Freedom of thought needs an atmosphere of tolerance where people can speak their mind and no one is forced to accept the beliefs of others. In the Middle East, though, tolerance is in short supply and ideas that don't fit the expectations of society and governments are viewed as a threat.

Where religion is concerned, the "threat" can come from almost anyone with unorthodox ideas but especially from those who reject religion entirely.

Increasingly, atheists in Arab countries are characterised as dangerous extremists – to be feared no less than violent jihadists.

Persecuting atheists is the inevitable result of governments setting themselves up as guardians of faith. Among the 22 Arab League countries, Islam is "the religion of the state" in 16 of them: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the UAE and Yemen. 

For most of them, this is more than just a token gesture; it also serves political purposes. Embracing religion and posing as guardians of morality is one way for regimes to acquire some legitimacy, and claiming a mandate from God can be useful if they don't have a mandate from the public.

State religions, in their most innocuous form, signal an official preference for one particular kind of faith and, by implication, a lesser status for others. But the effects become far more obtrusive when governments rely on state religion as an aid to legitimacy – in which case the state religion has to be actively supported and policed. That, in turn, de-legitimises other belief systems and legitimises intolerance and discrimination directed against them. 

The policing of religion in Arab countries takes many forms, from governments appointing clerics and setting the theme for weekly sermons to the enforcement of fasting during Ramadan. 

To shield the government-approved version of religion from criticism, a variety of mechanisms can be deployed. These include laws against "defaming" religion and proselytising by non-Muslims but general laws regarding public order, telecommunications and the media may also apply.

In Algeria, for instance, the law forbids making, storing, or distributing printed or audiovisual materials with the intention of "shaking the faith" of a Muslim. In Oman, using the internet in ways that "might prejudice public order or religious values" is an imprisonable offence.

For Muslims who publicly abandon Islam the problem is even worse. In Mauritania, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen anyone convicted of apostasy faces the threat – at least in theory – of execution.

Using a state religion as an aid to legitimacy turns the personal beliefs of individuals into a political issue, because disagreeing with the state's theological position also implies disloyalty to the state. Those who happen to disagree must either conform or risk becoming not only a religious dissident but a political one too.

Equating religious conformity with loyalty to the state allows Arab governments to label non-conformists not merely as dissidents but extremists. This in turn provides an excuse for suppressing them, as has been seen in Egypt with the Sisi regime's campaign against atheism and in Saudi Arabia where "promotion of atheist thought" became officially classified as terrorism.

Although Saudi Arabia's war on atheists stems from fundamentalist theology, in Egypt it's the opposite: the Sisi regime presents itself as a beacon of religious moderation. To describe the Sisi brand of Islam as moderate, though, is rather misleading. "Militantly mainstream" might be a better term. Theologically speaking it is middle-of the-road and relatively bland but also illiberal and authoritarian in character.

The result in Egypt is a kind of enforced centrism. While allowing some scope for tolerance – of other monotheistic religions, for example – the regime sets limits on discourse about religion in order to confine it to the middle ground. The main intention, obviously, was to place Islamist theology beyond the bounds of acceptability but at the other end of the spectrum it also means that atheism, scepticism and liberal interpretations of Islam have become forms of extremism.

Defining 'extremism'

Absurd as it might seem to place atheists in the same category as extremists such as terrorists and jihadists, the issue hinges on how "extremism" is defined: extreme in relation to what? Violent and intolerant extremism is a global phenomenon but confusion arises when governments try to define it by reference to national or culture-specific values.

Arab states are not the only offenders in this respect, though. They have been assisted by western governments defining "extremism" in a similar way – as rejection of a specific national culture rather than rejection of universal rights and international norms.

In its effort to prevent radicalisation of students, for example, the British government defined extremism as "vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values". Also in the context of eradicating extremism, the education minister talked about actively promoting "British values" in schools.

Approaching the problem in this way invites other countries to do likewise – even if their own national and cultural values would be considered extreme in relation to universal rights and international norms. Thus, Saudis can justifiably claim that atheism is contrary to fundamental Saudi values. Furthermore, the British minister's idea of instilling British values into British schoolchildren is not very different in principle from "instilling the Islamic faith" in young Saudis – which the kingdom's Basic Law stipulates as one of the main goals of education.

This article was first published on al-Bab.
 

The post Arab world: Where atheism is equated with extremism appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Human rights defenders are out in the cold at this moment: we have compromised allies on the left and the right.
 

National Security Adviser Michael Flynn at the National Prayer Breakfast, February, 2017, Washington, DC. Pool/ABACA ABACA/Press Association.

The line of demarcation has been drawn. Is fear of Islam rational? or a mental illness, a phobia? Against the soon-to-be National Security Advisor Michael T. Flynn’s claim that fear of Islam is rational, we have the common and damning denunciation of Islamophobia.

My perspective is unusual; I am a historian of modern Europe and a human rights lawyer who works in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. My work defending human rights is born out of requests from Muslim Mauritanians who believe deeply in the promise of human rights – the right to freedom from enslavement, the right to equality before the law, the right to freedom of conscience, the right to freedom of expression, the right to property, and so forth. These are fundamental values that have guided the United States from its revolutionary era and that are enshrined in the major international human rights treaties.

Human rights defenders in the Islamic world often find themselves fighting oppressive governments that are allies of the United States. And then they have to fight again, when the architects of such international policy deride Islamic culture as incapable of supporting human rights.

The much celebrated book of Karima Bennoune, Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here, tells the story of numerous Muslim human rights defenders. All of them are fighting for the fundamental values that animate our American democracy. The polarization of politics – from rational to fear, or phobia – silences this human rights movement. The human rights defenders find themselves on a small isolated island, an ideological no man’s land.

By all rights the defense of human rights should be integral to western politics. And yet we find ourselves in a political dynamic so highly polarized that one camp is insisting rational people should fear Islam, and on the other hand, in the urgent need to defend people under attack, we see an uncritical embrace of all Muslim traditions. We see, for example, college students enthusiastically defending a sex-segregated Muslim prayer circle at the University of Michigan. The students are rightfully motivated to defend a minority culture that is under attack, but the nuance is lost — the male supremacism of this sex-segregated prayer circle goes uncriticized.

Probably some of those students defending the prayer circle are advocates of women’s rights. But the men they are defending, do they believe in women’s rights? Just to be clear, this male supremacism is shared by most conservative religions, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim. The advocate for human rights, which include women’s rights, is critical of all these male supremacist ideologies.

Those politicians who believe that fear of Muslims is rational, meanwhile, argue, why is the left so stupid as to defend conservative Muslims? Why do they defend this culture that is so deeply at odds with western values? This culture that believes in veiling women, in stoning adulterers, in cutting off the hands of thieves, in executing blasphemers and apostates? The nuance is lost. There are numerous Muslim defenders of human rights. Indeed, the stereotyping of Muslims and blanket denunciation is itself a human rights violation.

The nuance is lost, abandoned in the polarized ideological battle that, along with the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump, has slammed hard onto center stage of national politics. Human rights defenders are out in the cold at this moment, we have compromised allies on the left and the right.

When I defend my Mauritanian client, Mohamed Cheikh Mkhaitir, against blasphemy charges and fight to get his death sentence repealed, I risk being viewed as an ally of Pamela Geller and her politics of polarization. Those on the left cannot hear of human rights troubles in Islamic societies, they are preoccupied with defending Muslim immigrants against hateful discrimination. Those on the right gleefully seize on any scandal in the Muslim world as further evidence of its irredeemable nature.

The western world, so caught up in its own objectives and internal clashes, easily abandons human rights advocates for Muslim communities. This is true not only in domestic politics, but even more so in international policy. The long alliance with the Kingdom of Saud is only the most glaring example. We could go on: US support for the Saudi war in Yemen, US tolerance for Israeli war on Gaza and other aggressions against Palestinians, US unprovoked war on Iraq and its ill-advised invasion of Afghanistan.

Human rights defenders in the Islamic world often find themselves fighting oppressive governments that are allies of the United States. And then they have to fight again, when the architects of such international policy deride Islamic culture as incapable of supporting human rights.

As of January 20 2017, when Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States, when General Flynn assumed office as National Security Adviser, the defenders of human rights for Muslims find themselves in political no man’s land.

Alice Bullard is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Initiative for the Resurgent Abolition Movement, known commonly as IRA – USA. Previously she was a tenured professor of History at Georgia Institute of Technology. She holds a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center, and is licensed in the state of Maryland and in Washington DC. Her M.A. and Ph.D. were earned in European Intellectual and Post-Colonial history at the University of California, Berkeley. She has published widely on French colonial and post-colonial history, history of human rights, history of psychiatry and psycho-analysis, and environmental history. Her articles are linked on academia.edu.

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Demonstrators outside the Supreme Court. The banner says: ""We demand the execution of Ould Mkhaitir immediately".

In December 2013 engineer Mohamed Ould Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir wrote an article for a website about Mauritania's caste system, including prejudice against the low-status blacksmith class. His article also referred to similar practices in the time of the Prophet. 

Two days after the article appeared Ould Mkhaitir was arrested and has been in jail ever since. His family reportedly disowned him, his marriage was dissolved on grounds of apostasy and his lawyer abandoned him. A Mauritanian businessman also offered a substantial reward for anyone who succeeded in killing him.

In December 2014 Ould Mkhaitir (also known as Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mohamed) was convicted of apostasy "for speaking lightly of the Prophet" and sentenced to death. Ould Mkhaitir told the court it was "not his intention to harm the prophet", according to a judicial source quoted by AFP. For more background on the case see previous blog post and a recent article in IB Times.
 

Facing execution: Mohamed Ould Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir

Apostasy is a capital offence in Mauritania though no one has been executed there for many years. Those convicted of apostasy are allowed three days to repent – in which case they will be spared execution but imprisoned for an unspecified time.

The purpose Tuesday's Supreme Court hearing was to determine whether Ould Mkhaitir, now aged 31, has "sincerely" repented. The court has been coming under heavy external pressure not to accept his repentance.

Last month, Mauritania's Forum of Imams and Ulemas called for him to be executed "with no exception made for his repentance". Their statement said: "We demand that the competent authorities apply the law: kill him and bury him in conformity with the law of God."

According to the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), which is monitoring the case through local contacts, some of the demonstrators outside the court on Tuesday were armed. One banner, bearing the name of the "Group of Lovers of the Prophet" said in Arabic: "We demand the execution of Ould Mkhaitir immediately".

IHEU also said prosecution lawyers were accusing Ould Mkhaitir's lawyers of apostasy and calling on them to "repent" for defending him.

The case was adjourned until December 20 when a final verdict is expected.
 

More protesters outside the court

This story was first published  on Al-Bab.

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