Blasphemy and the Ahmadiyya
READER OF THIS ENTRY: I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU READ THE COMMENTS TO THIS SECTION AS WELL AS THE SECTION ITSELF, AS THERE IS SIGNIFICANT NUANCE TO THESE SUBJECTS THAT APPEAR IN THE COMMENTS AND LESS SO, UNFORTUNATELY, IN THE TEXT. I'VE ALSO MADE A COUPLE OF ADJUSTMENTS TO THE TEXT FROM ITS ORIGINAL VERSION, BASED ON SOME COMMENTS RECEIVED THAT APPEAR IN ORDER TO ADD SOME NUANCE. I AM SATISFIED THAT THE GENERAL THEME IS GOOD, AND THE COMMENT TRADES WERE AND ARE I THINK VERY VALUABLE, AND SO I HAVE DECIDED TO KEEP THE ENTRY, BUT PLEASE DO NOTE THE QUALIFICATION.
In today's paper, there was a report that Indonesian President Yudhoyono was cracking down on the Ahmadiyya sect, officially banning its practices as being a form of blasphemy. Centrally, the orthodox Muslim problem with the Ahmadiyya (among Sunni and Shi'a alike) is that they recognize a Prophet after Muhammad, and this is a form of sabb al-nabi, we are told, or an insult of the Prophet, which carries the death sentence in classical times.
Again, it is my purpose not to dismiss the classical origins, but point to their limitations in understanding what is happening in Indonesia, a country I actually have some interest in, having lived there quite happily for two years.
The basic thing about the classical doctrine, and the classical scriptural crime under which so much ridiculous thought control is being practiced in the Muslim world, is that it isn't disbelief (kufr) but rather apostasy (radd) and its relatives that carry the capital crime. [Liberals like myself say even apostasy is in the context of foundational text more "treason" (joining the other side in the middle of war) than the individualized crisis of conscience that are more typical of modernity, but that's a side point. The classical doctrine doesn't recognize modern liberal trends, of course.] In other words, the capital crime was for a Muslim to insult the Prophet, a Christian who said "I don't think Muhammad received a Revelation from God" is not getting punished, that's obviously what he believes. That is the scriptural crime of apostasy, though sabb al nabi can be directed to non-Muslims as well, as we know from the Sudan teddy bear case, when it's explicit. It should also be noted that a separate issue, known as bid'a, or invention, is at play too, that is, adding forms of worship following the Prophet's death that are un-Islamic, a largely Sunni issue, as the Shi'a, being on the receiving end of the bid'a accusations, never really raise the matter themselves.
The point, ultimately, is that we can distinguish between two categories here, one is "nonbelief" and the other is "bad belief" i.e. Muslim but not Muslim enough. And number 2 is more centrally the criminal issue in the classical world (leaving aside the possible exception of openly insulting the Prophet).
The reason this is has to do with the fact that the only non-Muslims under the juristic texts who can live in the House of Islam have some sort of arrangement with the caliph, for example, People of the Book (Jews, Christians) who pay a higher level tax and get some level of security in exchange. Other non-Muslims under the classical law are outside the House of Islam, you fight them to conquer the territory and bring them in, but then they have to convert, unless they are people of the Book when they pay a higher tax, etc. and the system continues as such. They have no other legal recognition
But in the modern world, this distinction between kufr/disbelief, etc. and apostasy/heresy means everything. Because in a country like Indonesia, say, there is open tolerance, constitutional tolerance, of any number of religions that would have a hard time qualifying for People of the Book status (Buddhists and Hindus, namely). And even those who are People of the Book, in Indonesia or Iraq or almost (not entirely) anywhere else, it's not the same thing as classical doctrine, all people are citizens subject to the same law, except maybe in family matters. There certainly is no sense of a set of criminal rules applying to one and not the other, no sense of conquering the world, this isn't the reality of the lives of Indonesian Muslims, or Muslims anywhere else really.
And so now the distinction between kufr and disbelief and apostasy and nonbelief becomes important, and in fact causes the original apostasy and apostasy-like crimes to devolve into incoherence. (I should emphasize that none of this is important in those Muslim societies where there is no such thing as an apostasy crime because they don't care about implementing shari'a crimes, but certainly in places where this notion of apostasy holds, even in part, then it starts to apply.) Because if the crime of the Ahmadiyya is made into nonbelief categories, ie if you insult the Prophet by saying there is another after him then we kill you or ban you, or fine you, or whatever you want, or if you deny the One True God who sent down Revelations then same result, then why aren't you going after the Hindus, who deny the entire notion of Muhammad as Apostle? Yet if it is apostasy, then how can that be, if they've had this view all along? Either it's a legitimate Islamic opinion, and they are okay, or it's not, and they haven't apostasized, they've stayed consistent. I guess they could be heretics, or engaged in bid'a, but why do you care about that and yet protect non-belief/kufr? There doesn't seem to be a coherent justification for all of this confusion.
And here is where modernity creeps in to provide an answer, because what you have is this classical crime being used to club groups that are considered heretic, and then you ignore groups further away in derogation of classical doctrine that deals with them. This isn't unique to modern Islam, in any religion you find the heretics, the group whose ideas lay just outside the mainstream who claim to belong to the religion, receiving much harsher treatment than people who believe considerably different things. They are perceived as a greater threat to the faith. Islam is only unique in the tools used by its extremist conservatives to repress that.
Take the Ahmadiyya for example. The complaint is they call themselves Muslims and then hold beliefs that insult Islam. In other words, the complaint is that they're not close enough to actually be Muslims, but close enough to confuse people or delude the real believers. And so apostasy, or heresy, or an insult to the Prophet is used to deal with this, because it seems to fit. They insult the Prophet, or Islam, they "invent" worship post Prophet, check out any major Sunni Islamist website and they mention this a great deal. Or just read Pakistan's Penal Code, which more or less drafted its apostasy rules to repress the Ahmadiyya as falsely representing themselves to be Muslim and as insulting the Prophet. And so it's a two part analysis, the first part of which is (a) are they kinda sorta Muslim-like and the second part is (b) do they hold proper Muslim views.
It's an odd mixture, a duck bill platypus of a legal doctrine, a rejection of the classical notions of kufr and a wholehearted acceptance of the classical ideas of heresy/blasphemy//apostasy, to hold to modern notions of tolerance (as in Indonesia) with other religions, but much less tolerance within Islam itself. All done to deal with a modern turn of the times, the need to distinguish those who are different but seem quite similar.
HAH
In today's paper, there was a report that Indonesian President Yudhoyono was cracking down on the Ahmadiyya sect, officially banning its practices as being a form of blasphemy. Centrally, the orthodox Muslim problem with the Ahmadiyya (among Sunni and Shi'a alike) is that they recognize a Prophet after Muhammad, and this is a form of sabb al-nabi, we are told, or an insult of the Prophet, which carries the death sentence in classical times.
Again, it is my purpose not to dismiss the classical origins, but point to their limitations in understanding what is happening in Indonesia, a country I actually have some interest in, having lived there quite happily for two years.
The basic thing about the classical doctrine, and the classical scriptural crime under which so much ridiculous thought control is being practiced in the Muslim world, is that it isn't disbelief (kufr) but rather apostasy (radd) and its relatives that carry the capital crime. [Liberals like myself say even apostasy is in the context of foundational text more "treason" (joining the other side in the middle of war) than the individualized crisis of conscience that are more typical of modernity, but that's a side point. The classical doctrine doesn't recognize modern liberal trends, of course.] In other words, the capital crime was for a Muslim to insult the Prophet, a Christian who said "I don't think Muhammad received a Revelation from God" is not getting punished, that's obviously what he believes. That is the scriptural crime of apostasy, though sabb al nabi can be directed to non-Muslims as well, as we know from the Sudan teddy bear case, when it's explicit. It should also be noted that a separate issue, known as bid'a, or invention, is at play too, that is, adding forms of worship following the Prophet's death that are un-Islamic, a largely Sunni issue, as the Shi'a, being on the receiving end of the bid'a accusations, never really raise the matter themselves.
The point, ultimately, is that we can distinguish between two categories here, one is "nonbelief" and the other is "bad belief" i.e. Muslim but not Muslim enough. And number 2 is more centrally the criminal issue in the classical world (leaving aside the possible exception of openly insulting the Prophet).
The reason this is has to do with the fact that the only non-Muslims under the juristic texts who can live in the House of Islam have some sort of arrangement with the caliph, for example, People of the Book (Jews, Christians) who pay a higher level tax and get some level of security in exchange. Other non-Muslims under the classical law are outside the House of Islam, you fight them to conquer the territory and bring them in, but then they have to convert, unless they are people of the Book when they pay a higher tax, etc. and the system continues as such. They have no other legal recognition
But in the modern world, this distinction between kufr/disbelief, etc. and apostasy/heresy means everything. Because in a country like Indonesia, say, there is open tolerance, constitutional tolerance, of any number of religions that would have a hard time qualifying for People of the Book status (Buddhists and Hindus, namely). And even those who are People of the Book, in Indonesia or Iraq or almost (not entirely) anywhere else, it's not the same thing as classical doctrine, all people are citizens subject to the same law, except maybe in family matters. There certainly is no sense of a set of criminal rules applying to one and not the other, no sense of conquering the world, this isn't the reality of the lives of Indonesian Muslims, or Muslims anywhere else really.
And so now the distinction between kufr and disbelief and apostasy and nonbelief becomes important, and in fact causes the original apostasy and apostasy-like crimes to devolve into incoherence. (I should emphasize that none of this is important in those Muslim societies where there is no such thing as an apostasy crime because they don't care about implementing shari'a crimes, but certainly in places where this notion of apostasy holds, even in part, then it starts to apply.) Because if the crime of the Ahmadiyya is made into nonbelief categories, ie if you insult the Prophet by saying there is another after him then we kill you or ban you, or fine you, or whatever you want, or if you deny the One True God who sent down Revelations then same result, then why aren't you going after the Hindus, who deny the entire notion of Muhammad as Apostle? Yet if it is apostasy, then how can that be, if they've had this view all along? Either it's a legitimate Islamic opinion, and they are okay, or it's not, and they haven't apostasized, they've stayed consistent. I guess they could be heretics, or engaged in bid'a, but why do you care about that and yet protect non-belief/kufr? There doesn't seem to be a coherent justification for all of this confusion.
And here is where modernity creeps in to provide an answer, because what you have is this classical crime being used to club groups that are considered heretic, and then you ignore groups further away in derogation of classical doctrine that deals with them. This isn't unique to modern Islam, in any religion you find the heretics, the group whose ideas lay just outside the mainstream who claim to belong to the religion, receiving much harsher treatment than people who believe considerably different things. They are perceived as a greater threat to the faith. Islam is only unique in the tools used by its extremist conservatives to repress that.
Take the Ahmadiyya for example. The complaint is they call themselves Muslims and then hold beliefs that insult Islam. In other words, the complaint is that they're not close enough to actually be Muslims, but close enough to confuse people or delude the real believers. And so apostasy, or heresy, or an insult to the Prophet is used to deal with this, because it seems to fit. They insult the Prophet, or Islam, they "invent" worship post Prophet, check out any major Sunni Islamist website and they mention this a great deal. Or just read Pakistan's Penal Code, which more or less drafted its apostasy rules to repress the Ahmadiyya as falsely representing themselves to be Muslim and as insulting the Prophet. And so it's a two part analysis, the first part of which is (a) are they kinda sorta Muslim-like and the second part is (b) do they hold proper Muslim views.
It's an odd mixture, a duck bill platypus of a legal doctrine, a rejection of the classical notions of kufr and a wholehearted acceptance of the classical ideas of heresy/blasphemy//apostasy, to hold to modern notions of tolerance (as in Indonesia) with other religions, but much less tolerance within Islam itself. All done to deal with a modern turn of the times, the need to distinguish those who are different but seem quite similar.
HAH
I am confused about a few things.
On my understanding, blasphemy is speaking scandalously about the character, behavior or nature of the Prophet and is thus sabb al-nabi, not kufr.
Kufr in general is denial of God and thus ingratitude towards Him, and rejection of the Prophet's message. This is mere kufr when held by a non-Muslim (Kafir asli) but is ridda/irtidad when done by an erstwhile Muslim.
There is also the question of whether sabb al-nabi on the part of a Muslim constitutes ridda, but in any event sabb al-nabi is a crime punishable by death without istitaba (UNLIKE some form of theological or political ridda where there is istitaba).
Furthermore, sabb al-nabi, unlike kufr, is a crime regardless of who does it. Ahl al-dhimma can be punished for sabb al-nabi; this is one of the terms of the dhimma contract and a good example of where Islamic public law would apply to non-Muslims. Thus in the Rushdie case it was often "explained" that Rushdie's crime was apostasy (being a nominal Muslim and all) whereas I believe that the crime was actually sabb al-nabi in which case his confessional identity is irrelevant. As with the Danish cartoonists or Theo Van Gogh.
I think you are right later in the post that the question is not blasphemy (sabb al-nabi) but heresy (bid'a) and when it becomes kufr/ridda. But the tougher question - and the one that arises also with the Baha'is - is not whether the doctrine is bid'a-cum-ridda (it obviously and unabashedly is in the case of the Baha'is) but what to do in the case of later descendants who adhere to a clearly heretical-apostate doctrine but who themselves were never Muslims and thus cannot be apostates. (Incidentally, this is what Obama is since his father openly apostatized from Islam. Does this make Obama a murtadd or a kafir asli?)
I guess the Ahmadiyya would be worse than the Baha'is since they claim to be Muslims and thus can be charged with continuously propounding expressly *heretical* doctrines whereas the Baha'is claim a clean break with Islam and thus only the first generation would be murtaddun sensu strictu.
So if this is correct, I am not sure that you are quite right in saying that this is a purely modern platypus we are dealing with, although obviously we are talking about modern actors acting in messy contexts.
Reply to this
Well, I don't know how to translate blasphemy really (though I don't know if I'd limit it to sabb al nabi--certainly you'd agree that takfiris read the term kufr much broader than your definition allowed) and I'm not sure I'd translate bid'a as heresy rather than "invention", clearly some heresies (denying that khamur is haram, for example, or denying the Apostlehood) are forms of ridda and the Shi'a though we have heresies tend not to use the term bid'a except when making fun of the phrase kul bid'a dhalala wa kul dhalala fil nar in sectarian fashion. Certainly I think your comment ably points out that there are multiple nuances involved in translation and description that I handled rather summarily, and I appreciate your addressing that.
The one point I accept as wrong in my original post is that in addition to ridda certainly sabb al nabi can be applied as against non-Muslims (I would assume as a ta'zir), the Sudanese case that I started this whole blog with makes that clear enough. My apologies to all on that error. But still there is an inconsistency, in that usually when you talk of the Ahmadiyya (not the Baha'i, which Iran just dismisses as kuffar who deserve no recognition in an Islamic state), the penal codes used to persecute them and the rhetoric against them tends to be of the form of their very forms of worship are an insult to the Prophet and a rejection of the true Islam. I'll dig up the proper Pakistani Penal Code provision for you, but the point is, if that's sabb al nabi, then surely Christian or Jewish worship amply qualifies as well, right? Surely the notion of ridda (included in the same based section), fused with sabb al nabi is at work and that's the sort of duck bill platypus idea I was trying to get at.
Reply to this
I think law of the country can not prohibit any one's belief. If it does then
i can say it is not the act of a man. How a man define other religion without the agreement. Can Law of the state define a muslim as christian? Is it posible? Blasphemy is the most worst Law, I have ever know.
Reply to this
I do think bid'a is the closest equivalent to "heresy." I can't think of anything else which is not a later translation. They are both about theological innovations which violate orthodoxy, rather than scandalous speech. And I do think "sabb al-nabi" is the closest to blasphemy, and the most purely Islamic. "Tajdif" does exist as a word for blasphemy but do you really see it in fiqhi texts?
Thus, both heresy and blasphemy are "offensive" and "scandalous" but for different reasons. Although the overlap is good to keep in mind during our frequent free speech wars when religious citizens invoke "offense" as a public justification for limiting speech. "Offense" is in the eye of the beholder (or maybe the heart of the emoter) and there is a danger of giving persons and groups arbitrary discretion over what is offensive.
But in the Islamic context we don't really have this problem because the individual crimes for the distinct types of actors are all so clearly defined.
I would love to see the justifications for persecuting the Ahmadiyya. I agree that it would be very odd for the arguments to be that their worship is an "insult to the Prophet." If it is worship, then it is either to God via the Qur'an or not. If not, then it is either by a tolerated class of believers (Jews and Christians at least) or not. If not, then it is either some kind of untolerated mushrikun or heretical-apostate Muslims. If the latter, then their crime is heresy or apostasy - why do you need "insulting the Prophet" at all? It is not like they are engaging in Shia-type insults of certain Companions (which the Sunnis regarded as a distinct Shi'ite transgression). If their worship does not involve some kind of mockery of Muhammad (praying with Qur'ans under one's knees?) but rather some kind of theological error, then why talk about "insulting the Prophet" when you have other perfectly good crimes on the books?
So that is what I find curious. But this is what I think: Maybe in countries like Pakistan and Indonesia they can't (or don't think they can) criminalize heresy and apostasy, so they can only revert to "insulting the Prophet" - as they do with free speech cases. So maybe that is your story - not the arbitrary, random, ad hoc, platypus nature of modern Islamic thought, but the success of certain aspects of the "modern transplant" and partial secularization. Pakistan and Indonesia may be "modern" enough to feel embarrassed about criminalizing "heresy/bid'a" and "apostasy" but not about "insulting the Prophet" which is a bona fide, modern/post-modern, multicultural, interfaith issue. But do countries like Saudi, Sudan and Iran have to talk about "insulting the Prophet" or can they just go straight for the red meat crimes of bid'a/ridda?
Reply to this
Is this the report you are talking about?
http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=12466&size=A
Here it does say that the concern is with "heresy" rather than "insulting the Prophet." Of course it is an "insult" to say that Muhammad was not the seal of the Prophet's, but it is also a theological heresy, unlike saying that Muhammad ate pork or was sexually deviant which are blasphemous insults but not primarily aimed at theological innovation.
But here is a law review article on the situation in Pakistan which does note that there the law is on "blasphemy":
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/hrj/iss16/khan.shtml
"The “Blasphemy Law,” as the Act came to be referred to, amended Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code by raising the penalty against blasphemy from fine or imprisonment to death. Because the Ahmadi belief in the prophethood of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was considered blasphemous insofar as it “defiled the name of Prophet Muhammad,” Zia-ul-Haq and the Pakistani government institutionalized the persecution of Ahmadis in Pakistan with Section 295-C. The mere existence of practicing Ahmadi Muslims could be considered blasphemous and punishable by death."
So, yes, you are right that the crime in Pakistan is "blasphemy" and that the theological claims are regarded as "defiling the name of Prophet Muhammad."
So I would love to know more about this. Why the term "blasphemy" in particular? Is this British in origin? What classical Islamic categories does it link up with? What is the Urdu (or even Arabic) translation? Why not simply "apostasy"?
Reply to this
All good questions I think, deserving of more thorough consideration. I'll try to do that in later posts at some point. The Pakistan example is really noteworthy of what I am talking about--forget the term for a minute, if it's bad, and a crime to insult the Prophet whether or not you are Muslim, and the Ahmadi is doing that by worship, ie through an implicit statement that there is an Apostle following Muhammad, then isn't the Christian also then guilty of the same crime through his worship? This is the meat of the matter, irrespective of how we might choose to translate kufr, bid'a, sabb al nabi or anything else. (and there I think we still have disagreements, though they might be more linguistic and semantic than anything else).
Reply to this
Yes, so this is the question: "If it's bad, and a crime to insult the Prophet whether or not you are Muslim, and the Ahmadi is doing that by worship, ie through an implicit statement that there is an Apostle following Muhammad, then isn't the Christian also then guilty of the same crime through his worship?"
Of course, what I would argue is that theologically speaking the mainstream position is that Muslims are in a basic state of moral non-obligation to non-Muslims. (Bara'a asliyya) Two basic ideas here: If you are a theistic subjectivist/voluntarist then you think all rights and obligations are *only those* God has created. Has God created any universal (if not "natural" rights) - well you might then say He has but only for Muslims. This is the theological meaning of the basic classical fiqhi claim that the "basic status" (al-asl) of relations with non-Muslims is "war." Meaning that there is no absolute moral obligation to them. Moral obligations to them only arise out of contractual relationships, which Muslims are commanded to honor, even with infidels. (Thus, their eligibility for contracts points to their moral status.)
Any special or innate moral status or esteem due to Jews and Christians (e.g., that these are the only infidel technically eligible for general contracts of inviolability) can be attributed to them not just having a "revealed religion", but one which *precedes* Muhammad's revelation. Thus, it might be part of God's plan to have them persist with their own laws and beliefs, and besides it is reasonable for them to stick to their ancient rites.
Obviously, none of this applies to Ahmadis or Baha'is, whose late-arrival involves an explicit rejection of Islam in a way which compounds the rejection inherent in Judaism and Christianity. Thus, they assume the "basic status" of having no absolute moral inviolability by virtue of being infidels and do not inherit the Abrahamic dispensation enjoyed by Jews and Christians.
So I suppose it all makes good "classical" sense to me. I don't see any contradiction or paradox in tolerating the "kufr" of the Jews/Christians because: a) this tolerance does not imply a general right to be an infidel within an Islamic space but is a special case accounted for in the revelatory sources; b) their "kufr" is NOT "bid'a" (here is where the terms do matter); c) they are also not allowed to trumpet their true views about Muhammad in public - if they went around calling Muhammad a false prophet in public and calling to that view, what do you think would happen?
Reply to this
My dear Professor March, this is all well and good as classical analysis, but do you really think it's relevant in our times in a state such as Indonesia, where religions like Buddhism and Hinduism are explicitly constitutionally protected, or Pakistan, which like Indonesia has a constitutional guarantee of freedom of worship? This idea of non-status to non-Muslims simply does not exist in these states, non-Muslims are equal citizens under the law. Now then when we have this fact, a direct and unambiguous rejection of classical doctrine concerning non-Muslims, then I think the question becomes first why do particular groups of Muslims care about the Ahmadis, and the second, the one we are focussing on, becomes how do they go about getting them. It's both a legal question, how can Yudhyono run off and outlaw them, for example, or what does Pakistan's legal code say to limit them, and a religious question--assuming wise scholars, what is the justification for targetting this group in particular and not just demonstrating against all forms of nontolerated kufr and the constitutional protection thereof?
I think conservative Sunni groups care because Ahmadi worship resembles Islamic worship (I think Shi'a are less focussed because they don't want to get into the heresy game for obvious reasons), and they focus, legally and religiously, on that resemblance to target them. Call it insulting the Apostle, call it bid'a (heresy or invention) and ignore all other forms of untolerated kufr, in other words raise the prominence of bid'a, lower the prominence of kufr from classical doctrine, and then stick it near to apostasy as well, and through these techniques you can really target them and not have to touch other groups that for whatever legal or political reasons you can muster, you have no interest in going after. And that, I submit, is a duck bill platypus, accepting notions of tolerance and modernity with respect to certain groups, and then going back to classical doctrine with respect to other groups.
HAH
Reply to this
Frankly, it seems to me that the whole concept of "blasphemy" in Islam is a form of bid'a. There is NO hadd punishment in shari’ah for blasphemy. During the lifetime of the Prophet (peace be on him), he never allowed anyone to be killed for insulting him.
Blasphemy against God and his Prophets (PBUT) has no earthly punishment and is judged by God alone. Often, in Pakistan, for example, false accusations of blasphemy are made as a way of carrying out a personal vendetta against someone who has not committed any crime at all.
Curiously, here in Canada, we have a criminal statute that makes it possible to punish "blasphemous libel". It has not been used in over 50 years and contains an exception for the expression of opinions on religious matters that are made in "good faith"and using "decent language". The law makes it possible to discuss controversial religious ideas so long as provocative language likely to incite violence is not used.
In Muslim countries that have and enforce anti-blasphemy statutes, they are used by the State or certain groups to exercise control over "enemies". The problem with the Ahmadiyya movement is not so much a question of "blasphemy" (disrespect) or "apostasy"(renunciation) or even "heresy" (innovation) as it is a question of "fraud" (culpable misrepresentation).
I have mixed feelings about the Ahmadiyya. I was raised as a Christian but when, as adult, began to study Islam, I came into contact with some Ahmadiyaa men at a large book fair. They had a booth and were distributing literature about Islam. The first Arabic Qur'an that I obtained was purchased from them.
I praise God for putting those men on my path but I also feel sadness that they teach (among other heresies) that God sent another Prophet after Sidi Muhammad (PBUH). God himself says, "(Let there be) no compulsion in religion." (surat al-baqarah 256) So I recognize their right to follow their conscience in matters of religion and along with Ibn Tamayyah, the Hambali jurist, I do not believe that changing religion as a spiritual matter constitutes "apostasy" under shari'ah.
It is a fraud (misrepresentation) for them to call themselves the "Amadiyyah Movement in Islam".
Taking such liberties is easier in Christianity because there are literally hundreds denominations. In Islam, however, such a degree of division does not exist. Moremover, dissident Christians still agree on the core doctrines. I don't know of any of them that teach, for example, that there has been any Prophet, Messiah or (as they say) "Son of God" after Jesus (PBUH).
So long as the Ahmadiyya pretend to be what they are not, they will encounter controversy and repression
Hindus, Buddhists, etc. encounter far less enmity in Muslim societies because they do not pretend to be what the majority is convinced they are not.
The juridical classification of the Ahmadiyya may be clumsy, but it what motivates it is clear.
Reply to this
Thanks, very interesting comments. Many Jews tend to have the same reaction you are describing to the "Jews for Jesus" folks.
Reply to this