Islamic Apostacy
Reader comment on item: Blaming Islamic Apostasy Laws on Western Imperialism

Submitted by Stephen Berman (United States), Apr 10, 2006 at 13:22

Professor Pipes:

Have you considered that other religions also believe that the proper penalty for apostacy is death?

Perhaps the only difference in the Muslim world is the fact that the government still has the authority to enforce Islamic law. If the government had the authority to enforce Christian law, it would seem that the English would still be executing Catholics, the Spanish would still be executing Catholics who convert (or return) to Judaism or Protestantism.

Only several hundreds of years of civil war, executions, and unbearable repression changed what we do in the West. Indeed, until 1776, Virginia continued to administer public beatings for Baptists, just by way of example. It took the untiring work of Thomas Jefferson to convince people to stop this behavior (and John Adams failed to convince Massachusettes to discontinue religious coercion).

What happened in this West is not that the religions changed. Religions cannot really change very much. Rather, governments ceased to impose religious coercion. I suggest that the only way Muslims will come to treat this matter the same way that we do, is if they too experience the harsh consequences of centuries of religious wars, bloodshed, wholesale slaughter, as we have experienced in the West.

You raise the issue of Muslims trying to hide the fact that their law calls for death penalty for apostates. That is the kind of thing that most people would not want known about their religions, including Jews and Christians. All religions claim to be truth, and the law of excluded middle indicates that to each religion, other religions ought to be considered false. This is reality; it cannot be changed. Somehow we need to learn to get along despite our different ideologies. If Muslim nations cannot figure this out, there are natural consequences which are quite grave.

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Daniel Pipes replies:

Religions do change, or at least the understanding of them changes, as you yourself document. There is much in the Bible that parallels the Koran but is now defunct. Until those same parts become defunct in the Koran, we have a problem.