Islam on Free­dom of Religion

Wan Azhar Wan Ahmad

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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