Religious Limits in the Muslim World
IF THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT AUTHORITIES IN ISLAM, the Quran and the Hadith, do not curb religious freedom, then where do the restrictions in the Muslim world come from?
This is a question leading scholar of Islam and religious freedom Prof. Abdullah Saeed has spent much of his career trying to answer. Saeed (pictured in center above) informed an audience of graduate students, lawyers and journalists at a recent seminar on religious freedom that his research has found very little historical or theological evidence to support any ongoing religious restrictions.
In fact, the restrictions that countries such as Saudi Arabia impose on Muslims as well as non-Muslims “serve no Quranic or Prophetic purpose,” stated Prof. Saeed, who is Muslim himself and teaches Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
The professor, who spent his early education at conservative Islamic seminaries in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, was one of the speakers at the Witherspoon Institute's seminar on Islam and Religious Freedom at the Princeton Theological Seminary.
An often-overlooked aspect of this issue is that Muslims who do not subscribe to a country’s official version of Islam face greater restrictions than non-Muslims, noted Saeed, who holds a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies and an M.A. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Melbourne. The main issue concerning non-Muslims, he went on, is not belief per se, but its manifestation.
The Maldivian-born scholar explained that the first restrictions emerged in the early first and late second centuries of Islam.
The Prophet lived for 12 years in Mecca and then 10 years in Medina, said Saeed, co-author of Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam. The 114 suras of the Quran are broadly classified as Meccan and Medinan, according to their place and time of revelation.
When the Prophet was teaching and preaching in Mecca, he attracted a few hundred converts, many of whom were themselves persecuted. But “the Quran kept emphasizing again and again that the Prophet’s job was to preach. He did not have the authority to force anybody…No violence was allowed,” Saeed emphasized.
In 622 CE, the Prophet and his followers had to flee to Medina because their condemnation of idol worship had angered powerful groups of Meccans, and conversions into Islam were seen as a threat to local tribal leaders.
Medina, where the Prophet spent the next 10 years, had very different politics. Large numbers of people converted to Islam, but there was a significant Jewish community that did not convert, Saeed added. In the first five years, “the Muslim community was struggling, trying to defend itself from outside repression from the opponents [Meccans and Jews who allied with them].”
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This is a total farce.
Islam doesn't restrict religious freedom, and commandments in the Quran bash such a ridiculous article and the likes in the face (Do refer to the First comment on this article where multiple citations have been stated)
Secondly, judging by the author's name which clearly points out an indian background, and clearly isn't muslim and hasn't stated that (s)he is a qualified scholar of islam to speak about it so freely. Do mind your place and speak on subjects you're qualified to talk about and refrain from infringing on others which you don't have the right to speak about.
You, are a joke.
this all are lie...
then look at these things from kuran and hadith:
1. Why is it so hard for Muslim to become a Christian or join with another religion? Mohammed said, “Whoever changes his Islamic religion, kill him.” (Hadith Al Buhkari vol. 9:57) This command is practiced in almost all Islamic Fundamentalist countries today.
2.“Slay the idolators [non-Muslims] wherever ye find them, and take them captive, and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the last Day…. Go forth, light-armed and heavy-armed, and strive with your wealth and your lives in the way of Allah! (Sura 9:5,29,41).
3. If they trust the power of the Qur'an, why would they rely on physical force and intimidation. However they will say, “Therefore grant a delay to the Unbelievers: Give respite to them gently (for awhile).” Sura 86:17
4. Mohammed said, “I have been ordered to fight with the people till they say, none has the right to be worshipped but Allah” (Al Bukhari vol. 4:196).
5. Sura 5:51: “O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: they are but friends and protectors to each other. And he among you that turns to them for friendship is of them.” This friendship makes any Muslim a enemy of their own and deserving of the same fate as the unbeliever. This is because God does not guide an unjust people.
6. Sura3 3:64: “Verily Allah has cursed the Unbelievers (whom he defined as Christians in the 5th surah “Believers, take not Jews and Christians for your friends.) and has prepared for them a Blazing Fire to dwell in forever. No protector will they find, nor savior. That Day their faces will be turned upside down in the Fire. They will say: ‘Woe to us! We should have obeyed Allah and obeyed the Messenger!’ ‘Our Lord! Give them double torment and curse them with a very great Curse!’”
7. Hadith, the body of traditions relating to Mohammed and now supplemental to the Koran: He (Abu Hurayah) reported the messenger of Allah as saying: The last hour will not come before the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, so that Jews will hide behind stones and trees and the Stone and the tree will say, O Muslim, O servant of God! There is a Jew behind me; come and kill him. The only exception will be the box-thorn for it is one of the trees of the Jews. (Sahih of Muslim, quoted by Israel and the Prophecies of Al Quran by Ali Akbar, Bismi Publishers 1992, p.44)
8. Of the Unbelievers: Sura 4:89 “seize them and slay them wherever you find them: and in any case take no friends or helpers from their ranks.” ... Slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush. (Sura 9:5)....
9. Many of these quotes should be self-evident what the meaning is. Of course they will be some that say that what they mean is not what they read like. Muslim clerics and their apologists are saying “the command to kill non-Muslims is not for today” it was only for a certain time. Where in the Qur’an does it say this? It does not say or teach the commands to kill the “infidels”, “unbelievers” “Jews” and “Christians” was only for a previous time. ” Nowhere. why should we accept this rhetoric? There is proof in the Qur'an that it is actually to continue and increase.
10. One of their Hadiths states about their own: Narrated Ikrima: The statement of Allah’s Apostle (Muhammad), “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.” (Hadith 9:45; 84.2.57.)
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