One of the problems facing Islam today is its failure to deal with basic human rights. Traditional, orthodox Islam doesn't recognize equal rights for women, the right to convert from Islam to another religion, or the right to criticize Islam, the Qu'ran, or Muhammad. Where Islam reins, basic human rights are restricted in the name of religious ideology.
In In the Shadow of the Prophet: The Struggle for the Soul of Islam, Milton Viorst writes about an interview he did on the murder of Farag Foda, a critic of Islamic orthodoxy:
“In supporting the shari’a, I am not dismissing human rights,” [Abdul Halim Mansour] replied amiably, with a kind of patience he might show in explaining the obvious to a foreigner. “Farag Foda surely has a human right to speak against the government or” — jabbing a finger demonstratively in my chest — “against you. But no one has a right to speak against God. We are the slaves of God. God has the right to sentence us to death for insults. If I deny my creator, how can I ask Him to let me live? There are no human rights against God.”
Mansour is one of Egypt’s most famous trial lawyers and he headed the legal team which defended Abdul-Sahfi Ahmad Ramadan, a religious extremist who murdered Farag Foda. Mansour fervently believes that any Muslim who insults God deserves to die — and he is not alone in this. Large numbers of Muslims simply don’t recognize that a person should have a right to criticize Islam, any more than they should have a right to convert away from Islam. They don’t even believe that there are such things as universal human rights; instead, there are simply those rights which God allows us.
It occurred to me as I headed for the door that four or five hundred years had probably passed since a lawyer in a Western courtroom had expressed a notion of justice which held that “God has a right to sentence us to death for insults,” It was not God who sentenced Foda, of course; it was two young zealots who did the killing and on whom Mansour bestowed his approval. Yet Mansour, I knew, was a serious man and, though we disagreed, I could not dismiss his endorsement execution for apostasy.
Mansour is “serious” in the sense that he means what he says and is willing to act on behalf of his beliefs. He may not be willing to pull the trigger and murder a critic of Islam, but he’s willing to support and defend those who do — not out of an abstract commitment to seeing that accused murderers receive justice, but out of a commitment to the idea that these murderers acted justly.
This makes him dangerous and that’s a very good reason not to dismiss his comments. The West is fortunate that Christian lawyers are no longer able to seriously make such claims and offer such defenses in a court of law. How long will it be before the same is true in most Muslim nations?
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