This article was downloaded by: [University of Auckland Library]On: 05 December 2014, At: 11:46Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Islam and Christian–Muslim RelationsPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cicm20

Contemporary Discussions on ReligiousMinorities in Muslim CountriesJØRGEN S. NIELSENPublished online: 14 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: JØRGEN S. NIELSEN (2003) Contemporary Discussions on Religious Minorities inMuslim Countries, Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, 14:3, 325-335

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09596410305269

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Vol. 14, No. 3, July 2003

Contemporary Discussions on Religious Minorities inMuslim Countries

JØRGEN S. NIELSEN1

ABSTRACT An Islamic debate on human rights has been developing actively over recentdecades. Within that debate there has been a more specific one on religious pluralism and therights of religious minorities in Muslim society and the Islamic state. This article briefly reviewsinitial responses to the United Nations Charter and then sets a historical context, before lookingin more detail at selected writers such as Muh�ammad Salım al-�Awwa, Rashid Al-Ghan-nouchi and Syed Z. Abedin, each coming at the subject from different perspectives.

Most public debate on Islam today, as it takes place outside the Muslim world proper,is locked into views of Islam in its traditional medieval forms, and in particular thosespecific aspects and forms of expression which have attracted the attention of centuriesof observation and scholarship. This is not the place to engage again in regretting theimpact of medieval European misunderstandings of Islam and the Muslim world,2 or inattacking ‘Orientalism’.3 It is enough to recognize that such traditional approaches havehad a substantial effect on public debate concerning the contemporary Muslim world.Indeed, the position of religious minorities in Islam is one of the topics that has beenespecially prone to being locked into a traditional view.

Much of the early European scholarship in the field of Islam relied heavily on theclassical Islamic legal textbooks.4 One major problem with this scholarship is that itassumed such law was also descriptive. While these assumptions about law had alsocharacterized a phase of European historiography, the historians were able to correcttheir assumptions by referring to the data in diplomatic and judicial archives. Scholarsof Islam and the Middle East were much slower to adopt these methods of theEuropean and North American historians5 for two main reasons: first, their traininglong remained isolated from the mainstream of history as a discipline, and second,because the Islamic and Middle Eastern archives, necessary for a study of how the lawwas implemented and how it impacted society, have only recently become accessible.6

Modern historiography is not the only discipline that has influenced Islamic scholar-ship; the questions and methods of the social sciences have also opened up new vistas.For example, the work of social anthropologists has exposed the distance between thenorms of the Sharı�a and the practice of local communities. In addition, legal anthro-pology and the recently popular field of the study of fatawa (legal opinions) have shownhow the local upholders of the Sharı�a, the Islamic judges (qad� ıs), often bridged the gapbetween the normative rules of the Sharı�a and the practical requirements of the localcommunities.7

Simplistic views of Islamic law, rooted in out-of-date scholarship, have been rein-forced by developments in the Muslim world itself. Islamist political movements havetended to attract most attention when they have expounded those traditional rules of

ISSN 0959-6410 print/ISSN 1469-9311 online/03/030325-11 2003 CSIC and CMCUDOI: 10.1080/0959641032000104673

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f A

uckl

and

Lib

rary

] at

11:

46 0

5 D

ecem

ber

2014

326 Jørgen S. Nielsen

Sharı�a such as the death penalty for apostasy and adultery, harsh punishments forcertain other crimes, and oppression of women and non-Muslims. The Taliban inAfghanistan are another obvious example. The West has gradually accepted such rulesand traditions as ‘typical’ of the Islamic world.

However, the ‘typical’ image outlined above is only partially accurate and ignores theextraordinarily complex predicament of the Islamic scholarly disciplines over the lastcentury or so. The rise of European economic and political power during the nine-teenth century had deep repercussions in the Muslim Middle East even before manyregions fell under direct colonial rule. The shift of educational models from that of themadrasa-university to that of Oxford, Cambridge and the Sorbonne accompanied therise of new forms of employment in civil and military state structures. New professionsand specialties associated with modernization and the gradual integration of local andregional economies into global networks attracted growing numbers of people andresources away from the systems and institutions of Islamic education. New specialistcolleges, military and civilian, became the ideal destinations for ambitious young men,and the American University of Beirut became the desired alternative to al-Azhar, the1000-year-old Islamic university in Cairo.

The result of these changes was the decimation of the Islamically literate elite(�ulama’), and a consequent decline in comprehension of the complexities ofthe Islamic legal tradition. At the same time, pressures for reform, especially in familylaw, came to be associated with pressures for Westernization, leading many Islamicscholars and activists to reject all reform as a surrender to the imperialists. What wasleft in the broader Muslim public opinion was a merely superficial comprehensionof the rules of the Sharı�a partnered by complete ignorance of its subtleties, its scopefor flexibility in implementation and the centrality of the rules of interpretation. Atthe same time, the available trained personnel with the full range of traditionalskills and knowledge were sharply reduced in number. So when, for example,President Jaafar al-Numeiri of Sudan made Islamic law the norm in his country,citizens had only a superficial knowledge of it and committed quite blatantmistakes.

Western perceptions of human rights in the Muslim world are influenced both bytraditional views of Islamic thinking and by the practice of states in the region—andoften by a confusion of the two. It is important to emphasize that very few Muslimcountries claim to have an Islamic constitution. Some of the Muslim countries that doclaim to have an Islamic constitution are Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, oneor two Gulf States and possibly Morocco. However, these countries lack a fullconsensus of Islamic opinion inside or outside their own countries in support of theirclaims to an Islamic constitution. Indeed, in many cases it might be said that there isa contradiction between the state and Islamic trends. Examples of this contradiction arefound in most of northern Africa, particularly Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Turkey andall the Muslim countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia.

The relationship between the governments mentioned above and the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights (the Declaration) has always been somewhat ambivalent.During the drafting stage of the Declaration, Charles Malik, a Lebanese Christian,proposed including in Article 18 the right to change one’s religion, traditionallyprohibited in Islam.8 Saudi Arabia abstained because of this article and because ofArticle 16’s provision for equal rights in marriage. The only other abstentions in thevote in December 1948 were the USSR and six other East European countries; Yemenwas absent. No country voted against the Declaration. Despite voting in favour, the

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f A

uckl

and

Lib

rary

] at

11:

46 0

5 D

ecem

ber

2014

Religious Minorities in Muslim Countries 327

representatives of Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan and Syria drew attention to thedifficulties that Articles 16 and 18 posed for Muslim countries.9

For the first three decades or so after the adoption of the Declaration, the consolida-tion of the newly independent Muslim nation states was a political priority. In thecontext of the Cold War, the contrast between state systems (often constructed byrevolutionary military regimes) and the Muslim character of the population was one ofpotential tension rather than one of common activity in the public space. It was notuntil the 1970s that this tension gained a higher profile in the process of social andeconomic change. The massive urbanization of Muslim countries everywhere, whichtook place in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, has often been the source of popular supportfor Islamic political movements.10 An important part of this modernization was themigration of Muslim people from the countryside to the city. Many of the children ofthese immigrants have gone into higher education and are forming a growing pro-fessional urban middle class. They and their parents came from a countryside that hadonly indirectly experienced the periods of secularization and nationalism which charac-terized the 1920s to 1960s and so had mostly preserved its traditional way of life andoutlook. For them their Islamic foundations were not open to question. Rather, thequestion was how they could function in an Islamically appropriate fashion. Theireducation and intellectual capabilities helped this new middle class to deal with thisquestion, and they have become participants in a new, more self-confident explorationof how Islam and its Sharı�a can make sense in the modern world. It should be notedthat in this exploration they share very directly with their co-believers in Europe andparts of North America, who are usually also the children of the same process ofmigration from the countryside to the city

Amidst this period of growth and urbanization, Islam was increasingly being chal-lenged on its attitude towards human rights. In response to these challenges Islamicorganizations felt obliged to create their own Islamic human rights documents in sucha way as to provide Islamic parallels to the United Nations (UN) Declaration onHuman Rights. These documents tend to have an apologetic tone, indicating that theconcept of human rights is now comfortably at home in an Islamic environment andthat human rights are rooted in qur’anic principles. Large parts of these texts arereasonably consonant with recognized principles laid down in international documentssuch as the UN Declaration on Human Rights and the European Convention onHuman Rights. In relation to the status of non-Muslims, the documents usually beginby citing the qur’anic injunction that ‘There is no compulsion in religion’ and thenproceed to guarantee to non-Muslims the right to freedom of belief and religiouspractice.11

Among the most widely circulated of such declarations is the so-called UniversalIslamic Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the International Islamic Councilin September 1981,12 which includes a freedom of religion provision in sections 10,12a and 13. However, the way in which the document has been presented andtranslated can only be termed devious. While the English text refers to rights ‘subjectto the law’, the Arabic text is explicit that the law being referred to is actually theSharı�a. The result is that a comparatively innocuous text in English becomes, in theArabic original, a minefield of ambiguity to anyone but a traditionally inclined Muslimreader.

As Ann Mayer has pointed out, section 12a is particularly problematic. In its Englishversion it confirms the right to expression of thought and belief ‘within the limitsprescribed by the Law’, but limited by the prohibition of spreading slander, falsehood

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f A

uckl

and

Lib

rary

] at

11:

46 0

5 D

ecem

ber

2014

328 Jørgen S. Nielsen

and defamation. The English text, however, does not include the prohibition of ‘leavingthe [Muslim] umma’, which is included in the Arabic text.13

Other documents of this nature have been more hesitant in speaking of the religiousrights of minorities. A draft Islamic constitution published in 1979 by a committee ofIslamic scholars linked to al-Azhar University in Cairo merely spoke of providing ‘forthe natural basic rights of religious and intellectual beliefs’ within ‘the limits of theIslamic Sharı�a’.14 The 1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, adopted bya foreign ministers meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, avoids thequestion of religious freedom and religious minorities altogether.15

Some Islamic scholars themselves have been aware of the problem of human rightsand have been looking for ways to establish a constructive relationship between theSharı�a and the world around them. It is probably no coincidence that the number ofthese scholars has grown quickly in the last couple of decades. The rise of Islamicpolitics, whether in its Iranian form or in the revived family of movements aroundthe Muslim brotherhood, has led to a political environment in many parts ofthe Muslim world in which participants have to take account of Islamic trends. Indeed,in some regions, such as Egypt, politics have become Islamic even when thestate structures have not. This has allowed Islamic thinkers, scholars and movementsa growing self-confidence allowing them to become more critical about their tradition.At the same time, this political revival has mobilized an increasing number of intellec-tuals, both within the religious disciplines and without, to participate in the Islamicdiscourse

With regard to non-Muslim minorities, there are some scholars and activists whoadvocate the traditional practice of tolerating ahl al-kitab, Christians and Jews, asprotected communities with specific rights, privileges and duties. These scholars viewsuch protection and toleration as a favour towards communities that are in essencesubjugated. Contemporary proponents of this tradition rightly point out that thistreatment was far better than that which religious minorities generally experienced inEurope until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Other scholars have reformulated these traditional concepts into the language ofmodern state structures, the most well-known being the Pakistani founder of theJama�at-i-Islami, Abu al-A�la Mawdudı (d. 1979). In his view, many of the specificrights and duties of non-Muslims are no different from those of Muslims, including adegree of participation in the political process. However, he insists that the Islamic stateis an ‘ideological state’, and that it is reasonable that only those who share that officialideology can fully participate in the state. Therefore, he concludes, public expressionsof minority religion must be restricted.16 Nevertheless, members of the religiousminorities, along with a growing number of Muslim intellectuals engaged in rethinkingthe issue, insist that this subjugation of religious minorities is not satisfactory in amodern society. It is the ideas of this group to which we now turn.

While this section will concentrate on authors who have published during the 1990s,it would be a mistake to think that they do not have important predecessors. The greatShaykhs of al-Azhar Islamic University in Cairo, Muhammad �Abduh (d. 1905) andMah�mud Shalt�ut� (d. 1963), were among the leading thinkers to highlight the conceptof citizenship in the Islamic discourse in a way that forced people to pay attention.17

This discussion of the concept of ‘citizen’ was shared with secular circles in anenvironment where the primary political questions were those of independence fromimperial rule and then, in some countries, from autocratic monarchies. In the terms ofthe Egyptian secularist Khalid Muh�ammad Khalid, writing in the last year of the

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f A

uckl

and

Lib

rary

] at

11:

46 0

5 D

ecem

ber

2014

Religious Minorities in Muslim Countries 329

Egyptian monarchy, the struggle was for the liberation of the citizen (muwat�in) from thestatus of subject (ri�aya).18

Three decades later, another Egyptian, this time associated with the moderate wingof the Muslim Brotherhood, Fahmı Huwaydı, echoed Khalid’s title in his book,Muwat�inun, la dhimmiyyun,19 this time juxtaposing the traditional status of protectedcommunity with the concept of citizenship. In the intervening period, of course, thecontext had seen some radical changes. The radical Arab nationalism of the 1950s and1960s had failed in some crucial areas, particularly in relation to Israel. Both Syria andIraq had suffered a series of military coups, while the leading figure President Gamal�Abd al-Nas�ir of Egypt had suffered a number of setbacks, above all the defeat of theJune 1967 war. In the aftermath of such disillusion, Islamic alternatives to the secularstate were beginning to acquire a new attractiveness. By the time Huwaydı’s bookappeared, the political initiative was very much in the Islamists’ court. The Islamicrevolution had occurred in Iran, and Islamist radicals had assassinated President Anwaral-Sadat, Islamist parties were beginning to make inroads in those states where electionstook place and armed Islamic militant groups were appearing in a number of differentcountries. Huwaydı’s book, written by someone better known as a journalist than ascholar (he was and is a leading columnist and deputy editor of Al-Ahram newspaper),was a sign that the internal Islamic debate was beginning to open up.

In the years that followed the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, several other promi-nent Egyptian intellectuals associated with the moderate tendencies within theMuslim Brotherhood contributed to the Islamic debate, mostly through discussionsof human rights and the political order. In 1989 Dr Muh�ammad Salım al-�Awwa,a British-trained lawyer practising in international civil law, published a discussionof the political ordering of the Islamic state.20 The basis of the state, he said, isthe collective citizenship established by the Prophet Muhammad in the so-calledConstitution of Medina, a citizenship founded on a common commitment to theProphet under God. This original community, the umma, included the Jewish tribes ofMedina. The classical and medieval scholars developed the jurisprudence of thiscommunity into the status of dhimma for all peoples of the book by analogy with theJews of Medina.21

Al-�Awwa revisits the general question of relations between Muslims and non-Mus-lims on the basis of Qur’an and Sunna (the precedent set by the Prophet’s deeds andpronouncements preserved in the H� adıth). The general principle espoused is to deal ina kindly and just manner with those, regardless of religion, who reciprocate suchtreatment.22 Verses in the Qur’an that detract from or contradict this principle, such asthose which call for a jihad against non-believers or for them to be oppressed, only applyin specific circumstances. Events in the life of the Prophet are cited in support of thisprinciple, and al-�Awwa concludes that Muslims are obliged to use their intellect andreasoning (ijtihad) to ignore any rulings in the classical Sharı�a which contradict it.23

Applying the argument to the present day, he asserts that the modern state representsa new kind of Islamic sovereignty to which much of traditional law cannot apply.Reasoning based on first principles (ijtihad) must be used to deduce a new system. Themodern Muslim state is the result of a common struggle for independence andnation-building in which the Muslim majority and the non-Muslim minority haveshared. In this way it differs sharply from the early Muslim state that was based onconquest. In this situation it is the duty of the Muslim majority to concentrate onapplying the principles established by God and the Prophet rather than stubbornlyinsisting on applying outdated and inappropriate rules. The discourse has changed

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f A

uckl

and

Lib

rary

] at

11:

46 0

5 D

ecem

ber

2014

330 Jørgen S. Nielsen

from one of contract (�aqd) to one of constitution (dust�ur) and from dhimma tocitizenship (muwat�ana).24

An older but close colleague of al-�Awwa, Ah�mad Kamal Abu al-Magd, was movedby the growing tension between the Egyptian regime and Islamic political extremism toissue a declaration of principles in 1991.25 The following year a second printingincluded a foreword responding to comments to the first printing.26 One particularpoint to which he felt called to respond was the fear expressed by Christian commen-tators that his insistence on majority rule would marginalize the Christians, given theoverwhelming Muslim majority in the population of Egypt.27 His first point, in re-sponse, is that the dhimma was an historical expression of rights and duties guaranteedin the founding documents of Islam, namely Qur’an and Sunna, and that the condi-tions originally necessary for the institution of dhimma are no longer present. Hereaffirms his belief expressed in the original declaration that it is possible to write amodern constitution which gives full religious freedom and civil rights to all, Muslim ornot. Therefore, according to Abu al-Magd, the rights of non-Muslims in a modernIslamic state would be guaranteed in constitutional texts that have the highest legalstanding and would be fully in consonance with the Sharı�a.

The concept of majority rule is, of course, one that arises out of the Westerndemocratic experience. Abu al-Magd posits that the fears that Christians have ex-pressed are based on an assumption that religion is the primary line of division withinsociety, a fear that has come about because of the hard-line Islamic movements thatseek to impose their fossilized concept of Sharı�a. A constitution that is consistent withthis position would guarantee the equal rights of all citizens and should thus alleviatethe understandable fears of non-Muslims.

A few years later, another Egyptian, Muh�ammad �Imara, rather closer to the centreof the Muslim Brotherhood than the two previous writers, asked whether Islam was thesolution. This question echoed the slogan of the Islamic radicals: ‘Islam is the sol-ution’.28 �Imara also refers to the ‘constitution’ of Medina, which, within the sharedcommunity/umma, has space for religious pluralism.29 Communities and states arefounded on a shared belonging. In the case of the Islamic state, the priority of thisbelonging is Islam, within which there is no problem about a plurality of lesserbelongings, including family, tribe, ethnic group, locality, etc.30 This belonging, says�Imara, includes non-Muslims in the Muslim world. The difference between them isthat while for the Muslims the belonging includes ‘creed, Sharı�a, values, civilization,nationality, country, culture, history, and heritage’, the belonging for the non-Muslimdoes not include a shared creed or Sharı�a; they have their own.31 Islam, he says,represents their shared belonging and brings together the peoples and nations of theumma with their differing beliefs and forms of worship. In fact, the Constitution ofMedina distinguishes between umma as a religious community and umma as a politicalcommunity, citing the status of Jews as an analogy. In a direct comparison withChristians and Christianity, he asserts that the Islamicness of a Muslim majority stateis an essential requirement in a way that the ‘Christianness’ of a Christian majority stateis not. The implementation of Sharı�a does not detract from the Christianness ofChristian minorities, but its absence would fatally flaw Islam.32

Perhaps one of the most influential Arab Islamic political writers outside Egyptduring the 1980s was Rashıd al-Ghannushı, the now-exiled leader of the Islamicopposition in Tunisia. In a series of sermons delivered in 1984 at the Burj al-Rumımosque in Tunis, he outlined his thoughts on citizenship and the rights of non-Muslimsin Muslim society.33 He bases his arguments on a few key qur’anic verses, the most

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f A

uckl

and

Lib

rary

] at

11:

46 0

5 D

ecem

ber

2014

Religious Minorities in Muslim Countries 331

basic of which is Sura 16�90: ‘God commands justice, the doing of good, and liberalityto kith and kin, and He forbids all shameful deeds and injustice and rebellion’. Quotingthe medieval commentator al-Razı, Ghannushı says that all the rest of the Qur’an is acommentary and explanation (tafsır) of this verse.34 The first four of the sermons dealwith his understanding of justice (�adl). On this foundation he then enters into adetailed discussion of the rights of non-Muslims, where the key qur’anic verses are49�13 (‘O people, We created you male and female, and made you peoples and tribes,that you might know each other’) and 2�256 (‘There is no compulsion in religion: truthstands out clearly from error’). In the face of much traditional commentary, Ghannushıemphasizes that this last verse appeared towards the very end of the period of revelationduring the lifetime of the Prophet, and must therefore be regarded as a generalinjunction taking precedence over the number of more inimical statements that relatedonly to specific events and circumstances.35 On this basis, Ghannushı joins the previousauthors in relegating the status of dhimma to a past history that is no longer relevant,36

before proceeding to deal with the various practical implications. There is broadagreement with the other authors that non-Muslims have equal political and civil rights,including full rights of employment, even within the government, except in posts withreligious content. On the issue of the jizya (a poll tax incumbent on non-Muslimsaccording to classical rulings), Ghannushı takes the view that the qur’anic statementthat it should be collected ‘with submission’ (9�29) is linked to one particular event.The crucial element is that it is paid in lieu of military service, and, as the modern stateis one of shared citizenship, it is more appropriate for all to share that duty in whichcase the requirement to pay the jizya falls away.37

Professor Syed Z. Abedin took a different approach to dealing with the contemporarychallenge to the traditional Islamic views. Trained in social science and of Indian origin,Professor Abedin was the founder of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs in Jedda,Saudi Arabia, an institution that had the quiet but active support of the then GeneralSecretary of the Muslim World League, Dr �Umar �Abdallah Nas�ıf.38 In an articlepublished just a decade ago, Professor Abedin places the qur’anic concept of ‘thepeople of the book’ (i.e. Christians and Jews) into the exegetical context of what heidentifies as a qur’anic distinction between religion as dın and as shir�a.39 The formerterm, often translated as ‘faith’ or ‘religion’, represents the eternal divine absolutes andtruths that are revealed at various times and various places into particular contexts.There they acquire the trappings of the limitations of the created, finding expression inthe circumstances of time and place, ‘hence multiple ways of life … i.e. religious andcultural plurality among mankind’.40 Shir�a is then the term which applies to such waysof life. Islamic scholars have also dealt with apostasy

One topic that most such intellectuals tend to avoid is the sensitive matter ofconversion away from Islam—apostasy (ridda)—whose traditional punishment accord-ing to the vast majority of the texts is death. However, there are differing views on thistopic. An increasingly common argument is that the traditional judgment was deter-mined by the conditions in early and classical Islam. Reading the Qur’an and Sunnaallows for an understanding of ridda that is essentially akin to the concept of treason.In modern society and state, apostasy understood simply as a turning away of faith fromIslam has become an issue separate from treason. This was reflected in the conclusionsof a 1976 meeting of Christian and Muslim theologians discussing mission and da�wa(the Muslim equivalent to Christian mission) which accepted the legitimacy of the‘right to convince and to be convinced’.41 While not widely referred to, the significanceof this statement lies in the identity of some of those Muslims who participated and

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f A

uckl

and

Lib

rary

] at

11:

46 0

5 D

ecem

ber

2014

332 Jørgen S. Nielsen

agreed to the text, most notably Professor Khurshid Ahmad, a leading member of theJama�at-i-Islami of Pakistan and later to be its deputy leader. More recently it has beenexpounded in strong and explicit terms from an unexpected quarter, namely Dr Hassanal-Turabi of Sudan, in an interview with Al-Mustakillah newspaper in which he opposesAyatullah al-Khumayni’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie:42

If Almighty Allah has granted us the merit of freedom, he who wants to believeis allowed that right and so too the one who wants to disbelieve. If He haschosen to distinguish us from other creatures through His gift of freedom,instead of creating us believers by necessity like stones, mountains and theearth … then the exercise of that freedom will become a matter of course—aself-evident truth confirmed by the Qur’an as in, ‘No-one is compelled tobelieve’. (2�256)

One question that cannot be avoided in relation to such trends among Islamicscholars and thinkers is the degree of relevance they have to the practical and legalsituation in Muslim countries. This is not a matter that has only has regard to the statusof non-Muslims. As Ann Mayer has pointed out, bans on apostasy are more likely tobe used against fellow Muslims than against those who convert to another religion:‘[P]rofessing Muslims may be prosecuted as heretics or blasphemers for what is actuallypolitical or theological dissent or may be arbitrarily declared apostates and executed.’43

The experience of the Pakistani law on blasphemy supports this analysis, as does therenowned case of the Egyptian scholar Nas�r H� amid Abu Zayd, whose marriage a Cairocourt dissolved on the grounds that he was allegedly an apostate.44

The answer to this question can only be given with reference to individual countriesand will usually depend on the local political situation as much as on anything else. Thedegree to which the regime is under pressure from Islamist groups, as well as thebalance of power between different Islamist trends, has a major part to play indetermining the effects of bans on apostasy.

A longer-term factor is the nature of the Islamic instruction which is provided inschools and the nature of training in Islamic religious scholarship offered in the Islamicfaculties of the universities around the region, the latter usually training the teacherswho provide the former. While much of the university training remains traditional,there are signs of change. Nevertheless this has to be the subject of a separate study.

Discussion of the issues outlined above has not remained isolated in little groups ofenthusiasts. Most recently it has found unusually strong expression in the form of an‘Arab Muslim–Christian covenant’ entitled Dialogue and Coexistence. The text of thisdocument, nearly three years in preparation, was finalized at a large, highly publicizedmeeting in Cairo in December 2001. Participants included scholars, writers andreligious functionaries covering a wide, ecumenical spectrum of both Christians andMuslims from the Arab world. Press and political response to the document rangedfrom the positive to the enthusiastic. I can think of no better way to end this article thanby including a few key excerpts from the document:45

5. The Arab Working Group on Dialogue observes that securing coexistenceis a necessity informed by a single set of national and social concerns andobjectives, one historical and cultural context, and a common destiny. Theseare core issues that bring everyone together; obligations and rights and theirconsequences do not involve just one party. Religious differences do notcancel out the fact of belonging all together to the Arab Islamic culture, inwhose making Christians and Muslims participated side by side.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f A

uckl

and

Lib

rary

] at

11:

46 0

5 D

ecem

ber

2014

Religious Minorities in Muslim Countries 333

6. The Working Group sees the need to strengthen national unity in the faceof external interference and efforts to assert domination over the Arab world.While external interference in internal unrest sometimes taking on religiouscoloration is a fact, it is a mistake to make light of the internal factors andcircumstances which lend themselves to exploitation by foreign forces for theirown ends. For this reason, addressing and solving internal problems throughdialogue and cooperation between compatriots, both Muslims and Christians,is the precondition for frustrating foreign interference which only aggravatesthe situation, sows suspicions and breeds mutual fear. If making light of theeffect which internal problems have in damaging national unity, so too makingtoo much of them can provoke similar damage. Among Muslims and Chris-tians, citizens of one nation, it can stimulate a generalized atmosphere ofpanic, fear and self-isolation.

11. The lack of respect for cultural and religious distinctiveness and theunsatisfactory management of diversity in Arab societies has led to a relativerestriction of the scope for intermingling, uniting, meeting, interacting andcooperating. This applies to residential districts, to educational institutions(especially private ones), to professional, cultural and political institutions,and to clubs. The impact of this is to weaken the institutions of civil societywhich ought to be a uniting force for the national body politic. To resolve this,the dialogue propounded by the Working Group strives for a concept of fullcitizenship and emancipation of participation in public life from the con-fessional shackles which have shaken national unity and opened the doors forexternal interference and hindered democratic development.

NOTES

1. The initial research for this paper was conducted during an extended visit to Lebanon and Jordanin the summer of 1995, funded in part by the British Academy. It was first published in theBrigham Young University Law Review, 2002�1, 353–69 and has been reprinted here withpermission.

2. These are surveyed in their complexity by scholarly works such as N. Daniel, Islam and the West:the making of an image (Oxford, Oneworld, 1993); M. Rodinson, Europe and the Mystique of Islam(London, I. B. Tauris, 1988); A. Hourani, Islam in European Thought (Cambridge, CambridgeUniversity Press, 1991), 7–60.

3. See E. Said, Orientalism (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978). For a sympathetically criticalresponse, see B. S. Sayyid, A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the emergence of Islamism (London,Zed Books, 1997), Ch. 2.

4. One of the best single accounts to come out of this tradition is that of Antoine Fattal, Le statut legaldes non-musulmans en pays d’Islam (Beirut, Imprimerie Catholique, 1958), who presents a system-atic analysis of the position of the minorities protected by the contract of dhimma, the outlines ofwhich were established already in the time of the Prophet Muhammad and which were elaboratedover subsequent generations until the subject was incorporated into the classical normativetextbooks.

5. Indeed, this is one of Edward Said’s complaints against the orientalists.6. A vast amount of literature based on court archives and registries has appeared in recent years. An

already classical work of this nature based on even older archival materials, namely S. D. Goitein,A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish community of the Arab world as portrayed in the documents of theCairo Geniza, Vol. 5 (Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1967), was a significant factorin the disillusion with legal texts as a reliable source for social realities.

7. A good example of this is offered in L. Rosen, The Anthropology of Justice: law as culture in Islamicsociety (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989). Cf. Kemal Cicek, ‘Living together:

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f A

uckl

and

Lib

rary

] at

11:

46 0

5 D

ecem

ber

2014

334 Jørgen S. Nielsen

Muslim–Christian relations in eighteenth-century Cyprus as reflected by the Sharı�a court records,Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 4�1 (1993) 36–64.

8. A. Verdoodt, Naissance et Signification de la Declaration Universelle des Droits de L’Homme (Leuven/Paris, Nauwelaerts, 1964), 177.

9. Ibid. 181–2.10. See, e.g. the later chapters in Peter Mansfield, A History of the Middle East (Harmondsworth,

Penguin, 1992), and Nazih Ayyubi, Political Islam: religion and politics in the Arab world (London,Routledge, 1991).

11. A comprehensive discussion of the attitude of the Qur’an specifically to Christians and how therelevant texts have been interpreted over the centuries may be found in Jane D. McAuliffe,Qur’anic Christians: an analysis of classical and modern exegesis (Cambridge, Cambridge UniversityPress, 1991).

12. Both the English and the Arabic versions were published in pamphlet form by the Council’s officein London. An Arabic version can be found in Ghanim Jawad (Ed.), Al-h�aqq qadım: watha’iq h�uquqal-insan fı al-thaqafa al-islamiyya (Cairo, Centre for the Study of Human Rights, 2000), 143–56.

13. Ann E. Mayer, Islam and Human Rights: tradition and politics, 3rd edn (Boulder CO, WestviewPress, 1998), 160–1.

14. Ibid., 162.15. For the Arabic text, see Jawad, Al-h�aqq qadım, 160–5. For an English translation, see Mayer, Islam

and Human Rights, 203–8.16. A. A. Maududi, Rights of Non-Muslims in Islamic State (Lahore, Islamic Publications, 1961).17. See W. C. Smith, Islam in Modern History (New York, Mentor, 1957), Ch. 3; G. Kramer, Gottes

Staat als Republik (Baden-Baden, Nomos, 1999), Ch. 1, 2, 6.18. Khalid M. Khalid, Muwat�inun..la ri�aya, 6th edn (Cairo, Mu’assasat al-Khanji, 1958). The

publication of the 1958 edition was no coincidence: this was the year the Iraqi monarchy wasoverthrown and widespread protests took place against the US-led Baghdad Pact, so the book wasstill very relevant.

19. Fahmi Howeidi, Muwat�inun, la dhimmiyyun (Cairo, Dar al-Shuruq, 1985).20. Muhammad S. al-�Awwa, Fı al-niz� am al-siyası li-al-dawla al-islamiyya (Cairo, Dar al-Shuruq,

1989).21. Ibid., 55–7. A translation of the text of the ‘Constitution’ can be found in Ali Bulac, ‘The Medina

Document’, in: C. Kurzman, Liberal Islam (New York, Oxford University Press, 1998), 169–78.22. Q. 60�8.23. Al-�Awwa, op. cit., 248–55.24. Ibid., 257–63.25. A. Kamal Abu al-Magd, Ru’ya islamiyya mu�as�ara: i�lan mabadi’ (Cairo, Dar al-Shuruq, 1991). In

fact the original declaration had been circulated for private discussion already in 1981.26. A. Kamal Abu al-Magd, Ru’ya islamiyya mu�as�ara: i�lan mabadi’, 2nd printing (Cairo, Dar

al-Shuruq, 1992).27. Ibid., 15–18.28. M. ‘Imara, Hal al-islam huwa al-h�all? (Cairo, Dar al-Shuruq, 1995).29. Ibid., 53–4.30. Ibid., 162–3.31. Interestingly, this is a view which is mirrored in an earlier generation of Christian, mostly

Byzantine Orthodox, Arab nationalist thinkers. Cf. A. Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age:1798–1939 (London, Oxford University Press, 1962), 309–11.

32. �Imara, op. cit., 170–3.33. Rashıd al-Ghannushı, H� uquq al-muwat�ana: h�uquq ghayr al-muslim fı al-mujtama� al-islamı (Herndon

VA, International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1993) (1st edn 1989).34. Ibid., 31–4.35. Ibid., 53–7.36. Ibid., 65–75.37. Ibid., 99–103.38. Dr Nasif subsequently spent some years as the first deputy president of the new Saudi Shura, often

seen as an embryo national parliament. The Institute continues to publish a journal, Journal of theInstitute of Muslim Minority Affairs, although after the first few issues publication had to be movedfrom Jedda to London.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f A

uckl

and

Lib

rary

] at

11:

46 0

5 D

ecem

ber

2014

Religious Minorities in Muslim Countries 335

39. Syed Z. Abedin, ‘Al-Dhimma: the non-believer’s identity in Islam’, Islam and Christian–MuslimRelations 3�1 (1992), 40–57.

40. Ibid., 50.41. 65th International Review of Missions (Oct. 1976), reprinted by the Islamic Foundation under the

title Christian Mission and Islamic Da’wah (Leicester, Islamic Foundation, 1982).42. English translation in The Diplomat 38–39 (June 1996).43. Mayer, Islam and Human Rights, 174.44. Abu Zayd supplies a sharp attack on what some people have called the ‘intellectual terrorism’

mobilized against him in this case, Al-tafkır fi zaman al-takfır (Cairo, Sina, 1995).45. The full text in Arabic and English is available from the Middle East Council of Churches from

jarjour@spidernet.com.cy.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f A

uckl

and

Lib

rary

] at

11:

46 0

5 D

ecem

ber

2014

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f A

uckl

and

Lib

rary

] at

11:

46 0

5 D

ecem

ber

2014