recognized in a lecture at Harvard, can be executed for leaving Islam. He did not mention at the time, but he might have, for he certainly knows it, the hadith in which Muhammad says “If someone leaves his [Islamic] religion, kill him.”
As for non-Muslims, Akyol has recognized that they may stay alive and continue to practice their own faith in a Muslim country, but according to the Sharia, they can do so only if they accept the many onerous conditions imposed on non-Muslims. These include a ban on repairing old, and on building new, houses of worship, the requirement that: 1) they step aside for Muslims on footpaths; 2) that they ride donkeys instead of horses; 3) that they wear clothing — belts, turbans — identifying their religion, and similar identification on their dwellings; 4) most important of all, they pay the Jizyah, a tax which had to be paid by non-Muslims to the Muslim state in order to be free from attacks by Muslims — in short, the Jizyah was religiously-sanctioned extortion. Are these really Islam’s “strong assets for religious freedom”?
Though this precedent [of toleration] exists, Akyol said the toleration was contingent on the religious minorities’ willingness to accept inferiority.
The word “inferiority” hardly does justice to all that non-Muslims had to endure as “tolerated” dhimmis.
“This toleration — and toleration is the right word — was not based on equality,” he said. “Muslims made sure that they were the ruling, supreme nation. Jews and Christians are tolerated, but as inferior. And this has some clear expressions, one of them was that Jews and Christians were forced to pay an extra tax. … They could not serve in the military and in the state, so the state belonged to Muslims.”
Akyol mentions the Jizyah, though he could hardly have avoided it. He does not discuss just how burdensome that tax was. Nor does he mention that the tax had to be proffered, and then received, in a manner that deliberately humiliated the giver. He might have mentioned how difficult it was for many non-Muslims to pay the tax, for merely mentioning the Jizyah, without more, does not give us any sense of just how onerous it was. After a lifetime of study of Jews in Arab lands, the celebrated scholar S. D. Goitein, in his massive book, A Mediterranean Society, which made extensive use of the papers preserved by Jews in the Cairo Geniza, declared that the subject on which he had had to revise his previous views the most was the Jizyah. His research revealed that it was indeed very harsh, and for many almost impossible to pay. The “season of the tax,” Goitein concluded, was always one of “horror, dread, and misery.” Akyol might have conveyed this grim reality, but preferred to limit himself to mention of a vague “Jizyah.”
While he does mention that dhimmis were not allowed to serve in the military, that was hardly the most onerous condition put upon them, and some might consider such an exemption to be welcome. But he fails to mention any of the other requirements imposed on dhimmis, as already noted. These included preventing Jews and Christians from repairing existing, or building new, houses of worship; forbidding them from riding horses and allowing them to only ride donkeys; requiring them to make way on a footpath for Muslims; making sure that they wore marks on both their clothing and their houses, identifying them as Christians or Jews. Given his abridged description of the treatment of dhimmis, the full effect of the humiliations visited upon the Christians and Jews is not adequately conveyed, and noticeably absent is any remark about the devastating financial effect on dhimmis of the Jizyah.
tedh754 says
Islam = extortion racket
mortimer says
Agree. Extortion racket and DEATH CULT.
Terry Gain says
Islam was a wonderfully peaceful and tolerant religion until it was hijacked by Muhammad.
It is to impose dhimmi status on oneself to grant to Islam what it denies to everyone else. Islam forbids and punishes the exercise of freedom of conscience. Those of us who believe that everyone has the right to exercise freedom of conscience should dispute that Islam qualifies as a legitimate religion.
762x51FMJ says
Islam is the throwback religion, When it was conceived it reversed time a millennia backwards to before the Egyptian Pharos worshipped their first queen.
Islam is a throwback religion, in its treatment of women, whom you may not see until you marry them, look under the burka, shout i divorce you three times and throw her back in like a smelly fish.
mortimer says
Islam Exposed 63 – No Compulsion In Religion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAqKJ3AHiFg
na says
People like Haji Yaqub Qureishi still support Islamic extremism.