The Penalties of Apostasy in Malaysia

Zusammenfassung

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[...] they are relegated to a new, inferior category of citizen, more invidious, the handful of front-line victims may feel, than the status deficit previously suffered by the non-Malays. [...] we might suggest that membership of the Malay community on these terms is today more akin to membership of an 'Army of God'.

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Auszug

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The Penalties of Apostasy in Malaysia

Editor's Note: On 21 November Malaysia 's National Fatwa Council issued a ruling commanding all the country 's Muslims to avoid practising yoga, as it was connected with Hinduism and could 'destroy the faith of a Muslim '. This article shows the complicated attitudes towards any form of 'apostasy ' in that country.

AT a period of both religious resurgence in the Muslim world and an assertive human rights consciousness in 'the West', the 'Islamophobia' of which Muslim spokesmen of any hue complain seems to be a label for both the fear and the criticism which are stimulated by violent jihad against the West and the coercive measures applied to less fanatical brethren within Muslim societies. These measures aim, not least, to secure conformity with rules of conduct and social organisation dating from the era of the Prophet, seventh century Arabia. Western human rights doctrine may have induced a greater interest in 'gender imbalance' (put bluntly, rules for control of women) than in other aspects of Islam's internal hegemony. But it should occasion no surprise that in anticipation of, or response to, resistance, attempts to abscond from that religious allegiance itself are also dealt with harshly, giving rise in turn to a new layer of external human rights concern and protest today: over the issue of 'right to life' or 'freedom to choose one's faith'. Spokesmen for Islam in Europe do not, of course, lack a capacity to invoke the protection of these same human rights principles for themselves, but upon examination it often turns out that what is being demanded is protection for the freedom to implement shariah: a somewhat ironical position, one may feel, given the intransigence of shariah precisely on the matter of renunciation of faith, with concomitant bans on Christian proselytization of Muslims in Muslim countries. The depth of the ideological divide will become especially manifest if we find that even Muslim regimes reputed to be 'moderate' and 'Western oriented' practise such denial of individual rights in the interest of the majority (or certainly of the regime itself), their interest being conceived as synonymous with total religious solidarity. Meanwhile, it will be manifestly frustrating for such a regime to discover that historic, non-religious inducements to solidarity, such as ethnicity, are becoming less effective in face of individual unwillingness to accept inherited religious identity as ineluctable - with the result that this traditionally complementary inducement to solidarity falls away, indeed may become a factor for positive alienation from it.

The clearest dictum of the Koran itself on the subject of apostasy is terse, but less so than many another Verse, and not without ominous implication for those who renounce the Shahada (declaration of faith).

Those who turn back as apostates after Guidance was clearly shown to them [in the Koran] - the Evil One has instigated them and buoyed them up with false hopes. [Surah 47, v. 25.]

Taking off from the absolute imperative of communal solidarity, expressed through a shared obeisance to Muhammad as 'the Messenger of God' in virtually equal measure with belief in God as such, the doctri...

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