Sunday, July 31, 2011

"Treason" in Islam

Addendum 2: You say that one might equate Apostasy or irtidad in Islam with treason. In my letter I said I disagreed. Further reading has allowed me to see what you meant.
So, in Islam, the concept of treason is not limited to political and military affairs, it also has a spiritual and cultural dimension to it. In other words one can commit treason by one’s thoughts and beliefs alone. Let me explain, in case you feel I have gone too far here. The religion and the state/constitution are one and the same. (You said in your letter you attribute the problems in Arab countries not to Islam but to a lack of Islam, by which I take it you mean that the countries are not under the pure sharia law of the Qur’an.) So, just as upholding and protecting the constitution of a country is a sign of patriotism, and undermining it is a form of treason - in the same way, open rejection of the fundamental beliefs of Islam by a Muslim is an act of treason.  It is the conflation of state and religion and, by extension, the public and private that concerns me. If, as I suspect, you believe the best and most perfect state to be one in which all legislation is decided by the moral precepts established by Islamic jurisprudence, then anyone who publicly disagrees is not exercising their right to free speech, but rather committing treason, and therefore subject to the punishment decided upon after consulting the Qur’an or ahadith. Is this a fair summary of your beliefs?

No comments:

Post a Comment