On NRO Friday, Paul Marshall lamented the Obama administration’s fecklessness, in particular the president’s appalling silence in the face of the death sentence Said Musa may suffer for the crime of converting to Christianity. This is in Afghanistan, the nation for which our troops are fighting and dying — not to defeat our enemies, but to prop up the Islamic “democracy” we have spent a decade trying to forge at a cost of billions.
This shameful episode (and the certain recurrence of it) perfectly illustrates the folly of Islamic nation-building. The stubborn fact is that we have asked for just these sorts of atrocious outcomes. Ever since 2003, when the thrust of the War On Terror stopped being the defeat of America’s enemies and decisively shifted to nation-building, we have insisted — against history, law, language, and logic — that Islamic culture is perfectly compatible with and hospitable to Western-style democracy. It is not, it never has been, and it never will be.
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This is not the first time an apostate in the new American-made Afghanistan has confronted the very real possibility of being put to death by the state. In 2006, a Christian convert named Abdul Rahman was tried for apostasy. The episode prompted a groundswell of international criticism. In the end, Abdul Rahman was whisked out of the country before his execution could be carried out. A fig leaf was placed over the mess: The prospect of execution had been rendered unjust by the (perfectly sane) defendant’s purported mental illness — after all, who in his right mind would convert from Islam? His life was spared, but the Afghans never backed down from their insistence that a Muslim’s renunciation of Islam is a capital offense and that death is the mandated sentence.
They are right. Under the construction of sharia adopted by the Afghan constitution (namely Hanafi, one of Islam’s classical schools of jurisprudence), apostasy is the gravest offense a Muslim can commit. It is considered treason from the Muslim ummah. The penalty for that is death.
This is the dictate of Mohammed himself. One relevant hadith (from the authoritative Bukhari collection, No. 9.83.17) quotes the prophet as follows: “A Muslim . . . may not be killed except for three reasons: as punishment for murder, for adultery, or for apostasy.” It is true that the hadith says “may,” not “must,” and there is in fact some squabbling among sharia scholars about whether ostracism could be a sufficient sentence, at least if the apostasy is kept secret. Alas, the “may” hadith is not the prophet’s only directive on the matter. There is also No. 9.84.57: “Whoever changes his Islamic religion, then kill him.” That is fairly clear, wouldn’t you say? And as a result, mainstream Islamic scholarship holds that apostasy, certainly once it is publicly revealed, warrants the death penalty.
Having hailed the Afghan constitution as the start of a democratic tsunami, the startled Bush administration made all the predictable arguments against Abdul Rahman’s apostasy prosecution. Diplomats and nation-building enthusiasts pointed in panic at the vague, lofty language injected into the Afghan constitution to obscure Islamic law’s harsh reality — spoons full of sugar that had helped the sharia go down. The constitution assures religious freedom, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice maintained. It cites the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and even specifies that non-Muslims are free to perform their religious rites.
Read the fine print. It actually qualifies that all purported guarantees of personal and religious liberty are subject to Islamic law and Afghanistan’s commitment to being an Islamic state. We were supposed to celebrate this, just as the State Department did, because Islam is the “religion of peace” whose principles are just like ours — that’s why it was so ready for democracy.
It wasn’t so. Sharia is very different from Western law, and it couldn’t care less what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has to say on the matter of apostasy. Nor do the authoritative scholars at al-Azhar University in Cairo give a hoot that their straightforward interpretation of sharia’s apostasy principles upsets would-be Muslim reformers like Zuhdi Jasser. We may look at Dr. Jasser as a hero — I do — but at al-Azhar, the sharia scholars would point out that he is merely a doctor of medicine, not of Islamic jurisprudence.
The constitution that the State Department bragged about helping the new Afghan “democracy” draft established Islam as the state religion and installed sharia as a principal source of law. That constitution therefore fully supports the state killing of apostates. Case closed.
The purpose of real democracy, meaning Western republican democracy, is to promote individual liberty, the engine of human prosperity. No nation that establishes a state religion, installs its totalitarian legal code, and hence denies its citizens freedom of conscience, can ever be a democracy — no matter how many “free” elections it holds. Afghanistan is not a democracy. It is an Islamic sharia state.
This column makes some great points and hints at an alternative strategy for defeating America's enemies.
However, the column should have acknowledged that "Muslim democracy" represents a significant improvement over Muslim dictatorship. In a Muslim democracy the people select their political leadership through a competitive, multi-party electoral process.
It is true that this Muslim democracy fails to guarantee human rights for non-Muslims. Yet it is still a huge step forward for a Muslim society because it allows a significant amount of debate over public policy, including what it means to be Muslim. This is a very subversive debate.
For example, a Muslim democracy will inevitably debate the definition of "apostate". If someone represents himself to be a Muslim, yet drinks alcohol and listens to music written by Elton John (perhaps the world's most famous homosexual), is this person guilty of rejecting Islam? Or is does this person simply hold to a different interpretation of Islam?
Eventually, as debates like this take place, a "Muslim democracy" might eventually be able to liberalize itself. But there is no guarantee that the people of the Muslim world will allow the alcohol drinking, Elton John listening "Muslim" to define himself as a Muslim. They might decide that he or she is an apostate and put him or her to death.
If it wasn't for our military industrial complex being able to loot trillions from the US Treasury, we wouldn't be anywhere near any of those stone age redoubts of barbarism. And when the Islamic nation building gets to close, led by the 12th Iman (according to that other depraved rabid animal in charge of Iran), we could simply turn them into crispy bacon with the tap of a laptop keyboard. That we have wasted the lives of our precious kids for these two-faced savages, squandered a trillion dollars, and put American people into economic last place as our military special interests spew their brainwash lies, deceits, misdirection while continuing to push our kids into the carnage mulch of their war-profiteering machinery is a poignant illustration as to just WHO is the most savage nation on Earth. Islam has nothing on us. Good article, thanks. Nate
Andy McCarthy is the go-to guy for clear, concise analyses of all things Islam. NRO would not be the same without him. This piece is another perfect example.
Borrowing from today's NRO front page presidential review, Barack Obama as community organizer is hoping to "incrementally nudge" Islamists into "substantial change." Nudge and Change.
In a large sense, that is what we are consigned to as apparently the Bush administration recognized. After all, we don't destroy "eventual enemies" and the Islamic civilization (an umma comprised of limited ideological variants and of various factions and states through which to attack) is a present and future enemy through factions and nations in jihad for which other muslims are proscribed by sharia from interference. That civilization is an enemy as long as any significant number of its members take their definitions of peace and apostasy and the call to jihad seriously.
It's all in the nudging and changing. At this time, the west is leaning to self-lobotomization Carter/Obama style. No doubt in my mind that this would eventually nudge this civilizational battle to a conclusion and earn someone another Peace Prize. (/sarcasm unintentional)
Youseff Qaradawi,the fanatical,anti-Westerm,jihadist,anti-semitic/anti-Israel "religious capo, exiled by Egypt since 1979, has been allowed to return. Yesterday, he gave a speech to the welcoming , cheering million in Tahrir Square. Need I say more? Most of the MSM Ignores this
terrifying reality.The parallel with Iran 1979-80 is stunning.
I have read the koran twice, and have been studying islam since the mid-1980's so what is revealed in this article does not surprise me at all. the fact that this article is in NRO makes me very happy, slowly the word is getting out about this 'religion'.
Imagine if we did not have to rely on the middle-east, or any other part of the world for that matter, for our energy resources...
Would any of us care about the anti-representative government "herd animals" in the middle-east?...anywhere for that matter?
Let them kill, mame, and/or abuse their countrymen in the name of their God, their faith in Socialism or Communism. As long as they don't treat us and/or our friends of the free-CIVILIZED world as they would their own...screw em'...let them have at it!!!
We agonize over the worthiness and value of middle-east dictators??? For what??? The Suez Canal??? Our "interests"??? Said dictator has been one of our friends???
The problem is not them...the problem is our failure to eradicate our own lib-progressive-independent stupidity...that we kneel at the altar of environmentalism and the EPA et. al. is sheer cowardice...
Good grief...
More than any of your articles, this one has caused me to realize the (hopefully) unintended consequences of our foreign policy. Extremely well stated - thank you!
Nudge and Change all you want, Mr. President. But do so without a single American soldier nor a single penny of tax dollars. ENOUGH. What has all our aid and all our blood bought us but more of the same. To contine these wars and these aid programs is insane.
Had occasion to hear former Sec.Def Rumsfeld on "Monica Crowley". He and other Bush Administration officials have learned nothing.This course is the definition of insanity. Any GOP nominee had best understans these misadventures have to end.
This article is factual. I visited a mosque in Tempe, Arizona years ago and met a Muslim graduate student. I asked him if he had considered changing to another religion. This doctoral student responded that the government where that apostate lives should execute him if he leaves Islam. I was so startled that I turned my back on him and left immediately.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have never been about nation building or defeating every ragtag band of insurgents in detail. These wars are about geopolitics. In 10 years we have managed to establish hegemony over an important swath of the world, a place of important resources and ceaseless trouble.
Look at a map. We have established a military presence and infrastructure in two key pieces of real estate. We have Pakistan -- which accedes to our regional presence to a degree that it lets us mount aerial operations on it territory -- between friendly India and Afghanistan. With our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, we have Iran effectively surrounded; likewise Syria, between Iraq and Israel. Further, our presence in Iraq protects the northern flank of the Arabian peninsula. Our presence in Afghanistan checks future Russian influence to the south and strengthens our influence in the northern 'Stans.
Nation building is a tactic that has had mixed results; certainly not all that many hoped, but probably the cheapest way to maintain reasonable and humane control of the populations.
Very good article. Our money and arms gives us the moral right to at least identify the rules of Sharia which are barbaric, savage and uncivilized, and to publicly call them barbaric, savage and uncivilized. And politely request that they be fixed.
Merely pointing out differences between one "civilization" and another, and assuming these differences are fixed in stone forever is insufficient.
Islam in its founding years was the most flexible of religions. No more. Early Koranic rules at times were contradicted by later ones,which took precedence. Then the entire institution was fixed in cement and has remained frozen for a thousand years.
Perhaps Islamic theologians of standing and moral courage can emerge to re-establish this flexibility.
Frozen edifices are brittle and can be fractured. But not unless they are pushed.
This is indeed a powerful argument, of the sort that has made Mr. McCarthy one of my favorite pundits.
I agree that we're not likely, in the short or even middle term, to turn Afghanistan into a western-style democracy.
I'm similarly discomforted to read about official and Islamic-dictated injustices perpetrated in Saudi Arabia or other Muslim-majority countries that are nevertheless long-time American allies.
But for me, the question is: Are American interests better served if we continue to be engaged or if we instead withdraw? And with due respect, Mr. McCarthy hasn't made a persuasive case that any particular change from what we're doing now will produce a better result than the (admittedly limited) results we're now seeing.
Put another way: Mr. McCarthy here makes a powerful argument that we should change our expectations and perceptions. But I don't find a powerful argument that we should change what we're doing.
And what exactly are we doing-catering to the Karzai drug gang? Looking the other way at these various Islamic atrocities? Bargaining with the Taliban and Al Qeada? Having our troops put in silly positions of nation-building nonsense with primitive Muslim nutballs? If the troops were being used to hunt and kill OBL and his gang, fine. But as per McChrystal and Petraeus before him and current policy, we're are not doing that, and not for some time. I'm sorry, but you and too many on the right look at this idiocy and somehow justify this disgrace. There's nothing remotely conservative about this policy. It's in fact insane.
