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

freedom, including religious faith as an individual choice. Religious freedom is presented in the Qur’an in a variety of contexts and ways. Under Muslim rule historically, non-Muslims were allowed to govern their lives under the rules and values of their religious traditions. Muslims were instructed not to abuse or slander adherents to other religions—including idolaters—even though their beliefs, values, and practices were not supported or respected by the Qur’an. The Qur’an also rejected forced conversions, as emphasized in the well-known verse, “There shall be no coercion in matters of faith …” 4 The principle of personal responsibility that is a strong current through the Qur’an also emphasizes that each person is given the capacity to discern right from wrong, and it is a personal decision as to which belief system, if any, to follow. According to the Qur’an, God’s plan for humankind is not that everyone should follow the same path. 5 The Prophet’s task was primarily to explain the difference between right and wrong. Individuals then had the choice of whether or not to follow God’s path. This principle applies equally to Muslims who choose to leave Islam. Every person will beasked about his or her actions on the Day of Judgment and it will be the individual who will ultimately bear the responsibility for that choice in the afterlife.
    Despite this, Muslim scholars of the classical period largely limited the scope of freedom available to a Muslim in choosing and adopting a religion or a belief system. They opted instead for a narrow definition of the right to religious freedom, confining it to the freedom given to non-Muslims either to remain under Islamic rule as “protected religious minorities” (
ahl al-dhimma
) or to convert to Islam. Conversion from Islam was banned absolutely. These scholars went against the general ethos of the Qur’an when they argued for state coercion to prevent Muslims from converting to other religions. The view of these early scholars is unsurprising as they functioned at a time when religious freedom and the concept of individual human dignity were not related in the way they are today. In the social and political environment of that earlier time, an individual generally became a “person” through association with a particular religion or tribe; and in the case of Islam, it was the religious tradition rather than the tribe that mattered most. In joining Islam, an individual automatically became part of the community of believers, which also functioned as a political unit, within the caliphate or emirate. Thus there was a conjunction between corporate religious identity rooted in the community and political identity. If someone rejected the community of believers, he or she was automatically excluded from the membership of the political community as well. This meant the complete loss of an individual’s basic rights, including the rights to life and to own property, which were conferred upon becoming a Muslim. Since an individual’s basic rights were dependent on being part of this community, the whole notion of apostasy and the punishment associated with it in the premodern period made sense.
    In contrast, most Muslims today have moved away from this conjunction between religious community and political identity to a sort of separation between the two. Today, a political community in the sense of a nation-state does not have to be based on a religious community, and, in fact, most nation-states in the world are not based on this strict identification. As a rule, an individual can become a citizen of this political unit regardless of religious affiliation. This is true even in the majority of Muslim states, in which modern constitutions often guarantee religious freedom and equality before the law for all. Thus, in general, religious freedom has become a
prima facie
right in the modern period within the functioning of the nation-state. Notions of apostasy,