Free Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide by Paul Marshall, Nina Shea Page A

eliminate opponents. For this reason, the potential for misuse of apostasy laws has always been considerable.
    How well the apostasy laws are supported by the Qur’an and the practice of Prophet Muhammad is also debatable. There are significant counterarguments to the view that the punishment of apostasy by death is based on clear Qur’anic or prophetic instructions. Critics argue there is nothing in the Qur’an to justify a temporal punishment, such as death, for apostasy, and little to justify many of the apostasy laws that one finds in classical Islamic legal texts. Many of these laws were developed on the basis of certain isolated (
ahad
) hadith or their interpretations or on the basis of analogy (
qiyas
) and
ijtihad
. For example, the hadith, “Whoever changes his religion, kill him,” could be understood to mean converting from any religion to another, and therefore could be taken as a prohibition against converting to any religion. Even if its interpretation was restricted to simply prohibiting conversion from Islam, there are other versions of the hadith that seem to imply a clear connection between the instruction to kill the apostate and rebellion against the Muslim community. In reading such hadith, classical Muslim jurists favored readings and interpretations that supported the death penalty at the expense of those readings that opposed such a penalty. Clear textual proofs that guarantee certainty of knowledge (
̀ ilm qat ́ i
) were lacking in this debate.
    The point is that, because none of the textual proofs provided by Muslim jurists to support the death penalty for apostasy guarantees certainty of knowledge as understood in the principles of Islamic jurisprudence (
usul al-fiqh
), Muslims now have the opportunity to go back and rethink the law. Moreover, if the law is no longer practicable or relevant for the majority of Muslims, there is strongjustification for reconsidering it. The argument that such laws have been traditionally backed by consensus (
ijma’
) should not be a deterrent. Numerous other laws in which there previously was a Muslim consensus have been subject to revision; some, as in the cases concerned with slavery and the caliphate, have been dropped altogether.
    The nature of today’s debate on apostasy and apostasy laws in Muslim states is also important to consider. Malaysia, for example, is a multireligious society in which apostasy laws have been long debated. In various states of Malaysia’s federation, apostasy laws, not necessarily with the death penalty, are in place and arguably violate constitutional guarantees of religious freedom by requiring Muslims who want to renounce Islam to repent or endure detention for the purpose of rehabilitation and education.
    The apostasy debate in Malaysia is also linked to Malay identity and politics. Both main political parties—the United Malay National Organisation (UMNO) and the opposition and more Islamist Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS)—use the debate to score political points by demonstrating their commitment to Islam. PAS has supported introducing the death penalty to deter Muslims from renouncing Islam, so the more secularist UMNO has been trying to demonstrate its Islamic credentials. As part of this agenda, UMNO has supported the introduction of Islamic banking, insurance, and mortgages and the increase of Islamic programming on television and radio and in other government-controlled media; and it has given more coverage to Islamic festivals than in the past. Several UMNO-governed states within the federation also have introduced or are preparing to introduce legislation making it difficult for Muslims to renounce Islam. Thus support for apostasy laws, along with other features of Islamization, is among the tactics being used to garner political support.
    A number of important issues emerge from the Qur’anic treatment of the subject of freedom of religion. It is clear that the Qur’an supports the notion of religious