Limits On Freedom of Expression
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According to Graham Fuller, a long-time observer of Middle Eastern politics and supporter of allowing Islamists to participate in politics: "One of the most egregious and damaging roles played by some Islamists ... has been in ... ruthlessly attack and institut legal proceedings against any writings on Islam they disagree with."
Some of the victims of Islamist enforement of orthodoxy include Ahmad Kasravi, a former cleric and important intellectual figure of 1940s Iran who was assassinated in 1946 by the Fadayan-e Islam, an Islamic militant group, on the charge of takfir.
Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, "a 76-year-old practicing Muslim" and theologian was hanged in a public ceremony in Khartoum, January 18, 1985, "following a hasty, ill-prepared trial." Taha had preached that of the two kinds of verses in the Qur'an - those revealed in Mecca and those revealed in Medina - the Medina verses were intended only for Muhammad's own instruction and were not eternally valid principles of Islam as those revealed earlier in Mecca were.
Maybe the most famous alleged apostate attacked by Islamists has been Egyptian Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz. He has been harassed and almost killed by assailants, stabbed in the neck. Others include novelist Salahaddin Muhsin who
... was sentenced to three years hard labor for writings that `offended Islam`; feminist novelist Nawal al-Sa'dawi has been repeatedly tried in court for anti-Islamic writing and her husband ordered to divorce her as a Muslim apostate, although the charges were ultimately struck down; Islamist lawyers also charged Islamic and Arabic literature professor Nasr Abu Zayd with apostasy for his writings on the background of the Qur'an, and his wife was ordered to divorce him. ..."
Egyptian author Farag Foda was assassinated on June 8, 1992 by militants of the Gamaa Islamiya as an example to other anti-fundamentalist intellectuals.
While the perpetrators of the killing and physical intimidation have been Islamic extremists, the Islamists working within the system are not innocent. Author Gilles Kepel points out that in Egypt "Islamist moderates and the extremists complemented one another's actions." The more establishmentarian "moderates" declare a modernists or secularist an apostate; the extremists then carry out the death sentence against the alleged apostate. In the case of Foda's killing, establishmentarian Sheik Mohammed al-Ghazali ("one of the most revered sheiks in the Muslim world"), testified for the defense in the trial of Foda's killers. "He announced that anyone born Muslim who militated against the sharia (as Foda had done) was guilty of the crime of apostasy, for which the punishment was death. In the absence of an Islamic state to carry out this sentence, those who assumed that responsibility were not blameworthy."
Read more about this topic: Criticism Of Islamism
Famous quotes containing the words limits, freedom and/or expression:
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Parents do not give up their children to strangers lightly. They wait in uncertain anticipation for an expression of awareness and interest in their children that is as genuine as their own. They are subject to ambivalent feelings of trust and competitiveness toward a teacher their child loves and to feelings of resentment and anger when their child suffers at her hands. They place high hopes in their children and struggle with themselves to cope with their children’s failures.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)