A Ray of Hope

We conclude this update with a ray of hope. Firstly, it is rare and getting even rarer that Muslim-majority states, including declared Islamic Shari�a-based states, dare to openly implement the whole procedure of arresting a �blasphemer,� sentencing him to death and effectively executing him.

In Pakistan with its draconian anti-blasphemy law, many people (mostly from the Christian and Ahmadiya minorities) have been arrested on blasphemy charges, many of them have been sentenced to years in prison, some have been sentenced to death, some have been murdered in custody or at large, but in no case has the state dared fully and formally to implement the whole course of its legal provision of a death sentence. Thus, in 1995, two Christians were sentenced to death for blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammed: Salamat Masih, an illiterate 14-year-old, alleged to have written blasphemous words on the wall of a mosque, and his uncle, Rehmat Masih.[96] However, local and international support helped finance a High Court appeal and they were acquitted of the charge. The authorities kept an eye closed when the Masihs were smuggled out of Pakistan to find refuge in Germany,[97] relieved to be rid of a source embarrassment in its relations with what it perceives as �Christian� America.

Ayub Masih, the Christian who had been sentenced to death in 1998 on charges of propagating Salman Rushdie�s offending book, was still alive in February 2002 when he was allowed a retrial. This was not coincidentally at a time when Pakistan�s leader General Pervez Musharraf was critically dependent on American support and greatly embarrassed by regular attacks on Christian churches by Islamist militants eager to thwart his alliance with the United States. Ayub Masih was acquitted in August 2002 and immediately released from prison.[98]

Other Muslim countries likewise try to steer a middle course between Islamist demands for heavy penalties and a more progressive international image. In Egypt, as noted above, sentences demanded against and imposed upon religious offenders typically amount to a few years in prison, or to some personal harassment such as an enforced divorce. In Indonesia, Permadi Satrio Wiwoho, who had called Muhammad a �dictator,� was taken to court for �demeaning the Islamic religion� and sentenced to seven months� jail: unsecular and unpleasant, certainly, but not the end of the world either.[99]

Iranian government support for the Rushdie edict has been gradually declining and the trigger-happy days of executing dissidents at home and abroad seem to be over. In the last weeks of 1998 the writers Majid Sharif, Mohammad Moukhtari and Mohammad Ja�far Pouyandeh were killed, as were the elderly couple Dariush Forouhar and Parvaneh Eskandari. Instead of celebrating the death of these �apostates,� the government announced on 6 January 1999 that �rogue elements� in its own ranks, notably in the security forces, had been arrested for the killings.[100]

With its extreme dependence on foreign aid, Bangladesh is understandably concerned about not offending Western sensibilities too much., Its government did not insist on implementing the prison sentence pronounced by a court against feminist author Taslima Nasrin for her 1994 book Shame, much less the death sentence pronounced by individual Muftis. Instead it preferred to send her into exile and be rid of the whole controversy. Her latest book, Wild Wind, is the object of yet another ban by the Islamist-leaning government of Khaleda Zia, the reason given being that it �destroys the socio-political amity of the country� and �contains anti-Islamic statements.�[101] But book-banning is not the same thing as a death sentence or an assassination.

Non-governmental Islamist forces are also becoming more circumspect. In Great Britain, after thousands of Muslims openly shouted �We will kill Satan Rushdie,� the next death edict, against Pakistani-born Anwar Sheikh in 1995, was much more restrained.[102] Unlike the novelist Rushdie with his oblique and ironical challenge to Islam, Sheikh very formally renounced and criticized Islam in a bilingual English/Urdu quarterly, Liberty, and in a series of erudite books.[103] When news of his critique reached his homeland Pakistan, at least fourteen clerics there issued death sentences against him. A Pakistani daily reported:

All Pakistani clergy demand extradition of the accursed renegade Anwar Shaikh from Britain to hang him publicly. � renegade must be murdered�this is a fundamental rule of the Islamic Law�Anwar Shaikh must be called back, some lover of the Prophet is bound to kill him. � If he is not eliminated, more Rushdies will appear. He is an apostate for denying heaven, hell, revelation, Koran, Prophet and angels. The Muslims of the world are ready to behead the accursed renegade to defend the magnificence of their Prophet.[104]

But the Pakistani authorities never demanded Anwar Sheikh�s extradition and the powerful Pakistan-originated Islamist groups in Britain never seriously threatened the offending author. Britain-based muftis explained that Sheikh deserves the death sentence but that it should not be carried out except by a duly constituted authority in a proper Islamic state. Again, no attempt was made to abduct the author to such an Islamic state for standing trial.[105] Shaikh continued to live discreetly but without police protection in suburban Cardiff.

A pattern seems to be emerging in the Muslim world: after a number of sensational murders or death threats against �blasphemous� authors in the early 1990s, life for freethinkers has become slightly safer again, with an unmistakable downward trend in the murder and execution statistics. Could militant Islam have grown wary of the negative publicity that comes from threatening writers for their thoughts? If so, then the main reason would be the increased interconnectedness of the world, especially with satellite-based television and the internet.

Publicity can save lives. This was already evident in the Soviet Union: whereas unknown local activists for religious freedom or human rights were unceremoniously carted off to the Gulag camps, high-profile dissidents with fan clubs in the West were not physically eliminated, only thwarted in their careers. The same applies with Islamists and explains why in Egypt or Lebanon, where the Western presence is palpable through media, tourists and an American university, judges award (and even prosecutors demand) sentences which fall far short of the death sentence demanded by Islamic law for blasphemy and apostasy. With the world media reporting within hours on the fatwa issued against Taslima Nasrin, the government of Bangladesh simply couldn�t risk incurring the opprobrium of the world by leaving the author to her fate, let alone by executing the death sentence on its own authority.

Today, stepping out of their cultural isolation, even militant Muslims now have a strong feeling of being watched and evaluated by the rest of the world. Governments concerned about good trade relations with the West are highly sensitive about foreign opinion, but even radical movements are increasingly PR-conscious. To some extent, they feel forced to live up to their own rhetoric about how advanced and civilized and humane the Islamic religion really is.

One practical implication is that non-Muslim governments and intellectual circles should maintain or increase their involvement with the situation of intellectual freedom in the Muslim world. It does make a difference.

At the same time, Western sympathizers should see their role as auxiliary. Like the West itself in the past few centuries, the Muslim world is bringing forth its own circles of freethinkers who are presently groping around for ways of communicating in reasonable safety with their fellow born-Muslims. Arab, Iranian and Pakistani dissidents (as yet typically residing in Western countries) have set up websites where texts critical of Islam are made available, and where all the latest information about particular cases of persecution is centralized.[106] This way, the authors can spread their message and the interested Muslim-born seekers can read it without anyone much noticing, thus silently but irrevocably changing the opinion climate in ever wider enclaves of Muslim society. Voltaire is not dead, he�s only being discreet somewhere in the Orient.

Koenraad Elst is a Belgium-based writer on comparative religion, Indian history, and Hindu-Muslim relations.