Dear Editor,
President Mohammed Nasheed has asked about the position of the Shariah on freedom of religion. I do sincerely hope he will consider the opinions of many scholars but here is one perspective.
The Qur’an says:
[“Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects Taghut (evil) and believes in Allah hath grasped the most trust worthy hand-hold, that never breaks. And Allah heareth and knoweth all things. ” (Qur’an 2:256)]
Literalists, mainly the Hanbali school of thought, argue that the above verse was replaced and abrogated (naskh) by verses commanding the Muslims to force others to submit to Islam.
Contextualists argue that forcing others to convert referred only to those who were attacking Muslims and so it was necessary to bring them into the fold only for STRICTLY self defence purposes and to prevent them from tyrannizing, exploiting the Muslims as well as their own children whom the pagans were killing. For contextualists, freedom can only be overridden when it is in the interests of human security.In this sense to impose religious restrictions on one who sacrifices their children as part of their religion is justifiable. Such could be forced into Islam, for example. However, if one is not a threat, or is not killing their children, contextualists would argue, it is against the liberating essence of Islam to force conversion.
From this point of view, it is against Islam to restrict freedom of worship for either foreigners or for non-Maldivian Muslims (though constitutionally there is no such thing as non-Maldivian Muslim’s the reality is different.)
Prophet Muhammad (SAW) extended rights to religious minorities (JEWS and Christians) in the Charter of Madinah, giving the non-Muslims the right of choosing a legal system they wished their affairs be governed by, be it Islamic or Jewish law or pre-Islamic Arab tribal traditions.
Under the Sharia law as determied by the four commonly adknowledged ‘Sunni Madhab’s’ (schools of thought) non-Muslims must pay a tax called Jizya if they want to be protected by the Muslims.
Those who’ve analyzed the Qur’an, Sunnah and Islamic historical context have argued that Jizyah tax was only due because the non-Muslim generally did not participate in Jihad for defence of the Islamic State, and therefore were paying for services. In this light, if a Muslim state is not at war, a non-Muslim citizen should not have to pay Jizyah.
The ijma (consenus) of the traditional Madhab’s is that an unrepentant apostate should receive the death penalty. There are different points of view on what exactly constitutes apostasy and how long the Muslim should be given to return to Islam, but this was the generally understood law in Muslim societies, a perpetually unrepentant apostate was to be killed.
Contextualists argue that the death penalty was only applied by Qur’an and by Sunnah for apostasy to save life because, the pagan religion was very inhumane in killing children – in murder and the non-Muslims were at war with the Muslims. This meant that by definition an apostate was a murderer or wanted to kill the Muslims.
In this line of thinking, to kill or repress an apostate who is not a threat is a brutal violation of the liberty promoting essence of Islam.
Regards,
Abdul-Rahman
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