Human Rights Does Religious Liberty Fit Into Islam?

In the wake of the Persian Gulf War, the U.S. and allied nations have looked to the Middle East as a site for building President Bush’s “new world order.” Yet international religious liberty watchdog groups have criticized the Bush administration for its failure publicly to include attention to human rights and religious liberty in that effort. Of most concern are the vast restrictions that most predominantly Muslim countries place on Christians and other religious minorities. According to many observers, the key question is whether Islam is compatible with religious pluralism.

Patrick Sookhdeo, director of the International Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, located in Great Britain, has his doubts, particularly on the issue of conversion. Speaking at a Washington, D.C., conference on religious liberty and Islam, Sookhdeo said, “It is intrinsic within the very nature of Islam in its classical formation that a Muslim may not choose to embrace another faith.”

Sookhdeo, who is also on the Missions Commission of the World Evangelical Fellowship, cited widely held and practiced Muslim traditions that the “apostate” be executed. “Given the historical difficulties in defining precisely who is a Muslim, apostasy is being used as the basis of the suppression of any idea, person, or group which dissents from established authority,” he said.

Sookhdeo made his remarks at a one-day meeting sponsored by the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), the National Association of Evangelicals, Catholic University of America, and the Trinitarians, a Catholic human-rights organization. More than 100 people attended the conference, held in the Senate office building on Capitol Hill, which brought together scholars, theologians, and politicians to discuss Islam and religious liberty.

Question Of Conversion

Sayyid Mohammad Syeed, director of Academic Outreach at the International Institute of Islamic Thought near Washington, D.C., took issue with Sookhdeo. “According to classical understanding of the Qur’an, [conversion] should be allowed,” he said, although he admitted there are different views within Islam about this.

Syeed denied that non-Muslims have been “singled out for persecution or prosecution.” “Muslims have suffered along with non-Muslims,” he said, criticizing the overall human-rights records of many Islamic nations.

Sayyid Hussein Nasr, professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University, cautioned Christians in the West against judging the entire world by their standards. Sitting on Capitol Hill, “one thinks the values of American society are absolute and must be global,” he said.

Nasr emphasized that Islamic views of Christians are often colored by “a silent, third partner: the secularized, Western world,” which is perceived as a threat to the Islamic world and way of life. “Minorities have problems everywhere, and the Islamic world is not last on the list,” he said.

While the conference dealt mostly with theological, philosophical, and academic discussions, practical issues also emerged, IRD executive director Kent Hill highlighted Christian human-rights concerns at the beginning of the meeting, commenting that “some who could have made an important contribution to this conference are not present today because of a fear of what the consequences of their participation may have been.”

Citing security concerns, the IRD later declined to elaborate for CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

An aide to Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) raised the plight of the three Egyptian converts who were held without charges in a Cairo prison (see World Scene, p. 48).

Rep. Paul Henry (R-Mich.), while urging the West to examine its own attitudes, had a warning for the Islamic world. Various congressional panels are “looking deeply” into the allegations of human-rights abuses in Muslim countries, he said. “In Congress, this is an issue, even if it isn’t for the administration.”