Articles 18-19

Muslim society has striven throughout to uphold the values inculcated by Islam in respect of the promotion and fostering of knowledge learning and science. Indeed, it early set up a brilliant record in that respect. The Prophet said: “Allah will make the path of paradise easy for him who follows a track in the pursuit of knowledge; angels spread their wings for the seeker after knowledge; the dwellers of the heaven and earth pray for a scholar; a man of learning sheds more light than a worshipper even as the moon outshines other planets; the divines are the heirs of the Prophets and he who inherits their knowledge finds himself rich in all that is good.”1

Among Muslims, knowledge has, fortunately, never been persecuted.

The same cannot be said of belief and doctrines. It is reassuring that the emphatic injunctions of the Quran on freedom of conscience were respected and obeyed so far as they affected non-Muslims. But within Muslim society, departure from whatever happened to be current as approved orthodox doctrine was suppressed with the utmost rigour.

Persecution often proceeded to extreme limits. When bigotry donned the garb of politics, freedom of thought could be indulged in only at the risk of martyrdom. Some of the great Imams of juriprudence had to endure imprisonment and flogging for their refusal to subscribe to propositions which seemed to them erroneous or futile.
On one matter of fundamental importance the doctrinal position became crystallized in a manner directly contradictory to the express and clear declarations of the Quran.

While it continued to be recognized that in the face of the emphatic directions of the Quran on freedom of conscience, no one could be forced or coerced to believe, the dictum gradually developed that apostacy must be treated as a capital offence and punished as such. It was not appreciated that this involved a complete negation of the freedom of conscience repeatedly proclaimed by the Quran.

The confusion arose in this manner. After the Prophet was forced to leave Mecca and migrated to Medina, where he was accepted as the chief executive by Muslim, non-Muslim and Jew alike, the Quraish of Mecca proclaimed a state of war between themselves and the Muslims which also involved the tribes in alliance with either side. This continued till the Truce of Hudaibiyyah brought about the cessation of hostilities. The Truce was broken by the Meccans in less than two years and hostilities were resumed on a much larger scale, followed rapidly by the fall of Mecca and by the Battle of Hunain, which broke the Arab tribal might and brought about the pacification of the greater part of the Peninsula.

On the death of the Prophet, several tribes which had submitted recently and reluctantly, raised the banner of revolt and advanced on Medina; and Abu Bakr, the First Khalifah, had to move against them.

In the meantime large-scale hostilities had developed between the Byzantine Empire in the north and the Muslims, and shortly after, in the time of ‘Umar, the Second Khalifah, Iran also took up arms against the Muslims. It is understandable that the emergence so close to their borders of a republic based on freedom, equality and human dignity, which was rapidly gaining strength and influence and whose supposedly subversive ideas were spreading like wildfire, was most obnoxious to these two mighty empires based on privilege, and that they became most anxious to put an end as soon as possible to a phenomenon which threatened their very existence.

Thus the Muslims were successively and continuously forced, first by the Meccans, then by the tribes in different parts of the Arabian Peninsula, and finally by the two mighty Empires of Byzantium and Iran, to submit to the arbitrament of the sword.

After the fall of Mecca and the Battle of Hunain a large number of desert tribes, finding that the tide had set strongly in favour of the Muslims, declared their submission and announced that they had accepted the Faith, though most of them had yet acquired little appreciation of the values of Islam and possessed small comprehension of faith and belief. Concerning these, the Quran spoke as follows: “The Arabs of the desert say: We believe. Say to them: You have not believed yet, but say rather: We have submitted, for true belief has not yet entered into your hearts. If you obey Allah and His Messenger, He will not detract anything from your good deeds. Surely, Allah is Most Forgiving, Merciful. The believers are only those who truly believe in Allah and His Messenger, and then doubt not, but strive with their possessions and their persons in the cause of Allah. It is they who are truthful.

“Say to them: Will you acquaint Allah with your faith, while Allah knows whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth, and Allah knows all things full well? They think they have done thee a favour by their adhering to Islam. Tell them: Deem not your accepting Islam a favour unto me. On the contrary, Allah has bestowed a favour upon you in that He has guided you to the Faith, if you are truthful. Verily, Allah knows the secrets of the heavens and the earth. Allah sees all that you do” (49:15-19).

In these conditions of stress and turmoil, there were cases of defection of groups or of individuals. When an individual or a group defected from the Muslim side and went over to the enemy, they denounced Islam. These were cases of treason as well as of apostacy. In truth no real change of religion was involved. These people’s declaration that they adhered to Islam was evidence of political submission rather than of faith on the basis of belief. When they changed sides they renounced political allegiance, became adherents of the enemy and joined its forces. They were described as apostates, a generic term which, in the conditions of those days, connoted the political crime of changing sides during the course of the war, made public and effective by a denunciation of Islam. In such cases, when those guilty became amenable to the jurisdiction of the Islamic State, they were liable to be punished for their treason; which offence, in the circumstances then prevailing, became synonymous with apostacy. Apostacy thus became a term interchangeable with treason. For instance, the tribes who marched against Medina after the death of the Prophet and against whom Abu Bakr had to take up arms, were ,in essence rebels, and yet they were also apostates and were so designated.

Apostacy having thus acquired a double connotation, the penalty for the political crime involved became attached, by an easy transition, to change of religion, even when, in later times, no question of treason to the State was involved. As one wrong often breeds another, the mishief, grave enough in itself as nullifying the provisions of the Quran on freedom of conscience, did not stop there. Orthodoxy, once entrenched in power, soon arrogated to itself the function of determining what a person should believe and what he should discard or denounce. The Prophet had said: “Honest and sincere differences of points of view among my people should be accounted a blessing.”2 Even these began to be treated as objectionable innovations, were denounced as heresies and when, in the view of the favoured divines, they touched on matters which had been pronounced by them as essentials of belief, were condemned as apostacy involving the extreme penalty.

As already observed, this juridiction did not extend to non-Muslims. They were completely free to believe as they chose.