Apos­ta­sy, appar­ent­ly a human rights-relat­ed issue, is high­ly sen­si­tive to the mul­ti-racial and mul­ti-reli­gious char­ac­ter of Malaysia. It tends to be prob­lem­at­ic, unten­able to some, espe­cial­ly when it deals with con­ver­sion into and out of Islam. It is true, the whole ques­tion involves cer­tain legal and social impli­ca­tions. At times, its reper­cus­sions appear to rat­tle the social sol­i­dar­i­ty and reli­gious har­mo­ny of our peace­ful nation. All these threat­en­ing con­se­quences are actu­al­ly caused by igno­rance. This writ­ing is not to incite fur­ther dis­sen­sion. Nei­ther is it intend­ed to sound apolo­getic. On the con­trary it calls for all par­ties direct­ly or indi­rect­ly affect­ed by the sub­ject mat­ter, Mus­lims and non-Mus­lims alike, to view it with an open heart guid­ed by wisdom.

Schol­ars have admit­ted that Islam is the most mis­un­der­stood reli­gion of all world reli­gions. Mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions and mis­per­cep­tions about it are caus­ing many to hur­ried­ly devel­op an unjus­ti­fied Islam­o­pho­bia. This syn­drome is actu­al­ly a fear of the unknown” as these peo­ple do not real­ly under­stand what Islam is all about. Many sim­ply accept the many glob­al mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions inces­sant­ly put to them via the media.

Seen through the lens of dis­course on human rights, apos­ta­sy in Islam has been noto­ri­ous­ly brought into con­flict with the doc­trine of human rights in gen­er­al, and with the notion of free­dom of reli­gion in par­tic­u­lar. Among the ques­tions raised is, if Islam can eas­i­ly be embraced, by the same token, why does it not allow Mus­lims to leave Islam ?

It is unques­tion­able that Islam indeed rec­og­nizes human rights, in fact from its very incep­tion, long before these ideas were devel­oped and doc­u­ment­ed in its mod­ern sec­u­lar form by the West like the Unit­ed Nations Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights, 1948. Islam, as sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly reflect­ed by the Cairo Uni­ver­sal Islam­ic Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights, 1981, advo­cates human rights via shari­ah. These objec­tives include the estab­lish­ment of jus­tice, indi­vid­ual edu­ca­tion and preser­va­tion of human wel­fare or inter­ests by pro­tect­ing and pre­serv­ing the free­dom of thought, wor­ship, rights to prop­er­ty and preser­va­tion of the prog­e­ny. These con­sti­tute the invi­o­lable prin­ci­ples of human rights”.

What many fail to under­stand is that Islam is prob­a­bly the only reli­gion that hon­ors its fol­low­ers to the utmost. Islam regards its adher­ents, both orig­i­nal­ly born Mus­lim as well as con­verts, as invalu­able assets. Once they come to the fold of Islam, they stand equal. There­fore, the respon­si­bil­i­ties, duties and rights of all Mus­lims are basi­cal­ly the same. Indi­vid­u­al­ly, they are equal­ly enti­tled to achieve suc­cess in this world as well as sal­va­tion in the here­after, guid­ed by and with­in the para­me­ters set up by shariah.

Mus­lims firm­ly believe that they are in the ter­ri­to­ry of truth, the right path. They are bathed in the bright­est light. For Mus­lims, truth is light, false­hood is dark­ness. There­fore, it is a grave injus­tice to them if they were to devi­ate from that truth. Fur­ther­more, the fact that Islam pro­hibits apos­ta­sy reflects the integri­ty and cred­i­bil­i­ty of the reli­gion. If Islam were to grant per­mis­sion for Mus­lims to change reli­gion at will, it would imply it has no dig­ni­ty, no self-esteem. And peo­ple may then ques­tion its com­plete­ness, truth­ful­ness and perfection.

Echo­ing the obser­va­tions of Syed Muham­mad Naquib al-Attas, rights” or huquq in Islam refers to some­thing that is right, true, cor­rect and prop­er. Free­dom” or ikhti­yar means a choice for the good or bet­ter. So it is nei­ther one’s right nor is it free­dom to choose some­thing evil, false, wrong, incor­rect or imperfect.

Reli­gious­ly, moral­ly and legal­ly, man has no right to do wrong. Nev­er­the­less, there are fee­ble, con­fused Mus­lims around. They may be the result of improp­er or inad­e­quate edu­ca­tion or the lack of expo­sure to the more com­pre­hen­sive teach­ings of Islam. And due to world­ly temp­ta­tions, this weak­ness caus­es their reli­gious foun­da­tions to become shaky. Appar­ent­ly, their com­mon fea­ture is a lack of knowl­edge and under­stand­ing of Islam. So if one insists on adopt­ing the afore­men­tioned wrong con­cep­tion of rights” and free­dom”, one is actu­al­ly expos­ing one’s shame­ful ignorance !

For con­verts, before they become Mus­lims, no mat­ter for what rea­son, it is only rea­son­able that they must have a cer­tain degree of basic knowl­edge about Islam. They must take efforts to study the fun­da­men­tals of the reli­gion first. This is actu­al­ly their respon­si­bil­i­ty and duty. Take note that rights do not come out of a vac­u­um ; they are accom­pa­nied by cer­tain respon­si­bil­i­ties and duties. For exam­ple, before one can exer­cise one’s free­dom to buy a car of his choice, one must first obtain a dri­ving licence. With­out that doc­u­ment, one will only endan­ger one­self as well as oth­ers. One can­not scream to be giv­en the right or free­dom to buy if the require­ment of respon­si­bil­i­ty is not ful­filled beforehand.

Mus­lims must under­stand that once they come into the fold of Islam, there is no ques­tion of leav­ing the faith or revert­ing to their ear­li­er beliefs even if the very rea­son for one to come to Islam in the first place ceas­es to exist. One may be a bad or a non-prac­tis­ing Mus­lim, but there is hard­ly any room avail­able for one to denounce that religion.

One can­not argue that Islam does not rec­og­nize the idea of free­dom of wor­ship. First and fore­most, the very doc­trine of Islam, as reflect­ed in the Quran, teach­es that there is no com­pul­sion. Free­dom of wor­ship is to be under­stood not only in the sense of mak­ing a choice for the bet­ter, but also in the sense of free­dom to prac­tise a par­tic­u­lar reli­gion. Once one accepts Islam or decides to become a Mus­lim, one is sub­ject­ed to all the rules pre­scribed by the religion.

If Islam for­bids apos­ta­sy, not only the Mus­lims must observe it, but the fol­low­ers of oth­er reli­gions that do not have such pro­vi­sions must appre­ci­ate and respect this posi­tion as well. This is actu­al­ly the free­dom of wor­ship that must be per­ceived by all.

The author is a Senior Fel­low for the Cen­tre for Syari­ah, Law and Polit­i­cal Sci­ence, Insti­tute of Islam­ic Under­stand­ing Malaysia (IKIM)
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28 responses to “Islam on Free­dom of Religion”

  1. godisjudge Avatar
    godisjudge

    Some of the views here and espe­cial­ly the death sen­tence for peo­ple leav­ing islam is exact­ly why non-believ­ers sus­pect the faith. Such extreme opin­ions by its fol­low­ers shows how much man has had their hand in the devel­op­ment and under­stand­ing of the reli­gion. Let God pun­ish those that have wronged. Who is man to judge.

  2. Shadowofears Avatar
    Shadowofears

    1. Media maligns Islam
    Islam is with­out doubt the best reli­gion but the media is in the hands of the west­ern­ers who are afraid of Islam. The media is con­tin­u­ous­ly broad­cast­ing and print­ing infor­ma­tion against Islam. They either pro­vide mis­in­for­ma­tion about Islam, mis­quote Islam or project a point out of pro­por­tion, if any.
    When any bomb blasts take place any­where, the first peo­ple to be accused with­out proof are invari­ably the Mus­lims. This appears as head­lines in the news. Lat­er, when they find that non-Mus­lims were respon­si­ble, it appears as an insignif­i­cant news’ item.
    If a 50 year old Mus­lim mar­ries a 15 year old girl after tak­ing her per­mis­sion, it appears on the front page but when a 50 year old non-Mus­lim rapes a 6 year old girl, it may appear in the news in the inside pages as News­briefs’. Every­day in Amer­i­ca on an aver­age 2,713 cas­es of rape take place but it doesn’t appear in the news, since it has become a way of life for the Americans.

    2. Black sheep in every community :
    I am aware that there are some Mus­lims who are dis­hon­est, unre­li­able, who cheat, etc. but the media projects this as though only Mus­lims are involved in such activ­i­ties. There are black sheep in every com­mu­ni­ty. I know Mus­lims who are alco­holics and who can drink most of the non-Mus­lims under the table.

    3. Mus­lims best as a whole :
    Inspite of all the black sheep in the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty, Mus­lims tak­en on the whole, yet form the best com­mu­ni­ty in the world. We are the biggest com­mu­ni­ty of tee-totallers as a whole, i.e. those who don’t imbibe alco­hol. Col­lec­tive­ly, we are a com­mu­ni­ty which gives the max­i­mum char­i­ty in the world. There is not a sin­gle per­son in the world who can even show a can­dle to the Mus­lims where mod­esty is con­cerned ; where sobri­ety is con­cerned ; where human val­ues and ethics are concerned.

    4. Don’t judge a car by its driver :
    If you want to judge how good is the lat­est mod­el of the Mer­cedes” car and a per­son who does not know how to dri­ve sits at the steer­ing wheel and bangs up the car, who will you blame ? The car or the dri­ver ? But nat­u­ral­ly, the dri­ver. To ana­lyze how good the car is, a per­son should not look at the dri­ver but see the abil­i­ty and fea­tures of the car. How fast is it, what is its aver­age fuel con­sump­tion, what are the safe­ty mea­sures, etc. Even if I agree for the sake of argu­ment that the Mus­lims are bad, we can’t judge Islam by its fol­low­ers ? If you want to judge how good Islam is then judge it accord­ing to its authen­tic sources, i.e. the Glo­ri­ous Qur’an and the Sahih Hadith.

    5. Judge Islam by its best fol­low­er i.e. Prophet Mohammed (pbuh):
    If you prac­ti­cal­ly want to check how good a car is put an expert dri­ver behind the steer­ing wheel. Sim­i­lar­ly the best and the most exem­plary fol­low­er of Islam by whom you can check how good Islam is, is the last and final mes­sen­ger of God, Prophet Muham­mad (pbuh). Besides Mus­lims, there are sev­er­al hon­est and unbi­ased non-Mus­lim his­to­ri­ans who have acclaimed that prophet Muham­mad was the best human being. Accord­ing to Michael H. Hart who wrote the book, The Hun­dred Most Influ­en­tial Men in His­to­ry’, the top­most posi­tion, i.e. the num­ber one posi­tion goes to the beloved prophet of Islam, Muham­mad (pbuh). There are sev­er­al such exam­ples of non-Mus­lims pay­ing great trib­utes to the prophet, like Thomas Car­lyle, La-Mar­tine, etc.

    A few select­ed vers­es from the Qur’an are often mis­quot­ed to per­pet­u­ate the myth that Islam pro­motes vio­lence, and exhorts its fol­low­ers to kill those out­side the pale of Islam.
    1. Verse from Surah Taubah
    The fol­low­ing verse from Surah Taubah is very often quot­ed by crit­ics of Islam, to show that Islam pro­motes vio­lence, blood­shed and brutality :
    Kill the mushriqeen (pagans, poly­the­ists, kuf­far) where ever you find them.”
    [Al-Qur’an 9:5]
    2. Con­text of verse is dur­ing battlefield
    Crit­ics of Islam actu­al­ly quote this verse out of con­text. In order to under­stand the con­text, we need to read from verse 1 of this surah. It says that there was a peace treaty between the Mus­lims and the Mushriqs (pagans) of Makkah. This treaty was vio­lat­ed by the Mushriqs of Makkah. A peri­od of four months was giv­en to the Mushriqs of Makkah to make amends. Oth­er­wise war would be declared against them. Verse 5 of Surah Taubah says :
    But when the for­bid­den months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wher­ev­er ye find them, and seize them, belea­guer them, and lie in wait for them in every strat­a­gem (of war); but if they repent, and estab­lish reg­u­lar prayers and prac­tise reg­u­lar char­i­ty, then open the way for them : for Allah is oft-for­giv­ing, Most merciful.”
    [Al-Qur’an 9:5]
    This verse is quot­ed dur­ing a battle.
    3. Exam­ple of war between Amer­i­ca and Vietnam
    We know that Amer­i­ca was once at war with Viet­nam. Sup­pose the Pres­i­dent of Amer­i­ca or the Gen­er­al of the Amer­i­can Army told the Amer­i­can sol­diers dur­ing the war : Wher­ev­er you find the Viet­namese, kill them”. Today if I say that the Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent said, Wher­ev­er you find Viet­namese, kill them” with­out giv­ing the con­text, I will make him sound like a butch­er. But if I quote him in con­text, that he said it dur­ing a war, it will sound very log­i­cal, as he was try­ing to boost the morale of the Amer­i­can sol­diers dur­ing the war.
    4. Verse 9:5 quot­ed to boost morale of Mus­lims dur­ing battle
    Sim­i­lar­ly in Surah Taubah chap­ter 9 verse 5 the Qur’an says, Kill the Mushriqs where ever you find them”, dur­ing a bat­tle to boost the morale of the Mus­lim sol­diers. What the Qur’an is telling Mus­lim sol­diers is, don’t be afraid dur­ing bat­tle ; wher­ev­er you find the ene­mies kill them.
    5. Shourie jumps from verse 5 to verse 7
    Arun Shourie is one of the staunchest crit­ics of Islam in India. He quotes the same verse, Surah Taubah chap­ter 9 verse 5 in his book The World of Fat­wahs’, on page 572. After quot­ing verse 5 he jumps to verse 7 of Surah Taubah. Any sen­si­ble per­son will realise that he has skipped verse 6.
    6. Surah Taubah chap­ter 9 verse 6 gives the answer
    Surah Taubah chap­ter 9 verse 6 gives the answer to the alle­ga­tion that Islam pro­motes vio­lence, bru­tal­i­ty and blood­shed. It says :
    If one amongst the pagans ask thee for asylum,grant it to him, so that he may hear the word of Allah ; and then escort him to where he can be secure that is because they are men with­out knowledge.”
    [Al-Qur’an 9:6]
    The Qur’an not only says that a Mushriq seek­ing asy­lum dur­ing the bat­tle should be grant­ed refuge, but also that he should be escort­ed to a secure place. In the present inter­na­tion­al sce­nario, even a kind, peace-lov­ing army Gen­er­al, dur­ing a bat­tle, may let the ene­my sol­diers go free, if they want peace. But which army Gen­er­al will ever tell his sol­diers, that if the ene­my sol­diers want peace dur­ing a bat­tle, don’t just let them go free, but also escort them to a place of security ?
    This is exact­ly what Allah (swt) says in the Glo­ri­ous Qur’an to pro­mote peace in the world.

  3. Xman Avatar
    Xman

    Ishark,
    If you mar­ry a Mus­lim woman & then have chil­dren. What reli­gion will the kids be ? What if the woman wants them to grow up as Mus­lim and you dont ?

    This is a com­mon sce­nario that usu­al­ly ends up in divorce.

    Even if you did allow your wife to bring them up as Mus­lims, they would get con­fused by your actions as a non-mus­lim. There will be no har­mo­ny in such a household.

  4. Malikam X Avatar
    Malikam X

    Ishark, did you mean to say some­thing that did­nt come out when you sub­mit­ted yr comment.…