The Roman Catholic

This article is sourced from the Herald (Malaysia) written by Fr. Samir Khalil Samir, an Egyptian Jesuit. Fr. Samir was responding to the conversion of Mohammad Ahmad Hegazi to Christianity in Egypt.

The Islamic world is truly obsessed with conversions. At least seven Islamic countries apply the death penalty to those who convert from Islam: Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Mauritania. But in other states, like Egypt, converts are condemned to prison, not as apostates but for contempt of Islam, as Hossam Bahgat, a member of the Egyptian Initiative for personal rights, explains.
According to government daily Al-Massa, all imams are unanimous on the need to kill the apostate Hegazi. They say that syariah (not the Koran) must be enforced and it calls for the death penalty. The more moderate say: if the apostate hides his conversion, does not broadcast his decision, then it is not necessary to kill him; he can live. If he lets it be known, then he causes scandal (fltna) and must die.

I happened to be looking through the website of the Forum of Arab Aviation. This case - Hegazi’s conversion - is the sole topic of the site’s “Islamic” section. There are eight reactions registered on the page and they all say that he must be killed. Some are subtle, saying for example: “The government must take the harshest decision to eliminate this problem,” but all the others quote the Koran:
“Fitna is worse than killing” (2,191 and 2,217); others say that “Islam is the better religion”; others still: “Kill him to avoid fltna” (8,39); others: “He who wants a religion other than Islam, his worship will not be accepted and in the hereafter he will be among the losers” (3,85).

No one quotes the Koranic phrase that affirms freedom of conscience, the one quoted by the Pope at Regensburg last September 12: “there is no compulsion in religion” (2, 186);nor the other that says: “Truth comes from your Lord. Let him who will, believe and let him who will not believe” (18,29).

This was the case in dozens upon dozens of comments in numerous Islamic web sites in the last week alone. Generally, for every 10 people who call for his death, there is just one who said: “I think that Hegazi should be free to choose.”

Others say that, yes, the Koran has the verse that says “there is no compulsion … “, but it has been cancelled (nusikha) by the famous “sword verse” (ayat al-sayf) that would have cancelled dozens of verses, which however no one can identify: if that would be verse 5 of chapter 9 (known as the “penitence” verse, al-tawbah), or verse 29, or 36, or else 41: all these speak of killing the other, and are often applied to apostates.

In any case, three famous imam have pronounced themselves against Hegazi. The first is Imam Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a big expert in his field, who cites dozens of references from the first centuries and concludes that Hegazi has to be killed because the group is in danger and the group takes priority over the individual. The idea is: if this person begins to speak and says that he is happy to be Christian, and smilingly appears in photos with a Gospel in his hands, this is intolerable and is non-Muslim propaganda, which is officially allowed neither in Egypt, nor in other Islamic countries. And since Hegazi is spreading Christian propaganda, he must be killed.
Suad Saleh, Muslim judge and dean of the Faculty ofIslamic Science at AI-Azhar University, has stated: yes, in matters of faith there is no compulsion, but Hegazi is spreading propaganda and thus the law must be applied. The judge advises that the apostate be given three days to repent and reconvert to Islam (istitabah), then “apply the law” (i.e. execution).
The Grand Mufti of Egypt, Dr Ali Gomaa, Egypt’s highest religious authority, stated to the Washington Post last June that apostasy “should not” be punished by death, eliciting numerous reactions from AI-Azhar. After many people expressed their approval for a death sentence, he retracted in a confused matter and his stance is still today unclear. On the surface, he wanted to reassure the West by using ambiguous wording, like the one that goes: “Apostasy is to be punished when it represents fitna or when it threatens the foundations of society.”
Instead, as we have said, there is no punishment in this world for the apostate according to the Koran. But the imams rely on one of the Prophet’s hadith of Islam handed down by Thn ‘Abbas: “Kill the one who changes religion.” And they rely on the fact that Mohammad applied this punishment to Abdallah Ibn al-Azhal who, to avoid being killed, had sought protection in the Kaaba shrine, but Mohammad ordered his companions to kill him.
To all this must be added the reaction of Hegazi’s and his wife’s parents. Questioned by Islamic judges, his father denied that his son converted to Christianity. His mother began screaming hysterically: “My son is dead, there will be no relation between us until the judgement day!” Ali Kamel Suleiman, the father of Zeinab, Hegazi’s wife, was more explicit. He declared to the independent daily al-Dustur: “Bring me my daughter in whatever way possible, even dead.” In our Egyptian mentality, this means: kill her, or bring her to me alive and I will kill her.
Because of the parents’ behaviour, Mamduh Nakhla, a Copt, director of the “Al-Kalima” Centre for Human Rights, who had submitted to the administrative courts a request for the recognition of Hegazi’s conversion to Christianity, then withdrew it for two reasons: “to not break Hegazi’s ties with his family” and due to the “lack of a certificate of [Hegazi’s] conversion to the Copt Church.

“This was confirmed by Fr Morcos, a bishop close to the Patriarch Shenouda, who stated, “The Church does not proselytise.” In all such matters of conversion, the Copt Church is usually very prudent, because it must take account of the “common good,” so as to not compromise other negotiations with the govemment. Rumani Gad el-Rabb, another executive of the Al-Kalima Centre, instead told AFP that the group withdrew the request after having receiving threats.
Instead according to scholars this reading is not exact. To be precise: there is a principle in Koranic exegesis by which a verse can be cancelled (Cf. Koran 2, 106). But to know which verses are cancelled, it must be clear in the Koran, or there must be unanimity in the community of origins. In any case, scholars says that in this specific case there is by no means unanimity. According to the greatest of medieval scholars, Jalal aI-Din al-Suyuti (d. 1505), only Koranic verse 21 responds to this criteria (cf. his book Mu’tarak al-Aqran, p. 118).

Several weeks ago I read an online column where a Muslim had advised a Christian to dump the Bible because it contained apparent contradictions.The Muslim said the Koran on the other hand was directly from God and was therefore accurate, i.e, without contradictions.

If this were so, why do some verses in the Koran cancel the others? Is this the result of a confused God who couldn’t keep track of his own contradictions? Or is it the consequence of a human being (i.e. Mohammad, founder of Islam) writing the Koran and purporting that God revealed the contents to him to pen down? The conclusion for me is that the Koran couldn’t have been inspired by God, neither could it have been dictated by God to a human author as the contradictions are divinely impossible. Hence it was merely a human endeavor devoid of divine intervention!

Conversely, Christians admit that several humans wrote the Bible in their respective styles but under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, there are no contradictions in the Bible. No verse cancels another. As Jesus Himself said that he came not to abrogate but to fulfill and complete the law (i.e., previous verses). The New Testament fulfills the Old Testament. Apparent contradictions are simply failure to interpret correctly various verses. This is easily solved if Christians submit to the teaching authority of the Magisterium. The Holy Spirit guides the interpretation of what He has inspired in the Bible.

This is the reason no Christian should accept his/her own interpretation of the Bible lest he/she be tempted by the Devil to defy the Church and set up his own sect that claims to be the real one founded by Jesus Christ.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 1:00 and is filed under Catholic Answers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.