There was a report by Ruth Gledhill in the TimesOnline of a British citizen who was harassed when he converted to Christianity from Islam and who was then not taken seriously when he complained to the police. When locals threatened to burn his house down he was told by officers to “stop being a crusader”, according to a new report.
Nissar Hussein, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, converted from Islam to Christianity in 1996. He was told that his house would be burnt down if he did not repent and return to Islam, and after being subject to a number of attacks, reported the matter to the police. He was told that such threats were rarely carried out and that he should “stop being a crusader and move to another place”. A few days later the unoccupied house next door was set on fire.
Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a British human rights organisation, is calling on the UN and the international community to take action against nations and communities that punish apostasy.
Its report, No Place to Call Home, describes the position of Islam in relation to apostasy. It writes:
Apostasy is the renunciation of religious faith, and apostasy from Islam in particular has always been a contentious issue. Although the Qur’an does not prescribe a temporal punishment for apostasy, the vast majority of traditional Islamic theology and jurisprudence has advocated the death penalty for a mentally sane male apostate and life-long imprisonment or harsh treatment for a female apostate. Proponents of the death penalty have legitimised their stance from the sayings and deeds attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, his companions and subsequent caliphs.
The report claims that apostates from Islam are subject to “gross and wideranging human rights abuses”. It adds that in countries such as Britain, with large Muslim populations in a Westernised culture, the demand to maintain a Muslim identity is intense. “When identities are precarious, their enforcement will take an aggressive form.”
Of course, there must be many Muslims who are appalled by this practice, and in the interests of balance, it should be pointed out that Christians too have not been averse to killing in order to encourage people to convert, and some are still threatening and killing each other if they happen to be of the wrong Christian persuasion. However, the Islamic position on apostasy, and the fact that persecution is happening in relatively secularized modern societies, should be a concern for us all.
Eric Kaufmann notes in Prospect Magazine, the share of the world’s population that is religious is growing, after nearly a century of modest decline, and Islam, it seems, is enjoying a particularly large share of that growth. Throughout the world, the religious tend to have more children, irrespective of age, education or wealth. “Secular” Europe is no exception. In an analysis of European data from ten west European countries in the period 1981-2004 Kaufmann found that next to age and marital status, a woman’s religiosity was the strongest predictor of her number of offspring. However, whereas many religions have a high fertility advantage, many of them also have significant defection rates. What is worrying is that the Muslim practice of trying to prevent apostasy means that they are well able to reap the growth benefits from higher fertility rates. Reuters reported on 30 March, 2008 that Islam has finally overtaken Catholicism as the biggest religious denomination in the world (Muslims 19.2 per cent of the world population, and Catholics 17.4 per cent).
I find it sad that people should choose to switch from one myth system to another in order to rule their lives rather than face reality and reason, but hey, that’s my personal opinion, and how people fill their time and spend their money is largely up to them (provided society doesn’t suffer). I find myself angry that yet again the British police failed to take a cry for help from someone facing religious violence seriously, and seem to have totally misunderstood the reality of the threat Nissar Hussein was under.
However, for me, the far bigger crime is the notion that force must be applied in order to determine a person’s supposed religious faith. The very attempt to do so shows how little the bullies understand about true religion and the matter of the heart. At worst, all the bullies can do is achieve adherence to external forms. Who a person chooses to worship (or not worship) in the privacy of her or his heart is another matter. And of course, the brutality and the bullying denies the very substance of the religion that the henchmen are seeking to protect. It also shows that the particular god in question must be so weak as to need to rely on thugs.
A thought-provoking article, which points out a genuine danger of religious orthodoxy.
Officials should take this kind of thing seriously. I’ve heard no one explain how it can be that religious affiliation is growing, when the flaws and heartache that go with it are so obvious.
Excellent post. I continue to be alarmed and dismayed by the tensions that some Muslims are creating in Britain and throughout Europe. Any god that relies on thugs to enforce its will is not a god worth worshiping.
The very attempt to do so shows how little the bullies understand about true religion and the matter of the heart.
On the contrary, I think it is the “bullies” who do “understand about true religion” and that we atheists should get this clear in our minds.
Religion is about being right, being in possession of the “truth”. This in turn authorizes the believer to commit any act in order to defend the faith and impose it on others. The cuddly image of some modern religions has been forced on them by declining membership numbers. There isn’t a religion in the world that, if given exclusive authority, would not eventually act with the full rigour we see applied by some Muslim groups. Christianity is not an exception.
Failure on the part of the police is lamentable. I think it is at least partly down to ignorance. This is why I oppose the strident tone of the “Freethinker” (which I now regard as the Daily Mail of atheist publications - too much gob and too little brain behind it) when it opposes the spending of public money on courses on Islam for the police and other public officials. I regard such courses, properly run, as essential. This episode shows why.
There is a real danger in Britain of two streams of justice running in parallel, one for Muslims and one for the rest of us. If this is allowed to continue, the Muslim stream will overflow into our lives as well. Government has been slow to respond to this and to make it clear that there is only one system of justice in Britain and that it applies to all citizens, irrespective of their race or creed. It really has to get its act together on this and stop its weak-kneed policy of appeasement.
Like you, I don’t think that converting from Islam to Christianity is much of a step up. More a step sideways, perhaps. But I also agree that a citizen must have the absolute right to take that step and be protected from the idiots who resent his actions. A crime is still a crime even if perpetrated in the name of some god and should be dealt with as such.