Statement by IHEU Representative Roy Brown, Friday, 2 April 2004

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Commission on Human Rights: 60th Session. (15 March – 23 April 2004)

 

Civil and Political Rights, including the question of: Freedom of expression (11c) and Religious intolerance (11c) Chair: Mike Smith

 

I am privileged, as President of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, to read the statement of Ibn Warraq, author of Why I am not a Muslim (1996), and editor of Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out (2003).

 

In Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism, apostasy is no longer an issue. Nowhere on earth in any state are there legal sanctions if any individual wishes to change from one of those religions; it is a matter of personal choice, and it has become axiomatic that ‘My conscience is my own’.

 

But in Muslim countries apostasy is far from a dead issue, as is shown by the fairly recent examples of those tried, imprisoned, forced into exile, or executed, in the Sudan, Egypt, Iran, Yemen, Pakistan, and elsewhere. Despite the oft-quoted Qur’anic plea for toleration, ‘There is no compulsion in religion’, all the major Muslim theologians have concluded that apostasy should be punishable by death. And the absence of any mention of apostasy in the penal codes of some Islamic countries in no way implies that a Muslim is free to leave his religion. In reality, the lacunae in the penal codes are filled by Islamic Law, as in the case of Muhammad Taha, executed for apostasy in the Sudan in 1985.

 

Islamic Human Rights Schemes are clearly not universal since they introduce specifically religious criteria into the political sphere. A Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights is an oxymoron. Such a declaration is either Universal or it is Islamic. All such Islamic schemes severely restrict and qualify the rights of individuals, particularly of women, non-Muslims, and those such as apostates who do not accept Islamic religious orthodoxy.

 

In Muslim countries apostasy is usually linked to the related charges of unbelief, blasphemy and heresy. However these charges, whether upheld or not, clearly contravene several articles in the UDHR of 1948, and the legally binding International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR] of 1966 to which 147 states are signatories. Article 18 of the ICCPR is very clear.

 

General comment No. 22, adopted by the UN Human Rights Commission at its 48th session (1993) declares:

 

Article 18 protects theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief. The term ‘belief ’ and ‘religion’ are to be broadly construed.

 

We urge the Commission on Human Rights to call on all governments to bring their national legislation into conformity with those human rights instruments to which they are party, and to forbid fatwas or sermons preaching violence in the name of God, against those holding unorthodox opinions, or who have left a religion.