Read Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide for Free Online Page B

for respect for Islam and they certainly deplore and oppose insults to God and to their religion. But, they argue carefully and strenuously that Islam does not require temporal punishments for blasphemy or apostasy.
    The late Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid’s “God Needs No Defense” serves as the book’s “foreword.” Wahid was the president of Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, and the head of Nahdatul Ulama, the world’s largest Muslim organization. His essay outlines the nature of religious belief itself and argues eloquently that God does not need to be defended from blasphemy. It maintains that blasphemy accusations stem from the politics of early Islam, when apostasy meant desertion from the caliph’s army. In today’s very different world, temporal punishments for blasphemy and apostasy threaten true faith itself, which always includes growing and seeking the truth.
    In chapter 14 , “Renewing Qur’anic Studies in the Contemporary World,” the late Professor Abu-Zayd, who was forced to flee Egypt because of his work, emphasizes that blasphemy and apostasy accusations are used “strategically” to prevent the reform of Muslim societies. His essay stresses the diversity in contemporary and historical Islam and outlines the varied modes of interpretation used by Muslims. In particular, while carefully never reducing Islam to history, it emphasizes that we need to understand its historical context: “how it developed in Arabia and other parts of the world.” Only in this way can we understand how Islam should be manifest in our own place and time.
    In chapter 15 , “Rethinking Classical Muslim Law of Apostasy and the Death Penalty,” Abdullah Saeed—some of whose writings have been banned in his nativeMaldives—argues that current human rights discourse is not Western but is shared by many Muslims. Like Abu-Zayd, he emphasizes the need to understand early Islam, especially the “post-prophetic period,” during which apostasy laws were shaped. In a setting of armed conflict, apostasy meant joining a non-Muslim enemy and so threatening the community of believers. Later, the Abbasids curtailed religious dispute lest it undermine their claims to legitimacy, and so apostasy was akin to treason. Since most Muslims do not now live in closed tribes, apostasy is no longer related to desertion or treason and should not be treated as if it were.
Blasphemy Threats: Interconnecting the West and the Muslim World
     
    In this survey, we seek to cover three things. First, we provide an overview of the actual practice and the consequent dire effects of current blasphemy and apostasy restrictions in some major contemporary Muslim countries. Second, we outline ongoing attempts over the last two decades within the UN system to conform international human rights standards to blasphemy and apostasy restrictions. Finally, we give an overview of the growth of increasing antiblasphemy demands in the West, by force of law and by extralegal threats and violence, imposed on those suspected of insulting Islam. We also examine the consequent chilling of debate and the self-imposed silence taking place within the broader community.
    However, important as these three elements of the survey are, even when considered discretely, it is essential to note that these are not three separate trends. They are deeply interwoven, and their significance is best revealed when their interconnections are seen. For this reason, our survey seeks to elucidate six crucial themes and arguments, each of which stems from reciprocal interaction between the Muslim world and the West.
    First, it will be shown that within the Muslim world itself, laws and violence against those accused of insulting Islam are not in the least limited to what are commonly regarded, at least in the West, as insults or mockery. These strictures include lethal persecution of those, such as Baha’is or Ahmadis, who are though to believe that there has been a prophet