Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide (9 page)

One of the more famous cases of blasphemy and related laws to repress political dissent concerns reformers Ali al-Domaini, Abdullah al-Hamid, and Matrouk al-Faleh. The three men were part of a group of thirteen first arrested in March
2004 in connection with a petition they had circulated advocating the creation of a constitutional monarchy.
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Their ten colleagues were released in exchange for a promise to desist from pro-reform activities, but al-Domaini, al-Hamid, and al-Faleh rejected the deal. As a result they were accused of offenses including “incitement against the Wahhabi school of Islam” and, according to the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, “introducing ‘Western terminology’” in their calls for reform. On May 15, 2005, al-Faleh received six years in prison, al-Hamid, seven, and al-Domaini, nine for “stirring up sedition and disobeying the ruler.”
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In August 2005, King Abdullah pardoned all three. However, in February 2007, al-Faleh was rearrested, probably due to his criticism of the prison conditions for several other Saudi reformers—themselves jailed for organizing a women’s protest over the lengthy detention without charge of alleged terror suspects.
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Mohammad Al-Harbi was a high-school chemistry teacher in Ein Al-Juwa, Al-Qassim. In mid-2004, he was accused by other teachers and some of his twelfth-grade students of “mocking religion,” “praising unbelievers,” preventing students from performing ablutions, and practicing witchcraft. They also claimed that Al-Harbi had ridiculed bearded men, an especially dubious charge in light of the fact that Al-Harbi himself had a beard. He responded that Islamic studies teachers were angered by his passionate lectures attacking terrorists and extremists after the 2003 Al-Hamra Compound explosions and were looking for a pretext to remove him. He had reportedly also drawn the ire of colleagues by talking positively about the Bible, speaking favorably of Jews, and supporting the use of critical thinking to reconcile apparent contradictions between the Qur’an and the Sunna. Following the complaints, the Ministry of Education transferred Al-Harbi to an administrative post and tried him for blasphemy. His attorney, Abdul Rahman Al-Lahem, said the trial violated many legal procedures, since no witnesses other than those responsible for the complaint testified. Nor was Al-Harbi allowed to question the complainants. Also, jurisdiction over a case involving “sacrilege” properly belonged to a special religious court. In November 2005, Al-Harbi received a sentence of 750 lashes, to be given at a rate of fifty each week over the course of fifteen weeks, and three years in jail. The case drew substantial domestic and international attention; in early December, then–Crown Prince Abdullah, and now king, overturned the sentence.
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Rabah Al-Quwayi was a journalist in the northern city of Hail and a frequent blogger on many liberal websites, most of which have since been shut down by the government. His posts concentrated on the dangers of Al-Qaeda attacks on the Arabian Peninsula and denounced illiberal Wahhabi practices, such as ritual book burnings.
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He received many death threats, and, on November 15, 2005, the day after he questioned the authorities’ case against Al-Harbi, his car was destroyed, and a note left stated, “This time it is your car but next time it is you. Return to your religion and forsake heresy …”
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When Al-Quwayi filed a complaint with the police about the attack on his car, the Mabahith decided to investigate
the soundness of his religious beliefs instead. He was arrested on April 3, 2006, and charged with “doubting the [Islamic] creed” and “harboring destructive thoughts.” His accusers also claimed that he promoted homosexuality because he had written that it is a genetic predisposition. He was released in mid-April after being forced to sign a statement saying that he had denigrated Islam and not been a true Muslim but that he would defend Islamic values in his future work. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that if he had refused to sign the statement, he would have been charged with the capital crime of
riddah
, apostasy.
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Hassan al-Maliki, a theologian, lost his job at the Ministry of Education and spent time under virtual house arrest after challenging Wahhabi teachings. He criticized early Muslims, the Salafis, for allowing the Umayyad caliphs to establish a dictatorship that demanded unquestioning obedience in the name of Islam, and he suggested that contemporary Wahhabis carried on this unfortunate tradition. In 2007, he lamented that the Saudi educational system taught that “whoever disagrees with Wahhabism is either an infidel or a deviant—and should repent or be killed.” Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzan, who authored the portions of the curriculum that al-Maliki criticized, responded to the criticism by threatening to behead him, proving al-Maliki’s point as perhaps nothing else could have done. Al-Maliki was barred from leaving the country, and his books have been banned.
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On December 11, 2009, Saudi journalist Nadine Al-Bdair wrote in an Egyptian newspaper that Islamic leaders should issue an edict allowing women, as well as men, to marry up to four times. She claimed that the ancient reasoning, that the father of the child would be unknown if the woman got pregnant, is now obsolete because of technological advances. As a result, she faced charges of blasphemy, as did Magdy Al Galad, the editor in chief of the newspaper that published the article.
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In March 2010, Al-Bdair was also indicted for insulting the prophet on her TV program on Al-Hurra channel.
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Under King Abdullah, there have been recent signs of slight moderation in the kingdom, but the monarch’s reputation as a reformer so far seems overblown. Announced policies have not materialized into actual practices or changes on the ground. Because of sweeping attacks by state-approved and state-financed clerics on anyone who departs from Wahhabi orthodoxy as a blasphemer or apostate, Saudi Arabia remains perhaps the most repressively controlled Muslim country in the Sunni world. The kingdom is also aggressive in seeking to make its form of Islam the dominant one in the world, and it spends billions of dollars to do so. It has been the largest purveyor of Islamic educational materials worldwide, and, due to its role as custodian of the two holiest shrines in Islam, its religious authority is given special legitimacy. If it continues successfully to export its
currently held Wahhabi views, the future will be bleak for minorities, thinkers, writers, and reformers throughout the Muslim world and beyond.

One indication of Wahhabi views of intellectual life beyond the kingdom’s borders was given by then–doctoral candidate Sa’id ibn Nasser Al-Ghamdi. His dissertation at Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in 2000 accused more than 200 Arab intellectuals of heresy and apostasy and thus implicitly legitimized attempts to kill them. Those implicated included renowned Egyptian author and Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz, who had previously been stabbed by Islamic extremists, as well as Egyptian intellectual Nasr Abu-Zayd, who fled to the Netherlands when Islamists attempted to forcibly divorce him on account of his views, and who is a contributor to this book. Al-Ghamdi also attacked noted Syrian author Adonis, Egyptian intellectuals Taha Hussein and Hassan Hanafi, Egyptian author Jaber Asfour, Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, Iraqi poet Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab, Egyptian poet Amal Dankal, Libyan poet Muhammad Al-Fayturi, Yemeni poet ‘Abd Al-‘Aziz Al-Maqalih, Saudi intellectual ‘Abdallah Al-Ghadhami, Moroccan author Mohamed Choukri, Egyptian author Qassem Amin, Palestinian poet Mu’in Bsisu, Palestinian poet Tawfiq Ziad, Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani, Palestinian author Emil Habibi, Egyptian intellectual Rifa’a Al-Tahtawi, Egyptian intellectual Sa’id ’Ashmawi, Egyptian author Yusuf Idris, and Sudanese author Al-Tayyib Salih. For this, Al-Ghamdi was awarded his doctorate summa cum laude.
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Al-Ghamdi’s dissertation evolved into a book,
Deviation from the Faith as Reflected in [Arab] Thought and Literature on Modernity
, published in 2003. In a review, Egyptian poet and literary critic Abdallah Al-Samti writes: “Al-Ghamdi believes that modernism is a foreign plant intended to complete the West’s colonialist domination over the Muslim countries … [He] does not leave a single detail of modern culture—large or small—uncriticized. His criticism … reaches various levels of revilement, racism and accusation of heresy.” Al-Ghamdi’s proposals for handling the accused writers’ deviant behaviors are similar to, in Al-Samti’s words, “the recommendations of the Inquisition.” Furthermore, he did not stop with his cultural critique but addressed the political sphere, as well, berating “secular” Arab rulers and regimes, labeling them “apostate” and thus calling for their deaths.
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As one might expect, one of the dangers of throwing about charges of apostasy and blasphemy with promiscuous abandon is that the accusers themselves are subject to the same charges. Following NATO attacks in Afghanistan in 2001, a number of Saudi clerics, including the prominent legal scholar Hamoud bin Oqla al-Shuiabi, pronounced the entire Saudi royal family infidel on the grounds that “whoever backs the infidel against Muslims is considered an infidel.”
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After an April 2004 suicide attack on a Saudi government building, the radical Brigade of the Two Holy Mosques claimed responsibility for striking the “apostate” Saudi authorities.
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In a video released in July 2010, Al-Qaeda then-second-in-command Ayman Al Zawahiri denounced the house of Saud as Arab Zionists for their support of a peace proposal concerning Israel.

Hojjatoleslam Hassan Yousefi Eshkevari was trained as a cleric in the religious center of Qom. He has been published widely in scientific and religious periodicals, served as Director of the Ali Shariati Research Center, and was contributing editor of now-banned newspaper
Iran-e Farda,
a contributor to
the Great Encyclopedia of Islam,
and editor of the
Encyclopedia of Shi’a.
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Eshkevari participated in the 2000 Heinrich Böll Institute conference in Berlin, and, before attending, in an interview with Iran Press Service he criticized compulsory veiling for women and said that mixing religion and politics “spoils, corrupts and empties both of their substance” and that no leader should have powers above those of the constitution. At the conference itself, he spoke on the topic of dictatorship and its history, and his speech was criticized publicly by conservative clerics in Iran, including the Supreme Leader Khamenei. Critics compared his statements on separation of state from religion and unveiling of women to Salman Rushdie’s “anti-Islamic” statements
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Eshkevari went from Berlin to Paris for medical treatment and was arrested on his return to Iran in August 2000. In October of that year, he was tried behind closed doors by the Iranian Special Court of the Clergy on charges of apostasy, corruption on earth, waging war against God, conduct unbecoming a clergyman, insulting Islamic sanctities, and spreading lies, and, on October 17, he was sentenced to death. He appealed, and in May 2001, the appeals court overturned the death sentence but upheld a seven-year sentence—four years for “insulting Islamic sanctities,” in particular, for his comments about veils, one year for attending the conference, and two years for speaking against the Islamic Republic and “spreading lies.” He was released on February 6, 2005, having served two-thirds of his sentence: he was prohibited from wearing cleric’s robes, as one condition of his release
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Zabihollah Mahrami was called before the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Yazd on September 6, 1995, and questioned about his Baha’i faith as part of an unsuccessful attempt to persuade him to renounce his beliefs. On January 2, 1996, he was put on trial for apostasy, and the prosecutor argued that, based on a 1983 newspaper announcement and another 1985 document, Mahrami had renounced the Baha’i faith and declared himself a Muslim. The court minutes read: “Mr. Mahrami … followed the wayward Baha’i sect until the year 1981 … when he recanted Bahá’ísm in a widely distributed newspaper and announced his acceptance of the true religion of Islam. …” The court asked him again what his religion was, and Mahrami affirmed that he was a Baha’i. He was then sentenced to death—a verdict based not on any statute but on quotations from the writings of Ayatollah Khomeini. On appeal, the
Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence. In December 1999, due to a presidential amnesty on the eve of the birth of Prophet Muhammad, Mahrami’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. On December 19, 2005, he was reported dead in prison, purportedly from a heart attack; however, before his death he was believed to have been in good health
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On June 3, 2008, twenty-eight-year-old Tina Rad, a Christian, was arrested for committing “activities against the holy religion of Islam,” while her husband, thirty-one-year-old Makan Arya, also a Christian, was charged with “activities against national security.” Rad was accused of attempting to convert Muslims by reading the Bible together with them in her residence. Security officials seized personal belongings, including all of the couple’s videos, CDs, DVDs, and books, in addition to their computer and television set. They were jailed for four days, leaving their four-year-old daughter, Odzhan, alone. Tina Rad was tortured so severely that she was unable to walk when she was released. Security officials also told the couple that in the future they would be charged with apostasy and that Odzhan would be taken away from them and put in an institution. One officer told Rad that authorities could frame her and her husband as drug smugglers, a charge that can lead to the death penalty. The family’s shop windows have been smashed, and they have received repeated threats from the surrounding community and anonymous phone calls. In June 2009, the family fled from Iran
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