If you’re so ignorant of Islam that you’re lecturing someone with the username Ibn Warraq about apostasy in Islam you really don’t know very much about the subject.
Iran is the exception.
I wouldn’t call Saudi Arabia or Sudan theocracies ( rule by religious officials ). Sudan is functionally a military kleptocracy, SA a royal one. Both use religion to prop up their regimes, but at the end of the day the jurists don’t call the shots, unlike in Iran. I suppose it could be argued that it is a distinction without much difference in practice as SA is actually more religiously repressive than theocratic Iran in some ways. But technically speaking they don’t qualify. Afghanistan under the Taliban would have been another theocracy ( or quasi-theocracy at least ).
In other news the myriad different uses of ‘Islamist’ in this thread is making me twitch. But that’s what I get for opening it in the first place, I guess ;).
I don’t need to know much about the subject. All I need to know is that abostasy is punishable.
Yes it is, because a law against apostasy is incompatiable with freedom of speech.
I know that people have been sentenced to death for it. I also know that none of those sentences have been carried out (judicially, anyway). The technicalities really do not matter.
While many people are aware that you know quite a bit about Islam, and the significance of your user name, he may not, and your user name alone isn’t necessarily sufficient to clue him in. You can have any user name the board PTB don’t object to. Do you assume I am knowledgeable about creatures that disappear leaving only a smile, just because of my user name?
That’s an appeal to authority, and not even a very good one.
You are correct.
However, I take Ibn Warraq’s post not as an appeal to authority, but as a warning to someone that they are messing with someone who can kick their ass on the subject.
I take your point, and FWIW, had his comments not been so bigoted I might not have made them, but Ibn Warraq is a pseudonym that has been used by Muslim apostates for centuries.
Anyone familiar enough with Islam to justify the rather extreme opinions he’s used would be familiar with it.
Technically, apostasy isn’t so much a freedom-of-speech issue as a freedom-of-religion issue: you may be mixing it up with blasphemy.
In theory, a society could have laws defending free speech but also prohibiting apostasy: that is, you’d be allowed to say anything you liked, including criticizing or insulting religion, but you would not be allowed to formally disaffiliate yourself from the religion that you officially belonged to.
So if an official religion in such a society were called, say, Linctusianism, members of it would be free to say “I hate Linctusianism, and its founder was a drip and a wheezy old hack!”* or any other anti-Linctusian insults that occurred to them. But they would not be allowed to classify themselves as anything other than Linctusians in the census forms, for example, and if they attempted to they would be punished.
In practice, of course, laws against apostasy and laws against blasphemy generally go hand-in-hand.
- Attempted username puns. No animus or offense against the individual poster identified as Simple Linctus is intended.
My point now is that you’re misreading my post. I specifically asked about the law on apostasy, not blasphemy.
My mistake in a posting upthread. 'Twas Iran, not Pakistan, that released a Christian pastor accused of apostasy.
Freedom of speech is not about being allowed to say words, it’s about being able to express yourself and your ideas without fearing censure for the same. By default anti-aposty/blasphemy/whatever laws prevent you from exchanging ideas freely.
You’re still not actually answering the questions put to you. You’re just dancing around them. In short: you’re displaying your ignorance of the subject at hand.
Interesting thread, but I have to say that I see a lot of deflection on the subject, and still no definitive answer.
It does not matter to the OP whether other religions are any better. As noted, the Bible as strictly converted to law would be pretty harsh, but there are certainly plenty of nations with majority Christian populations and/or official Christian religion (UK) which have freedom of speech.
Likewise, arguing over whether different flavors and degrees of freedom are better (criticizing government vs. religion) are off the mark.
I also think that bogging down over the difference between Islamic and Islamist is disingenuous. I think the OP is wondering if there are states which are explicitly and or predominantly Islamic which provide real protections in a practical sense for freedom of speech. I am pretty sure that freedom of speech is something we can all agree to on the 95% level (i.e., US has it even though there are restrictions like those on libel and slander). Agreeing on what is an Islamic/Islamist nation might be a bit tougher, but still, I think most will be fairly apparent- if someone wants to suggest one that has practical freedom of speech and maybe fits the bill for the Islam part, by all means suggest it and we can always debate it.
I realise that questions like this make the progressives/liberals/squishy types a bit uncomfortable (and believe me, I am in that category), but it is a reasonable question.
What are the total dissolved solids in the carbonated water I’m drinking at the moment, according to the label, at 180 degrees C?
If you don’t answer this question correctly in the next few hours, clearly you are dancing around it and displaying your ignorance of the subject at hand.
Do you honestly think this a compelling argument. The questions you’re being asked are directly relevant to the discussion. Your asinine counter-example isn’t.
Look, it’s rather obvious that you know very little about either Islam or the Middle East and your sources are pretty terrible but you’re passionate about this subject.
There are some excellent books out there that you can read which would help you out and they’re not written by apologists for radical Islam.
Would you like some recommendations?
It’s interesting that with all of this expertise at your disposal you have yet to provide an answer to the OP.
I don’t know much about Islamist’s society, but if the media is correct the only freedom they seem to have is what the government lets them say!
No, the media don’t say that either. Maybe just the few stories you see or read here or there, but there is nothing stopping you from educating yourself beyond that.
As you said, you don’t know much about it. That’s fine. Just avoid speaking from ignorance. The world is a complicated place.
Well, this is where it becomes important to clarify what we mean by “Islamic”, even at the risk of bogging down over fine distinctions.
As I noted in reply to Wesley Clark earlier, if “Islamic” means “having a majority-Muslim population”, then yes, there are significant legal protections on freedom of speech in some majority-Muslim (in fact, almost entirely Muslim) states such as Turkey (and as RNATB mentioned, Bangladesh). These protections aren’t as widespread as they are in, say, the US and some other western nations, but they’re comparable to many non-majority-Muslim countries.
But if by “Islamic” you mean “explicitly enshrining or invoking various provisions of Islamic law as the guiding principles of civil government”, the answer is different. Protection of freedom of speech is significantly weaker under declaredly Islamic-law-invoking governments.
This is the problem with the term “freedom of speech.” A society might have blasphemy laws, yet have completely open speech otherwise. Would that society not qualify as having freedom of speech because it’s not total freedom?