Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide (15 page)

The Iranian regime uses accusations such as apostasy, blasphemy, heresy, and even sorcery in a profligate and inconsistent manner to punish those individuals it sees as a threat to its rule, including religious reformists, intellectuals, student activists, religious minorities, and women’s rights activists.
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When expedient, it adds other charges not defined in statute such as “propagandists against the government of Islamic Republic of Iran,” “friendship with the enemies of God,” “hostility towards friends of God,” “corruption on earth,” “fighting against God,” “obstructing the way of God and the way towards happiness for all the disinherited people in the world,” “dissension from religious dogma,” “spreading lies,” “insulting the Prophet,” “distributing propaganda against the government of Islamic Republic of Iran,” “attracting individuals to the misguided sect of Baha’ism,” “insulting Islam,” “propagation of spiritual liberalism,” “promoting pluralism,” “calling into question the Islamic foundations of the Republic,” and even, our personal favorite, “creating anxiety in the minds of the public and those of Iranian officials.” Court reasoning in such cases may be taken from the writings of Khomeini or others considered authoritative, and the resulting punishments include beating, lashing, solitary confinement, amputation, life or lengthy imprisonment, execution, and extrajudicial punishments such as rape, sexual abuse, burning, starvation, and strangulation.

As noted above, this inconsistency suggests that, when there is nothing else with which to charge a person, the regime uses some variant of apostasy, which conveniently can carry the death penalty. The targeted undesirables can be Baha’is, whose very existence is treated as a crime, converts to Christianity, Jews, Sunnis, Sufis, or Shia religious or political reformists whom the state punishes for speaking their minds. Those charged with “apostasy” include Mahrami, who was never a Muslim; the Soodmans, father and son, who chose a religion other than Islam; Talibi, because he allegedly signed a document that stated his religion as Islam; and Rowhani, because he allegedly converted a Muslim woman to the Baha’i religion. Mekhoubad was executed because he spoke to relatives in Israel and America, and Hovsepian Mehr was murdered because he preached Christianity. Aghajari was charged because of speeches in which he challenged some Islamic practices. The only apparent consistency is the use of these laws to persecute and silence religious minorities and Muslim dissidents.

Under the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, conditions have deteriorated, and the increased demonization of Baha’is, Jews, and Sufis indicates darker days ahead. This is especially so in light of proposed reforms to the penal code that would give the regime a sharper tool with which to eradicate its undesirables. Although Ahmadinejad’s victory in the June 2009 elections remains disputed in the eyes of many reformers, and although the massive demonstrations in its wake may have revealed fractures in the regime’s political support system, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s iron grip is likely to remain firm against dissenters, and may even tighten, as long as clerical rule survives.

On July 15, 2005, Sayed Al Qimni, one of Egypt’s most accomplished writers on religion—and one who has been heavily censored—received a death threat from Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Though he asked the police for protection, none was forthcoming. Two days later he received another letter from Al-Qaeda, this time saying that a team of five assassins had been organized and planned to “cleanse their own sins through his blood” by “ripping his head off.” The letter called Qimni “one of the walking dead” and threatened him with “the bullet of a passing car or a nearby rooftop.” Qimni was given a week to repent. He decided to stop writing, giving interviews, and attending debates, explaining that, while he had resisted numerous threats to himself personally, recent letters had also threatened to kill his children and had described their whereabouts in detail. A year later, however, he announced his return to writing and fighting the Islamists
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On July 16, 2007, Shaymaa al-Sayed, a twenty-six-year-old woman who had converted to Christianity several years before, was attacked in the street, along with her husband, by members of her family—they had been searching for her for four years. Police took al-Sayed into custody, ostensibly to protect her from the family, but then transferred her to the custody of State Security in Cairo. There she was tortured, including by electric shocks, and was photographed naked. On July 23, she was released to her family in Alexandria, who dragged her screaming from the police station and beat her severely before driving away with her
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On March 29, 2009, during a discussion of the Baha’i religion on the Al-Haqiqa television program, Press Syndicate Board Member Gamal Abdel Rahem denounced one of the guests, Baha’i activist and dentistry professor Basma Gamal Musa. He declared that Musa was an “apostate” and ranted to his viewers, “This woman should be killed.” A Baha’i caller to the program reported that his Egyptian village, al-Shuraniya, was “full of Baha’is.” For five days after this announcement, Baha’i homes in the village, 200 miles south of Cairo, were attacked with firebombs, their water supplies were cut off, and local Baha’is received death threats. Although no one was reported injured, the police detained six people
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Gamel Abdel Nasser, who led a coup in 1952 that overthrew Egypt’s monarchy, established a repressive police state and restricted the role of Islamic sharia to family law. However, in 1971, his successor, Anwar Al-Sadat, revised Article 2 of the constitution to read, “Islamic jurisprudence [sharia] is
the
principal source of legislation” (emphasis added), a change whose influence is still percolating through the legal system. Though the main body of law remains civil, the influence of sharia has been increasing, especially with the pressure exerted by groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood,
Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimeen
, which emerged in the 1920s with the goal of establishing a pan-Islamic state. Until the 2011 revolution, the Brotherhood was illegal in Egypt under a law prohibiting political parties based on religion, but it fielded “independent” candidates and remains strong despite years of persecution and official banning. The Muslim Brotherhood functions today as one of the most powerful Islamist movements in the world.

After Sadat’s assassination in 1981, Hosni Mubarak became president and declared a state of emergency that was renewed every three years since. Numerous radical Islamist groups became particularly violent in the 1980s and ’90s, attacking security forces, tourists, Christians, and moderate Muslims. These attempts at insurgency were met with heavy repression by the authorities, as well as restrictions on political and civil liberties, which have continued even after the armed infrastructure of radical Islamist groups was largely eradicated by 1998. To control extremism, the government has extended its legal control to all mosques, which, by law, require licenses. However, a large number of Egypt’s mosques remain unlicensed and operate outside of state control.

While Iran and Saudi Arabia are well known for their repression of religious dissent, Egypt has also been cracking down on departures from official Islam. The result is that the country’s intellectual and cultural life, which once set the pattern for much of the Arab world, has become increasingly stultified. Although Articles 40, 46, 47, and 48 of the constitution guaranteed equality before the law—freedom of belief, freedom of opinion, and freedom of the press—the political reality has been very different. The religious establishment has defended the government against political Islamist groups and in return is given authority over religious matters, including banning books, issuing fatwas on apostasy, and filing court suits.
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The doctrine of
hisba
, which entitles any Muslim to take legal action against anyone he considers harmful to Islam, provides Islamists extensive opportunities to harass intellectuals and others who arouse their displeasure. While no law specifically forbids blasphemy or apostasy, Article 98(f) of the penal code, which prohibits “ridiculing or insulting heavenly religions,” functions as a de facto blasphemy or apostasy law. The law, in principle, also forbids insulting Judaism and Christianity, but in practice only alleged insults to Islam are prosecuted, including by Muslims who object to the official version of Islam.
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This situation fans religious violence and bigotry.

In the early months of 2011, Egypt entered a period of turmoil. Beginning on January 25, 2011, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, inspired by the overthrow of the regime in Tunisia, began to gather in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, calling for a democratic and free Egypt. When the military refused to repress the demonstrators by lethal force, on February 11, 2011, longtime President Mubarak resigned. The military announced that elections were slated for approximately fall 2011, a deadline that many opposition parties said was too soon to allow them to organize. Meanwhile, Egypt’s repression of religious minorities has continued and intensified with violent attacks on Copts in particular.

The majority of Egypt’s eighty-three million people are Sunni Muslims. There is a small number of Shias and Baha’is, and fewer than 100 Jews. Egypt’s Christians, predominantly Coptic Orthodox, comprise some 10 to 15 percent of the population and thus constitute by far the largest non-Muslim minority in the Middle East. The Coptic Orthodox Church is an ancient community, dating from the first century of the church.

Due to widespread accusations that they are heretics, blasphemers, or apostates, Baha’is are probably the most repressed religious group in Egypt. The community originally consisted of people from Iran, but Egyptians have also converted, and Egypt’s Baha’i population now numbers several thousand. In the 1920s, Egypt’s highest ecclesiastical court declared the religion’s independence, saying, “The Baha’i Faith is a new religion, entirely independent, with beliefs, principles and laws of its own, which differ from, and are utterly in conflict with, the beliefs, principles, and laws of Islam. No Baha’i, therefore, can be regarded a Muslim or vice-versa. …”
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Law 263, passed in 1960, deprives Baha’is of legal recognition and also prohibits Baha’i institutions and community activities, while all Baha’i community properties, including cemeteries, were seized by the government under Nasser. On December 15, 2003, the state-funded Islamic Research Center (IRC) of Al-Azhar University issued a fatwa declaring Baha’is apostates and urging the state to “annihilate” the community. Most Baha’is are known to the security services, and many are harassed and subjected to surveillance. State security cracked down on them in 1965, 1967, 1970, 1972, 1985, and 2001, arresting several hundred people. In early 2001, the government arrested eighteen people in Sohag on suspicion of insulting a heavenly religion and violating the law abolishing Baha’i institutions. They were released in October of that year.
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In earlier years, Baha’is were allowed to list their religion on identity papers, but the Ministry of the Interior declared that only the three “heavenly” religions—Islam, Christianity, and Judaism—could be recorded on the new identity cards.
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Since Baha’is would not lie about their religion, they were forced to go without
such cards. One Baha’i, Diya Nur al-Din, had a handwritten birth certificate from 1982 stating his Baha’i faith. In 2001, his new (and compulsory) computerized birth certificate replaced this with the word “other.” Human Rights Watch reports:

In his case, because he has a Muslim name, CSD officers told him he had no practical choice but to identify as Muslim. Diya’s 23-year-old sister, Sama, has a dash in the religion entry on her birth certificate. Her 2001 computerized ID card, however, identifies her as Muslim. Their father, Nur al-Din Mustafa, has a birth certificate that says he is Baha’i and a paper ID card with a dash in the religion line. Their mother, Tahra, has a paper ID card that identifies her as Christian, in accordance with her family name, despite the fact that her birth certificate leaves her religion blank, indicating that she comes from a Baha’i family.
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Without identity cards, one cannot register children in school, open bank accounts, or establish a business. Law 143/1994 requires all citizens by age sixteen to obtain an identification card featuring a new national identification number. Those discovered without identity cards during random police inspections are detained until the card can be provided. This has forced many Baha’is to stay at home in fear of being arrested.

Baha’is proposed that the Interior Ministry write “other” in the religion box on the cards, but the Ministry refused and instead offered passports, which contain no religious identification. This led to speculation that the government wanted to make Baha’is emigrate to avoid ongoing insecurity. Baha’is then filed a lawsuit to revoke the Ministry’s decision and, on April 4, 2006, won its case. The following month, in preparation for an appeal, the Ministry consulted the IRC of Al-Azhar University, which issued a fatwa declaring the Baha’i faith a “heresy,” and referenced its 1985 opinion labeling them as “apostates” who supported Zionism and imperialism. On October 16, 2006, the pro-government newspaper
Roz Al-Youssef
, in addition to declaring Baha’is apostates, claimed that they threatened public order and advised that they be “watched carefully, isolated and monitored.”
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On December 16, 2006, the Supreme Administrative Court overturned the lower court ruling, arguing that the government could place restrictions “respecting public order and morals” and that listing the Baha’i faith in identity documents constituted a religious rite that violated public order, which in Egypt is based on sharia. It then attacked what it said were the heretical characteristics of the Baha’i faith.
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