LET US PREVENT HARM IN ISLAM!: MURDER AND MISTREATMENT OF THOSE WHO HAVE LEFT THIS RELIGION

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The Quran clearly prescribes murder and the application of painful punishments for those who abandon Islam to convert to another religion or to become atheists or agnostics. This leads to the oppression of probably hundreds of millions of innocent people, both legally and socially:

1. LEGAL REPRESSION

In many Muslim-majority countries, renouncing Islam is considered a crime (of apostasy), punishable by:

• The death penalty, in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Mauritania, Somalia, Nigeria, Yemen, etc., according to the strictest interpretation of Sharia law.

• Flogging, in countries such as Sudan, Brunei, the Maldives, etc., applied in public to serve as a warning.

• Imprisonment in many countries, such as Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, or Malaysia, with sentences of up to 30 years.

• Loss of fundamental civil rights, such as the right to marry, inherit property, or even be legally recognized as citizens. Their marriages are annulled, and they are denied access to education, health services, and other public benefits, as well as the registration of births, marriages, and deaths. This occurs in countries such as Indonesia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, or Iraq, among many others.

• Deprivation of child custody in countries such as Malaysia, Qatar, Mauritania, or Nigeria, among many others. The justification is that a person who abandons Islam is unfit to raise a child within Islamic values.

• Theft of all their assets by the state, as in Libya and Pakistan.

Blasphemy laws, which criminalize criticism of Islam, are also frequently used against ex-Muslims, intensifying their persecution.

Read LET US LIVE WITHOUT HARM! Let us reinterpret anti-freedom of expression Muslim texts

Furthermore, in many Muslim-majority countries, converting a Muslim is also condemned, sometimes even with the death penalty.

2. SOCIAL DICTATORSHIP

The tyranny of these societies (mostly composed of traditionalist believers) toward those who have left Islam includes physical and psychological aggression by family members and communities, lynchings, discrimination, threats, etc. Social pressure is intense: individuals may be disowned by their families, lose their jobs, and be excluded from their social circles. Death threats and physical assaults are common, forcing many to hide their change of faith or flee the country.

Due to fear, the vast majority of those who have stopped believing in Islam remain silent and even pretend to be Muslim, attending the mosque, performing prayers, and practicing Ramadan. In fact, in many countries, failing to do the latter is criminalized with prison sentences and even corporal punishment such as flogging, with the police monitoring that all Muslims fast, at least in public.

In summary, the oppression of ex-Muslims is multifaceted and severe, profoundly affecting every aspect of their lives. The number of victims is very high. It is difficult to obtain exact figures, but in some Muslim-majority countries, non-believers may account for more than 20%.

For example, in a GAMAAN interview of 40,000 Iranians, no less than 47% stated they had moved from being religious to non-religious, and only 37% identified as Muslim. Read more on this topic in…

LIVING WITHOUT HARM: Let us not reject all Arabs or other Muslim-majority ethnicities

According to a 2017 Pew Research Center survey, 23% of Muslims raised in Islam in the United States had left the religion.

Considering there are more than 1.9 billion followers of Muhammad in the world, if only 5% of them (a conservative estimate) questioned this religion and stopped believing, it would mean the existence of 95 million ex-Muslims. And if the percentage were 15%, given the growing process of secularization in many of those countries, we find nearly 300 million victims oppressed by the Muslim majority, which is traditionalist.

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This repressive tyranny is based on the Quran:

Quran 4:89:

“They wish you would disbelieve as they disbelieved so you may be alike. So do not take from among them allies until they emigrate for the cause of Allah. But if they turn away, seize them and kill them wherever you find them and take of them neither ally nor helper.”

Quran 3:90-91:

“Indeed, those who disbelieve after their belief and then increase in disbelief – never will their repentance be accepted, and they are the ones astray. Indeed, those who disbelieve and die while they are disbelievers – never would the whole capacity of the earth in gold be accepted from one of them if he would [seek to] ransom himself with it. For them there will be a painful punishment, and they will have no helpers.”

Verses 4:137, 2:217, and 3:86-89 are similar, though with nuances.

On the other hand, in the Hadiths, which are narrations about the words and actions of Muhammad and constitute the second great pillar of traditional Islam after the Quran, apostasy is mentioned with some frequency and severity. Below are some of the most relevant texts on this subject:

Sahih al-Bukhari (6922):

The Prophet Muhammad said: “Whoever changes his religion, kill him.”

Sunan Abu Dawood (4351):

‘Ikrimah narrated that Ali burned some apostates alive. When Ibn Abbas heard of it, he said: “If it had been me, I would not have burned them, as the Prophet said: ‘Do not punish with the punishment of Allah (fire).’ I would have killed them according to the statement of the Prophet: ‘Whoever changes his religion, kill him.'”

Sahih Muslim (1676):

Relates that Ibn Mas’ud narrated that the Prophet Muhammad said: “The blood of a Muslim who testifies that there is no god but Allah and that I am His Messenger cannot be shed except in three cases: the married adulterer, a life for a life (in case of murder), and the one who abandons his religion and the community.”

Sahih Bukhari 9:83:17:

The Apostle of Allah said: “The blood of a Muslim who confesses that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that I am His Apostle, cannot be shed except in three cases: for murder, a married person who commits illegal sexual intercourse, and the one who turns from Islam (apostate) and leaves the Muslims.”

These Hadiths have been used to justify the death penalty for apostasy in various schools of Islamic jurisprudence.

LET US DEMAND AN END TO THIS TYRANNY NOW!

All of the above is in direct contradiction with Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which establishes the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.

Fortunately, there is a growing number of progressive scholars and reformist Muslims who argue that such punishments should not be applied in the contemporary context, advocating for freedom of religion and conscience. They maintain that the historical and socio-political context of the Quran and the Hadiths was very different and that the application of these punishments does not align with the universal principles of human rights and justice in Islam.

Let us help them so that more and more Muslims question the validity of the Hadiths and contextualize the verses of the Quran. Read more…

As nearly a quarter of the planet’s inhabitants are Muslim, achieving this goal will have a considerable impact on creating a better world.

What can you do for this?

1. Sign this campaign to ask all Muslim leaders for a reform of Islam so that it is 100% benign, tolerant, and free of cruelty.

2. Sign this campaign to ask all governments for the abolition of the crime of apostasy.

3. Share these signature campaigns and this article with as many people as possible. Read more…

4. Convince the Muslims you know of the desirability of a respectful, compromising, and liberal Islam.

Thank you for doing so,