Shifting political winds in
the north African countries of Egypt and Sudan will leave their mark on
history, but local attitudes ensure one thing remains unchanged: the
laws against defaming Islam will stand like granite in a sandstorm.
As
Egyptians continue to grapple with a revolution and seek freedoms
commonplace in other parts of the world, there is no sign that Egypt’s
version of an anti-blasphemy law will be changed. And in Sudan, where
the non-Islamic south is set to split from the Islamic north on July 9,
Christians remaining in the north are more vulnerable than ever to
baseless accusations of defaming Islam.
The law in Egypt,
in theory meant to discourage people from offending others’ religious
sensitivities, is instead used to stifle free speech and punish and
intimidate those who do not subscribe to the standard, Orthodox version
of Sunni Islam practiced by most in Egypt, human rights advocates and
religious dissident groups said.
“In general in Egypt,
things are in flux, but because these particular issues are so hot
button, I would not expect, even with a new regime, any changes in these
laws,” said Paul Marshall, a senior fellow at the Center for Religious
Freedom at the Hudson Institute.
Still, Marshall said that
after the national demonstrations of Jan. 25-Feb. 11 that led to the
ousting of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, there may be changes coming
in the way the statutes are applied; there is hope that they won’t be
used “simply to shut people up.”
Crushing Non-Conformity
Article
98(f), known to Egyptian attorneys as the “contempt of religion”
charge, states, “Whoever exploits religion in order to promote extremist
ideologies by word of mouth, in writing or in any other manner, with a
view to stirring up sedition, disparaging or contempt of any divine
religion or its adherents, or prejudicing national unity shall be
punished with imprisonment between six months and five years or paying a
fine of at least 500 Egyptian pounds [US$85].”
Strictly
speaking, Article 98(f) is not an anti-blasphemy law, but it is used in
much the same way as other anti-blasphemy laws throughout the Middle
East and the greater Islamic world. Violating this statute is known as
having “defamed a heavenly religion.” Others have been charged under the
statute with “insulting Islam.”
Ashraf Thabet, 45, knows
all too well about being charged with defaming a heavenly religion. The
Port Said import merchant was a committed Muslim most of his life until
an economic downturn and a canceled business deal gave him the spare
time to investigate Islam more closely. What started as a quest to find
deeper meaning within his religion led him to embrace Christianity. As
he expressed his struggle and his newfound ideas to others, Thabet found
himself on the losing end of a battle with Egypt’s State Security
Intelligence service (SSI).
During an early morning arrest
on March 22, 2010, SSI agents kicked down the door of his apartment,
assaulted him in front of his family and dragged him off to prison.
Accused of violating Article 98(f), Thabet spent 132 days in solitary
confinement but was never brought to court.
Thabet said he
believed the SSI left the charges unresolved to harass and pressure him
to convert back to Islam. His case, still unresolved, is typical of the
way the law is used to punish people not for actually insulting any
religion but for choosing a spiritual path not accepted by the
government. It is what is known as a “status crime,” where one isn’t
punished for doing something, but rather for being something. Status
crimes have been stricken from the legal codes of most countries.
“If
you become a Christian, you are likely to be accused of insulting Islam
on grounds that you left, and therefore you are [supposedly] saying
it’s bad,” Marshall said.
By comparison, no convert from Christianity to Islam has ever been charged with Article 98(f) for defiling Christianity.
Converts
to Christianity aren’t alone in falling prey to the law. People in
Egypt who follow the Baha’i faith, adherents to the Islamic Shia
tradition and numerous other non-Sunnis have all been brought up on
defamation charges. In some cases, Sunnis who have expressed
non-conformist opinions have been accused of defamation. Several Sunni
journalists, bloggers, lawyers, university professors, at least one
renowned poet and a Nobel laureate have all been accused of religious
defamation – not for actually insulting Islam or any other tradition,
but merely for exploring non-orthodox ideas about religion.
“Muslims who hold unorthodox views are held to be insulting Islam or insulting a heavenly religion,” Marshall said.
Perhaps
the most famous defamation case in Egypt against a Muslim was that of
Nasr Hamed Abu Zaid, a Sunni Islamic scholar. Abu Zaid’s work dealt with
interpreting the Quran in a historical context. Accused by officials at
Al-Azhar University of defaming Islam, he was ruled in court to be an
apostate. Because a non-Muslim man cannot be married to a Muslim woman, a
court issued proceedings to nullify his marriage. In 1995, he fled to
the Netherlands with his wife.
Later returning to Egypt, Abu Zaid died in August 2010 in Cairo of a cerebral infection.
“Generically,
I would call that a blasphemy case because he wrote about Islam in a
way Al-Azhar and others did not like,” Marshall said.
According
to Azza Taher Matar of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information,
cases of a Muslim accused of defamation for holding a dissenting view
are the most common ones.
“Most cases result from Muslims
debating Islam or Islamic history and the Arabic empire,” Matar said.
“When [religious] debates or conflicts heat up, they are usually solved
in a political way.”
Human rights advocates say it is
nearly impossible to find out how many people are charged under the
defamation statute in Egypt. It is not pandemic, but it is certainly not
uncommon. Matar said her group is not defending any defamation cases.
Unequal Enforcement
Another
aspect of the law is that it is enforced unequally and in a way that is
seemingly meant to protect the sensitivities of the majority from the
minority, but not the other way around. In effect, the majority is given
free rein to insult or even vilify religious minorities in the country.
While
Judaism and Christianity are considered “revealed” religions under the
Quran, no other religious traditions are, and therefore the defamation
statute offers them no protection under the law. Using the Baha’i and
Zoroastrian traditions as examples, Marshall said they are “not regarded
as heavenly religions, so you may insult them all you want.”
Even
the protections that in theory are extended to Judaism and Christianity
are tenuous at best. Anti-Semitism is rife in Egypt. People insult
Judaism and its adherents in the media and in the public arena “everyday
and every way in Egypt” without anyone being called to task under
98(f), according to Marshall.
“The law is in principle
insulting any one of those religions. In practice, you can insult
Judaism all you want, even on state media,” he said.
On a
few rare occasions, the state has intervened when media professionals
have insulted Christianity on television, but by and large, people
“defame” Christianity and its core ideas in the public sphere with no
recrimination.
“You can hear it on loudspeakers in the
street,” Marshall said. “You will find it on school television programs.
You will find it in school textbooks. You will find that in books
issued by government ministries.”
After a church bombing
in Alexandria last New Year’s Eve, when at least 22 people were killed,
Coptic Christians complained that it is commonplace in Alexandria for
imams to launch into anti-Christian tirades during Friday afternoon
prayers. In several instances in southern Egypt, rioters have attacked
Christian-held businesses on prompting from imams during Friday prayers.
In Egypt, imams’ salaries are paid for in part by government-approved
Islamic institutions.
No Public Outcry
Outside of human rights groups and a few religious groups, there has been no large outcry to reform the law.
According
to a survey conducted in 2009 by WorldPublicOpinion.org, 71 percent of
Egyptians agreed with the statement, “The government should have the
right to fine or imprison people who publically criticize a religion
because such criticism could defame the religion.”
WorldPublicOpinion.org is run by the Program on International Policy
Attitudes by the University of Maryland.
Part of the
reason the laws are unlikely to change is that Article 2 of the Egyptian
Constitution states, “Islam is the Religion of the State. Arabic is its
official language, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic
Jurisprudence.”
Although the Egyptian Constitution also has
laws enshrining freedom of religion and expression, Article 2
supersedes those laws, rendering them ineffective. There has been
widespread pressure from Coptic and secular groups to do away with
Article 2, but the recent national referendum to reform the constitution
did not include any language to strike the article.
The referendum passed with 77 percent voting in favor of its reforms; defamation laws remained intact.
Offense of the Cross
In
Sudan’s Sunni Muslim-majority north, where apostasy (leaving Islam) is
punishable by death, the maximum sentence for violating the country’s
blasphemy law is milder than Egypt’s maximum of five years in prison,
but potentially more painful.
Violation of Section 125 of
the Sudanese Criminal Act, which prohibits “insulting religion, inciting
hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs,” is punishable by
imprisonment of one year, a fine, and 40 lashes.
As in
Egypt, the law can be used as a pretext for taking legal action against
anyone who leaves Islam, since conversion to Christianity itself can be
interpreted as “insulting” or “showing contempt” for Islam.
“This
article is being used by the police to crush any person who leaves
Islam for Christianity,” said one Sudanese convert to Christianity.
One Sudanese lawyer, a Muslim, said the law is seen as protective.
“The importance of this section is that it helps protect Islamic
religion from being insulted, and it also discourages those who do not
want to respect other religions,” said Nasour Badr in Khartoum.
The Christian convert said that sentiment can be easily manipulated.
“This
article is important to Muslims in Sudan since it gives the right to
any Muslim to file cases against converts from Muslim backgrounds and
other Christians as well,” he said. “The law can also be used by the
government to arrest individuals who may oppose the government.”
Christians
remaining in the north are particularly vulnerable, and the U.S.
Department of State’s latest International Religious Freedom Report
describes Khartoum as having a “significant Christian population,” due
in part to migration during the long civil war.
“The Roman
Catholic Church of Sudan and the Episcopal Churches of Sudan estimate
they have 6 million and 5 million baptized followers, respectively,
although active churchgoers are far fewer,” the report notes, adding
that there are also small but long-established groups of Orthodox
Christians in Khartoum and in other northern cities, including Coptic
Orthodox and Greek Orthodox communities.
“There are also
Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox communities, largely made up of refugees
and migrants, in Khartoum and the east,” according to the report.
While convictions may be rare, Christian converts from Islam said they continue to be victims of Sudan’s blasphemy law.
“In
many cases this law continues to be used by the police to harass
everyone who tries to express his or her belief in public,” said another
convert from Islam on condition of anonymity.
He said
police arrested one such convert in downtown Khartoum in 2009; not until
the convert arrived at the police station did he find out, to his
surprise, that authorities were opening a case against him under Article
125 for offense against any religious belief.
“He was
falsely accused of insulting Islam, even though at the time of his
arrest he was speaking only about his faith in Jesus,” the Christian
said of the other arrested convert. “The police were angry with that
move, so they arrested him and jailed him for few hours before they
released him for lack of enough evidence against him. He was basically
arrested because of his faith.”
While one church leader
noted that Article 125 is “a weapon in the hand of the government to
file accusations against Christians,” Christians are not the only ones
vulnerable within the Sudanese population. In November 2007, a British
teacher was jailed in Khartoum under the article for insulting Islam by
letting her class of 7-year-olds name a teddy bear Muhammad as part of a
school project.
Gillian Gibbons, 54, was charged under
Section 125 and convicted on one of three counts, “insulting religion,”
on Nov. 29, 2007. She was sentenced to 15 days in prison and
deportation.
She had suggested to her students that they
name their teddy bear, the new class mascot, “Faris,” but 20 of the 23
children decided they wanted to name it “Muhammad,” after one of the
class’s most popular boys.
Most Sunni Muslims forbid any
depiction of Muhammad. An office assistant at the school, Sara Khawad,
had filed the complaint and was the primary witness in the prosecution.
The
day after her sentencing, some 10,000 protestors in Khartoum demanded
death for Gibbons after imams denounced her during Friday prayers.
Ultimately, after intervention from British officials, she was granted a
presidential pardon and released into the security of the British
embassy in Khartoum.
In December 2007, the section was used
against two Egyptian booksellers, Abdelfatah Al Sadani and Maharous
Mahammad Abdelazeem, both 30. They were sentenced to six months in
prison because they sold a book that the court deemed an insult to
Aisha, one of Muhammad’s wives.
The U.S. Department of
State’s International Religious Freedom Report 2010 notes that while
Sudan’s Interim National Constitution provides for freedom of religion
throughout the country, it establishes sharia (Islamic law) as a
source of legislation in the north. The official laws and policies of
the Government of National Unity favor Islam in the north, while the
constitution, laws and policies of Southern Sudan provide for freedom of
religion “contributed to the generally free practice of religion.”
The
South has no penalties for apostasy or defaming religion, and
evangelism is common. And while the State Department report notes that
laws against blasphemy and defaming Islam in the north were rarely
enforced last year, the threat they pose can be enough to restrict
freedom of speech and freedom of religion – especially for converts.
“Those who leave Islam know they may be victims of this article,” a source in Khartoum told Compass.
Cheri Fuller and Cindy Lamb Curry 
Marilyn Hickey 
Charisma Staff