Sharia doesn’t discuss execution for apostasy?

October 19, 2009 By
Fathima Rifqa

There’s something curious about the way the media have been handling the difficult and complicated story of Rifqa Bary. She’s the Ohio teenager (pictured here) who fled to Florida after she converted to Christianity over concerns her Muslim father might kill her. We last looked at this story when CNN inexplicably referred to the girl as “Muslim” even though the whole point of this saga is that she’s not.

More recently, the Religion News Service has an interesting story about the case. The lede places the court battle over the case as just the latest example of crazy custody battles taking place in Florida:

If you’re involved in a high-stakes custody fight, Florida, it seems, is the place to be.

Could Rifqa’s father in Ohio really kill her for leaving Islam to embrace Christianity? Has the 17-year-old read too many fundamentalist Christian Web sites? Or is it all just teen dramatics?

Those are all questions swirling around the 17-year-old Ohio girl who became a Christian several years ago and sought shelter with an Orlando pastor after she feared for her life because, as she says, her father is bound by his Islamic faith to kill her.

Now, much of the piece is informative and it’s a good introduction to the case if you’re not familiar with it. But notice the somewhat flippant way the teen’s concerns are handled? Is it all just fundamentalist Christian web sites? Is it teen dramatics? Could there be any reason — other than teen dramatics or “fundamentalist” Christian web sites (whatever those are) — for why she might have fled?

Now let’s look at how the parents’ case (family pictured below) is presented:

A Florida Department of Law Enforcement report found no evidence of any threat or abuse against Rifqa and said her allegations are “based on her belief or understanding of the Islamic faith and/or Islamic law and custom. (Rifqa) stated that she believes Islamic law dictates she must be put to death for her abandonment of the Islamic faith.”

Her father, Mohamed Bary, denied making any such threat, according to the report, but he told investigators when he confronted Rifqa about her conversion last June he lifted a laptop to throw it but reconsidered, thinking about how much money he had invested in it.

The case has put Muslim groups on the defensive. Islam condones no such killings, said Babak Darvish, executive director of the Columbus chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Darvish said the girl’s parents are distraught about her behavior. They brought the family to the United States from Sri Lanka when Rifqa was a child so that she could receive better treatment for an eye injury that eventually left her blind in one eye, he said.

So we’ve got teen dramatics and fundamentalist Christian web sites on the one hand and a Muslim denying that Islam condones killing for apostasy. Case closed? It is for this article. But is that all there is to the underlying issue?

Well, here’s a story from April of this year about Harvard’s Islamic chaplain Taha Abdul-Basser endorsing death as a punishment for apostasy. (Note the correction appended to that article where a Muslim student who thinks the chaplain should be removed asks that his name be removed from his quote “to avoid conflicts with Muslim religious authorities.”) And here is what Wikipedia says about the matter:

In Islamic law (sharia), the consensus view is that a male apostate must be put to death unless he suffers from a mental disorder or converted under duress, for example, due to an imminent danger of being killed. A female apostate must be either executed, according to Shafi’i, Maliki, and Hanbali schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), or imprisoned until she reverts to Islam as advocated by the Sunni Hanafi school and by Shi’a scholars.

A minority of medieval Islamic jurists . . . held that apostasy carries no legal punishment . . . these minority opinions have not found broad acceptance among the majority of Islamic scholars.

That article goes on to say that beheading is the preferred form of execution for convicted apostates, that the use of execution as punishment varies, and that there are a number of recent examples of killing for apostasy. (I should note that the article does seem to underplay Muslim opposition to capital punishment for apostasy.)

Unfortunately, precisely none of that information makes it into the story. I’m in no way saying that I think that Bary’s parents could kill her. I don’t know her and I don’t know her parents and, what’s more, I’m just as sympathetic to their plight as I am of hers. It’s a difficult and complicated situation about the religious rights of parents. But it’s not like the idea of capital punishment for apostasy from Islam is something Christians invented, much less “fundamentalist Christian” types.

Teen Convert

And should an employee of the Council for American Islamic Relations really be the go-to source for a quote on whether or not Islam condones execution for the crime of apostasy? Reporters really like to go to CAIR for quotes, which is somewhat surprising considering their controversial ties to Hamas (You can read more about that from when the group was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case regarding terrorist financing). I think a more impartial, more theological, less political Muslim source might be a better source. Or maybe we could get a discussion between Muslims from different perspectives about whether Muslim law would apply in this case and how it would.

Here’s another quibble, which I like to file under the “show, don’t tell” category:

In her few public appearances, Rifqa is at times emotional, impassioned, giddy and sometimes a little incoherent. In a YouTube video during which she shares her testimony, Rifqa calls her parents “radical, radical Muslims” and says, “they can’t know of my faith because if they do know the consequences are really harsh. Just the culture and the background that they come from is so hostile toward Christianity.”

She explained that a classmate introduced her to Christianity, and then grows emotional as she describes the moment she became a Christian, during an altar call at church.

“The Lord completely wraps me in his arms of love, and I break down on the floor and weep,” she said. “I felt nothing but love, nothing but this great radical love.”

Now, maybe this young woman is all of these somewhat pejorative adjectives. (Ever notice how infrequently we hear of men described as “giddy” or “incoherent”?) But are we supposed to get the “incoherent” part from these quotes? If so, I don’t get it. If not, the “incoherency” should be substantiated or eliminated from the copy.

Again, this is a complicated story with competing claims and a truly tough situation. Any parent can imagine the horror of a falling out of this nature with their child. But the other issue — the threat of death for apostasy — is legitimate enough that it should be treated more seriously and with more input from religious scholars.

Print Friendly

Filed Under: Creeping Fundamentalism, Evangelicals, Godbeat, Islam, Journalism, Marriage & family, People, Religion, Social Issues
  • Davis

    And should an employee of the Council for American Islamic Relations really be the go-to source for a quote on whether or not Islam condones execution for the crime of apostasy?

    They seem as reliable as a wikipedia entry, or the reliance on anti-Islam groups and activists to trash CAIR.

    I guess I read the CAIR guy as a spokesman for the family, given he’s also in Columbus. The story is full of dueling spokespersons, so the CAIR ED seems as viable to quote as a Kansas City evangelist.

  • http://mattspoon.org Matt

    I’m actually not sure that this is as much a “media fails to get religion” issue as it is a “media is not willing to criticize Islam” issue.

    It seems to me that, in general, when a story involving Islam shows up, the media, at the least, puts on the kid gloves. If there’s some conflict between Islam and Christianity, the coverage seems to always subtly suggest that Christianity is somehow at fault.

    Honestly, I don’t see how the reporters here can even suggest that execution is not acceptable among Muslims for apostasy, or that the girl is merely hysterical or deluded by those ubiquitous “fundamentalist Christians.”

    If nothing else, just consider the case we had a year or two ago in Afghanistan, where a former Muslim converted to Christianity, and was being tried in the courts and set for execution for apostasy. As I recall, the judge in that case was quoted as saying something along the lines of, “As Muslims, we are very tolerant; if he repents and returns to Islam, we will let him go.”

    What I’m curious about here is why the media handles Islam this way. Is it a reaction to the outpouring of anti-Islam sentiment in the wake of the 9/11 attacks? “White guilt”? Or is it, perhaps, that the press is actually scared of offending Muslims?

    Whatever it is, I really suspect that this is not, again, so much a “press doesn’t get religion” issue as it is “the press isn’t willing to present Islam in a negative light.”

  • Pingback: There’s something curious about the way the media have been handling the difficult and complicated story of Rifqa Bary. She’s the Ohio teenager who fled to Florida after she converted to Christianity over concerns her Muslim father might kill her. | eChur

  • http://mattspoon.org Matt

    Oh, I should probably note that I recall hearing a former-Muslim-turned-Evangelical-Christian speak once about his conversion. As I recall, his family was, also, from a Muslim country (I believe Iran), and I don’t think he once mentioned a concern about being put to death. The main thing he talked about was his parents’ opposition, and their having him meet with a Muslim cleric over a period of time, hoping the cleric could convince him to return to Islam. I think they eventually disowned him (similar to how some Jewish families disown a child who converts to Christianity), but never tried to kill him.

    So there *is* the likelihood that the family has no intention of killing the girl. I’d suspect that it’s very likely. However, it seems undeniable to me that execution, at least in Muslim countries, is an acceptable form of punishment for apostasy, and the media does the truth a disservice for implying that this isn’t so.

  • Jerry

    More input from religious scholars sounds like a good idea. But I was struck the past few days by this story Churches involved in torture, murder of thousands of African children denounced as witches http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-af-nigeria-child-witches,0,5276725.story

    His family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism. It spilled as he struggled, burning away his face and eyes. The emaciated boy barely had strength left to whisper the name of the church that had denounced him — Mount Zion Lighthouse.

    A month later, he died.

    Of course we all denounce what we consider to be a misreading of Christian scriptures. But, say, if a Hindu society was considering who is a legitimate Christian religious scholar to ask about such things, what reason would they have to necessarily pick Nigerian pastors over western theologians as reflections of what scripture really enjoins as proper behavior?

    Mollie, I also found that you really selectively quoted wikipedia to make your religious point about Islam. The same wikipedia article says:

    The Qur’an states that God (in Arabic, Allah) despises apostasy. See verses [Qur'an 3:72], [Qur'an 3:90],[Qur'an 16:106],[Qur'an 4:137] and [Qur'an 5:54] which deal with apostasy directly and which state that Allah will punish and reject apostates in the afterlife. Except 16:106-109, the verses that discuss apostasy all appear in surahs identified as Madinan and belong to the period when the Islamic state had been established.

    W. Heffening states that in Qur’an “the apostate is threatened with punishment in the next world only,” adding that Shafi’is interpret verse [Qur'an 2:217] as adducing the main evidence for the death penalty in the Qur’an. Wael Hallaq holds that “nothing in the law governing apostate and apostasy derives from the letter of the holy text.”[4]

    The dissenting Shia jurist Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, a significant Shi’a religious authority, states that the above verses do not prescribe an earthly penalty for apostasy.[9]

    I see no essential difference between Christians that put children to death for witchcraft and Muslims who put apostates to death. There is a very good reason why many believe that the devil quotes scripture for his own ends.

  • http://blog.echurchwebsites.org.uk/ Webmaster

    Excellent, balanced and insightful article and badly needed as it has been particularly difficult picking through this story over the last few weeks or so.

    Thank you.

  • Dan Crawford

    I am troubled by the willingness to believe the father’s assertion that he has no intention of hurting his daughter. Didn’t he admit he was going to throw a computer at her, but refrained because it would cost too much to replace?

  • Davis

    Is it a reaction to the outpouring of anti-Islam sentiment in the wake of the 9/11 attacks? “White guilt”? Or is it, perhaps, that the press is actually scared of offending Muslims?

    Maybe it’s because there isn’t a Mulsim Vatican that issues pronouncements and catechisms. If journalists expect there is going to be a single, Islamic take on something like apostasy, they are going to be sorely disappointed.

    So someone from CAIR can say Islam doesn’t mandate killing for conversion and they can be right. Someone else can say Islam mandates killing for conversion and they can be right. There are Christians in Africa who say gays should be killed, because that’s what Christianity mandates. They say the same thing about killing children who appear to be witches. Others disagree. But are the both right?

  • Davis

    I am troubled by the willingness to believe the father’s assertion that he has no intention of hurting his daughter. Didn’t he admit he was going to throw a computer at her, but refrained because it would cost too much to replace?

    On the other hand, if he’s so traditional he’d threaten to kill her, why did he allow he to be a cheerleader? No headscarf, no alteration for modesty. Yet, he’s going to threaten to kill her for converting, but is fine with how Western she is otherwise? That doesn’t make sense.

    No wonder journalists find this story so difficult to cover.

  • http://www.tmatt.net tmatt

    JERRY:

    I saw that AP story and am planning a post on it. It’s crucial to note what kind of churches are cited in those reports, which seem sound to me otherwise.

  • http://mattspoon.org Matt

    “Maybe it’s because there isn’t a Mulsim Vatican that issues pronouncements and catechisms. If journalists expect there is going to be a single, Islamic take on something like apostasy, they are going to be sorely disappointed.”

    Right, and there is no Christian Vatican, either; only a Roman Catholic one. And if we really want to be proper when speaking of Christians, we would speak of Baptists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Non-denominationals, Catholics, Orthodox, etc. You really can’t just say “Christian” except in the broadest and least meaningful of senses.

    It’s kinda similar with Islam. You’ve got various Muslim groups out there. One Muslim group may interpret the writings (the Qur’an is not the only writing that Islam holds sacred, IIRC) in one way, and another in, well, another way.

    This is why it seems ludicrous and dishonest to imply that Muslims don’t teach that an apostate should be executed, which is what this story does by their suggesting that the girl’s fears are due to being overly-influenced by “fundamentalist Christians.”

    I’m not saying that, if the family claims that’s not what they believe, or a representative for the family claims such or whatnot, they shouldn’t report that; they should. However, they shouldn’t simply dismiss the girl’s fears, as if they were irrational.

  • http://www.tmatt.net tmatt

    MATT:

    The key is that SOME Muslims would condemn her. SOME interpretations of Sharia would condemn her.

    The press has to stress this message that there is more than one Islam.

    The problem is that this conflicts with the whole “Islam is a religion of peace” template. Well, WHICH Islam is a religion of peace? There are Muslims who fit that descriptions and others who do not.

    There are Muslims who commit honor killings. There are many, many, many more who do not.

    But that does not mean that a reporter should be SILENT on the threat. This calls for, well, journalism on this topic.

  • Suzanne

    I’m reeling from the idea that we’re supposed to consider wikipedia an authoritative, quotable source on anything. That’s just bad journalism.

  • Mr Aukema

    As concerning the Vatican, whenever many in the media wish to discuss issues of Catholicism, they usually point to “media-darlings” like Fr. Reese of Georgetown or Richard McBrien who are no fans of what the Church actually teaches, rather than Archbishop Chaput, or Cardinal George, or Archbishop Dolan. They are probably afraid of the answer they might get.

  • Jerry

    Terry – your #10 post – I’ll not comment further on the story itself until your post, but the point I was trying to make is that from an outside observer point of view anyone can call themselves Christian or issue a fatwa. Even an entire society can endorse a particular perspective but that does not make it a necessary part of the scripture. That’s why it’s so critical, as Terry said, to have good reporting of the issue. Finding reporters who do that might not be as futile as Digoenes of Sinope’s quest for an honest man, but it’s a hard problem especially when the reporter is ignorant or just not a good practitioner of the profession.

  • Dave

    So the father picks up a laptop to lob at the daughter, but refrains at the thought of what he’s invested in the laptop? And the reporter doesn’t think to ask about how much the father has invested in his daughter?

  • http://www.mikehickerson.com Mike Hickerson

    Suzanne,
    On religious topics, I’ve generally found Wikipedia to be a very helpful source for introductory information. Because “anyone can edit” a Wikipedia article, the medium works best when you have a large group of highly invested editors from diverse points of view. If Catholics, Shi’ites, Sunnis, Baptists, atheists, etc. can come up with an entry on “Apostasy in Islam” that they all more or less agree on, that’s a pretty good start. The Wikipedia article further cites sources both Muslim and secular.

  • http://www.post-gazette.com Ann Rodgers

    First, no journalist should ever, every use Wikipedia as a source. It is full of misinformation. It can be useful for letting you know what the main arguments over something are, but apart from that, it’s very dangerous.
    I’m no expert on Islamic law, but my understanding is that it’s not at all codified as canon law is in the Catholic Church. It’s a series of traditions, and varies between the many different schools of Islamic thought and also from region to region. You may remember an infamous case about 10 years ago when a Muslim community in (I think) Nigeria was going to kill an alleged adultress by burying her up to her neck and then stoning her (if my recollection is somewhat off, I apologize). They cited Sharia law for this. However Muslim scholars elsewhere in the world said that Islam demanded no such thing, and that the practice in Nigeria was based on tribal tradition as interpreted through Islam.
    Islam is every bit as diverse as Christianity. I’ve known several converts to Christianity from Islam, and while no one ever said that it made their parents happy, none of them said it jeopardized their safety. I’m in no position to judge where this family stands in the vast swirl of Islam. Maybe the girl is right; or maybe she’s discovered that dramatic conversion stories get you a whole lot of attention in certain church circles. Anyone remember Mike Warnke, who built a career on being an ex-Satanist — but actually made the whole thing up?

  • Jerry

    For what it’s worth, there was a study comparing the errors in Wikipedia versus the Encyclopedia Britannica. Wikipedia compared very favorably. But I do agree it should not be used a primary source in news reports unless the references have been fact checked and validated.

  • Joanna Ionescu

    The principal point here is clear. Good journalism is not about interpretations or speculations nor about passing judgments. It seems to me that that’s the gist of this post also. That there are cases in which some Muslims did not kill converts it is true. But the opposite also happened as a matter of fact. The case was poorly reported. Moreover, for whatever reasons, it was done in rather tendentious ways. Neither do I find acceptable that reporters so ignorant in matters religious should undertake with such shallowness and even callousness reporting on this personal drama. In any event, irrespective of how authentic or inauthentic some Christians and some Muslims are or how diverse the various traditions, the two religions do not translate as equal in their theological stance towards that which is essential for personal development in communion with God and each other: forgiveness, reconciliation, love of enemy. And this is also a matter of fact, something informed journalists could approach with no fears of becoming guilty of biased reporting.

  • Mollie

    I don’t think Wikipedia should be used for much other than a general indication of where to look for more information (and I noted my own problem with their article in the post above).

    However, I was just using it to emphasize the point that the understanding that Islam condones capital punishment for apostasy is not something that is found solely on “fundamentalist Christian web sites,” contra the implication of the article under review.

  • John M

    Davis,

    One helpful way of looking at Muslims is recognizing a diversity of both practice and identity. The things you cite about a Muslim man allowing his daughter to be a cheerleader and not wear a veil are issues of practice, whereas her conversion to Christianity becomes an issue of identity. You will find that different Muslim individuals and groups fall in different places on this two-dimensional spectrum. Turks, for example, tend to be high identity and low practice. To be a Turk is to be Muslim, but that doesn’t mean they pray five times a day or do the hajj. Pashtuns tend to be high identity and high practice. Groups like Bengali Muslims and Punjabi Muslims tend as a group to be lower identity, since relatively large proportions of those ethnic groups do not practice Islam. Individuals and communities inside those groups may be high identity, but the idea of being both Punjabi and non-Muslim or Bengali and non-Muslim is comprehensible in ways that being a Pashtun or a Turk an non-Muslim is not. And it’s very, very, very common for individual people to be higher identity than they are practice, which appears to be the case here for what little I know about it. And yes, I’m overgeneralizing here.

    Terry,

    If I understand correctly, an honor killing is not the same thing as an apostasy killing. The two issues may overlap in the minds of some, but honor killings are centered around perceived sexual misbehavior (where “sexual” can be defined very, very broadly in this context), but an apostasy killing can only be done in the case of someone leaving Islam. Now, the honor-shame matrix (as contrasted with the Western right-wrong matrix, which everyone who covers Islam should understand) in most cases plays into an apostasy killing as well as an honor killing, but they are not the same thing.

    Anyway, I’m off the specific topic of the coverage of this story, but hopefully this is helpful to folks who think about how to cover Islam and the folks who practice it.

    -John

  • Pingback: Parental rights vs. religious freedom — Cranach: The Blog of Veith

  • Peggy

    I think one problem with the media is that they seem to have wholly bought into the idea that “Muslim” is a racial category. I believe they are encouraged by this by their Muslim contacts/advisors since it is an article of Muslim belief that every one is inherently Muslim at birth, that being Muslim is the same as other physical facts like skin color, that is is written into our identity and cannot be changed. To consciously decide to be something other than what you cannot help being is then an act of high betrayal or else an act of insanity.

    I noticed that in the story, the girl is simply assumed to be a Muslim because she was born into a Muslim family. They duly treat her conversion as some form of mental illness because to suggest otherwise is too problematic for the media’s multi-cultural narrative.

    In otherwords, a Christian who converts to Islam is granted an automatic authenticity because they are willingly identifying with a non-western culture. In turn, they lend an intellectual credibility to an oppressed and misunderstood culture.

    But a Muslim who converts to Christianity is one who sells out to the great oppressor of the world. In the media’s eyes, they stand as a repudiation to non-western values by suggesting that as they do that not all cultures are equal all the time for all people. They are an affront to the idea that everyone is perfectly happy and satisfied with their non-western identity. There can’t be even the hint of a suggestion that there is something lacking in Islam for some people because that would be, gasp, racist!

  • Jared Grant

    Sir, I would only hope you would understand that “giddyness” and “incoherency” when you are brought to your knees and “wrapped in Christ’s arms of love.” You make a very good point: she is young, and im sure she is very prone to impulsive action and impetuosity, but can we not further reiterate “is she not also human?” Given her circumstance, im sure her fears are valid, and she has every right to be scared. Frequency is not an issue, the fact that corporal punishment occurs at all is enough to make any human ‘a tad weary, hesitant,’ possibly even with an element of ‘giddyness and incoherency.’ Im quite sure age is not an issue, or even if it is, from a journalistic perspective, i dont believe you are making the best efforts to empathise with this “young” christian.

  • Paul of the Desert

    Rifqa only has to hold out until her eighteenth birthday. If the courts can stall this dibate that long, she will be safe.

    But the point is: if she is sent back to her home land, Shi Lanka, will she be killed by the radical, anti-apostacy Islamics of that Nation? The answer is; yes she will! While her father lovers her, he loves Islam and its radical interptations more. As long as Rifqa believes her life is in danger, the courts of Florida and Ohio have an obligation to protect her.

    The other question not addressed in the article is whether her parents are legally in this country. they came with teh intention of getting medical aid for Rifqa but stayed on. In which case, Rifqa can seek religeous assylum and not be returned to Shir Lanka while her parents could be deported.

    The final point, America is founded on the freedom of religion. Rifqa is free to believe as she chooses. Under law, her parents can not force her to reconvet to Islam.

  • Pingback: Sharia doesn’t discuss execution for apostasy? | JewPI