Sudan woman faces death for apostasy (Apostasy is basically renunciation of a religion by a person). And this is on top of the 100 lashes she is set to receive for being convicted of adultery for marrying a Christian man, which was apparently not valid under Sudan's version of Islamic law. To be fair, the judge did give her 3 days to recant and return to Islam. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! And it's not just in Sudan that apostasy is punishable by death, but seemingly in quite a few Islamic countries (Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan etc) although it is unclear how many executions are actually carried out. Fortunately the UK tolerates us heathens who turn away from Christianity without so much as a flicker of attention.
Hmm... sounds like the Hanafi legal school here. They allow a week or something to recant and "re-re-revert" to Islam, as I understand it. The horror of the thing belies the claim by apologists for Islamic theocracies that no punishment for apostasy exists in Islam. One of the other scary issues is the forcible recruitment scheme: the woman, who is Christian, is roped into a religion she doesn't agree with on penalty of death. I've heard it described by Islamic extremists that Islam is a "door, once gone through, that cannot be gone back through" or some bloody thing; I forget their syntax. The innate, explicit supremacism is so startling that I think some people are unable to process it. I wonder if the new motions for the "respect of all religions" being pushed at the UN I think by the Arab League or the OIC would apply here: would the AL consider this a violation, or as a tacit good? I suspect the latter. Edit: it's the OIC pushing it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation_of_religion_and_the_United_Nations. A bit questionable considering the partners.
According to the wiki, even religious groups are against the measure. As for the apostasy stuff, I mean, is anyone surprised? This is fundamentalist islam. It's actually good timing, thoug, because I was just reading this about Iranian women taking their hijabs off in public and posting pictures of it to a facebook page. It's illegal, so they're calling it "Stealthy Freedoms for Iranian Women." Wonderful, but sad, too.
Of all of the major religions on Earth, Islam is the one that I like the least. Here's some poll results about Muslim attitudes towards Shariah around the world that I find very troubling. http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/...ligion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/ The punishment for apostasy in Shariah is death, I believe. And there are obviously countries in which Shariah is recognized as the law of the land. While in many of these countries, actual formal executions for apostasy are rare to non-existent, what happens more frequently is neighbors or even family members informally killing the apostate individual, and the police then declining to investigate and the state refusing to prosecute. Not just extremists, it's a widespread view among Muslims. It's what their divinely-revealed law commands. It's certainly politically incorrect to acknowledge it. Even mentioning it can result in people like you and me being labeled 'bigots'.
That's one of those things, though, where I wonder if it isn't just a bunch of people saying what they think they're supposed to say. I read once that there aren't enough churches in the country to hold all the self-proclaimed "Church-going" Christians, or something like that. I doubt most people answering even know much of anything about sharia, but maybe I'm being optimistic.
I would probably it is akin to something like the cult of personality phenomenon. Muslims feel threatened. The West have invaded their countries, we use drones to kill Muslims. A lot of the times we miss and kill innocent men, women and children. We have tortured some of them, we have acted as bad as some of their despotic leaders against them. We look at all of them with fear, we use racial and religious profiling against them. We did not trust them enough after 9/11 (we kind of forgot many innocent Muslims also lost their lives that day) and so we monitored them, watched their movements, detained quite a few more with very little proof or reason. We stripped some enemy combatants of their rights and personhood so we could hold some of them for as long as we want. And I say 'we' here because it encompasses behaviour and support of all of this. So they are constantly judged. They are constantly expected to condemn anything a Muslim does wrong, even if it had nothing to do with them. We have different expectations of them. So it is possible they stand together against the face of what they may deem to be outright aggression against their religion. So their religion has become a cult of personality. They may not like it or agree with it, but not standing up for it may make them a traitor and open them up to conflict for breaking the ranks. I don't know. Or it could just be that Sudan is a fucked up country with so many things wrong with it, from threats of violence and death from famine to this.. I tell myself 'well it is Sudan, they are hardly known for their human rights records'.. But yeah. It seems strange to me for this to happen right as International Aid agencies are warning of a very real threat of famine in Sudan.. Timing is everything I suppose. Then there is the fact that she is married to a South Sudanese Christian.. So tension from that front as well..
We racially profile them in Islamic countries? There's a clear line of political change beginning with Qutb; yet, before that, domestic theocratic tolerance was subject to whim. And still is.
Good point. Pew investigated what Muslims think Shariah law requires by asking followup questions to those who indicated that they favor making Shariah law the law of the land. Results differed widely from country to country. At one extreme, we find places like these: 15% of Bosnian Muslims indicated that they wanted Shariah to the law of the land in Bosnia. Of this 15%, only 21% (3% of all Bosnian Muslims) said that they support death by stoning for adulterers. Only 15% (2% of all Bosnian Muslims) supported the death penalty for apostasy. 12% of Albanian Muslims indicated that they want Shariah the law of the land in Albania. Of this 12%, 25% (3% of Albanian Muslims) favor death by stoning for adulterers. Only 8% (1% of Albanian Muslims) favor death for apostasy. Despite its current 'moderate' Islamist government, Turkey polled as pretty relaxed as well. 12% of Turks support making Shariah the law of the land in Turkey. Of this 12%, 29% (about 3.5% of Turkish Muslims) favor death by stoning for adulterers. 17% (2% of Turkish Muslims) favor death for apostasy. There's a similar pattern in parts of central Asia. Only 10% of Muslims in Kazakhstan favor making Shariah the law of the land in Kazakhstan. Of this 10%, 31% (3% of Kazakh Muslims) favor death by stoning for adulterers. A tiny 4% (less than 1/2 of one percent of Kazakh Muslims) favor death for apostasy. That's one extreme. Other places in the Muslim world produce strikingly different results. In Malaysia, 86% of Malaysian Muslims favor making Shariah the law of the land. (It already is for Muslims in Malaysia.) Of this 86%, 60% (52% of Malaysian Muslims) favor death by stoning for adulterers. 62% (53% of Malaysian Muslims) favor death for apostasy. Neighboring Indonesia is a little more relaxed. 72% of Indonesian Muslims say they favor making Shariah the law of the land in Indonesia. Of this 72%, 48% (35% of Indonesian Muslims) favor death by stoning for adulterers. 18% (13% of Indonesian Muslims) favor death for apostasy. I think that in Indonesia, many Muslims are only nominally Muslim and really follow local village religious traditions. That might make them old-style traditionalists when it comes to things like marriage, but not as attached to the 'Muslim' label as they might otherwise be. As we would expect from reading the news, Pakistan is extremely hard-line. 84% of Pakistani Muslims favor making Shariah the law of the land. (I believe that it already is.) Of these, 89% (75% of Pakistani Muslims) favor death by stoning for adulterers. 76% (64% of Pakistani Muslims) favor death for apostasy. Afghanistan is even worse. 99% of Afghan Muslims favor making Shariah the law of the land in Afghanistan. Of these, 85% (84% of Afghan Muslims) favor death by stoning for adulterers. 79% (78% of Afghan Muslims) favor death for apostasy. 91% of Iraqi Muslims favor making Shariah the law of the land in Iraq. Of these, 58% (53% of Iraqi Muslims) favor death by stoning for adulterers. 42% (38% of Iraqi Muslims) favor death for apostasy. In Egypt, 74% of Egyptian Muslims favor making Shariah the law of the land in Egypt. 81% of these (60% of Egyptian Muslims) favor death by stoning for adulterers. 86% (64% of Egyptian Muslims) favor death for apostasy. In the middle of the spectrum, we find places like Tunisia. 56% of Tunisian Muslims favor making Shariah the law of the land in Tunisia. Of these, 44% (25% of Tunisian Muslims) favor death by stoning for adulterers. 29% (16% of Tunisian Muslims) favor death for apostasy. One of the difficulties that Europe faces in assimilating its growing Muslim minorities is that it's never paid any attention to these kind of numbers when choosing whether to admit immigrants. So for example, the UK finds itself with Muslim populations drawn disproportionately from the most hard-line countries, like Pakistan.
I'm told that in Malaysia, one often sees ethnic Malays visiting some Buddhist temples in some locations. (In Malaysia, Malays are generally assumed by law to be Muslims by birth and thus technically fall under Shariah.) The explanation provided by Malay sociologists of this phenomenon is that Malays treat the Buddhist monks as traditional healers and thus these people are going to the temples for traditional medical services, not for religious reasons. Seeing that the poll results up above suggest that 53% of Malaysia's Muslims would favor killing compatriots who convert to Buddhism, it's easy to see why there might be a lot of unacknowledged crypto-Buddhism out there. I'm sure that the same thing is happening with Christianity.
I heard the Mafia is like this if you are 'made'. Once in the Mafia, it is death if you attempt to leave. Or so I heard.
