CENSORSHIP IN ISLAMIC SOCIETIES By Trevor Mostyn Saqi Books London; Distributed by Vanguard Books Lahore; Pp216; Price 16.95 pounds
hose Pakistanis who are shocked by the anachronistic Islamic reform suggested by our religious ministry and Council for Islamic Ideology should take a look at what Egypt’s Al-Azhar is doing to Egyptian society with the approval of the Council of State. In Iran, a large number of people have been executed and lapidated under law. In Sudan reformers have been declared apostate by the state and done to death. In Kuwait the works of Rumi were banned by the state censorship. On the other hand, a number of people sentenced to death in Pakistan for violating Islamic laws have not been killed by the state as yet, but the pressure daily increases on it to do so. Institutional extremism encourages an extremist attitude in society and people feel encouraged to revolt against the state because it is not hardline enough. Muslim clergy dominates civil societies with a stamp of authority from the state institutions. They become violent when they feel thwarted from their right to rule and bring about the utopia they promise to the people through the enforcement of pure faith. Because of their xenophobic fulminations, Muslim youth is attracted increasingly to international terrorism. This trend is proportional to the violence allowed in the home state by the official orthodoxy.
The book under review draws from public documents and newspaper reports to put together a mosaic of how the Islamic societies are being subjected to extremism. In 1987, 404 people, 270 of them Iranians, had been killed after disturbances in Mecca. When Ayatollah Montazeri objected to extreme action taken against Iranian society after the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini rejected him saying he (Imam Khomeini) was following the example of the treatment meted out to Banu Quraiza. By 1994, 48 writers and journalists had been executed, including novelist Rehman Hatefi and Said Sultanpour. A thousand Iranian intellectuals were in jail. In Egypt, the intellectual is under threat from a 1980 press law. Aala Hamid a novelist was sacked and imprisoned in 1997 for writing a novel the court thought obscene. In 1993, Egyptian professor Abu Zayd was declared apostate by a court and his wife forced to leave him. The same year Nawal El Saadhawi was hunted out of the country for writing objectionable novels. She had described the horror of her circumcision, a ritual that a majority of the women in that region of Africa have to suffer without a single cleric saying that it is against the teachings of the Quran. In 1995, an Algerian cartoonist was kidnapped and executed. In 1992, cartoonist Karimzadeh was sent to prison for one year and given fifty lashes because his cartoon looked suspiciously like the Spiritual Ruler. Iran closes down newspapers and publications considered anti-Islamic. One was the magazine edited by former president Rafsanjani’s daughter, Faezeh Hashmi.
In Algeria the religious party FIS was not allowed to rule after winning elections by an oppressive Algerian army. It went terrorist along with GIA, an extremist outfit inspired by the Afghan mujahideen. In 1995, GIA killed journalists it thought were ‘moderate’. It targeted the cartoonists in particular for being disrespectful. In 1998, pop singer Matoub was killed at a roadblock by GIA. In 1999, the Nigerian state of Zamfara adopted shariah and a mob chopped off the hand of a petty thief with a large knife saying they were using Saudi Arabia as a model because there people left their shops open without fearing theft. Their idea of shariah was going into the toilet with the left foot forward and coming out right foot forward. In 1998 six people were killed by stoning and Article 119 of the Qissas law specified that the stones used for rijm should not be so big as to kill the victim immediately. In 1980, a Saudi man was beheaded for forming a relationship with the daughter of a potentate. The daughter was executed with bullets through the head. In Malaysia in 1997 couples were wrongfully arrested under laws against khalwa. In Afghanistan, men had to keep beards under pain of punishment and could be lashed for wearing shorts and flying kites. Women were beaten with car antennae for going out without a mehram. In 2001 Afghan film-maker Sairah Shah made a film showing girls raped by the Taliban after killing their mother in front of them.
The fulminating man of God has to be blind to give out fatwas of extreme toughness. Saudi Arabia’s chief cleric late Ibn Baz thought anyone not believing that the earth is fixed and doesn’t revolve around the sun was outside the pale of Islam. King Faisal tried to confiscate his book but it was too late. Egypt’s Sheikh Omar Abdur Rehman was so violent in his oratory that he caused violence in the country and was driven into exile in the US where he was found guilty of planning a bombing of the Trade Center in 1993. In 1988 Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize for his novels but was stabbed by an Islamist youth in Cairo enraged by official criticism of his work. In 1976 Al Azhar of Egypt caused moderate Islamic leader Muhammad Taha of Sudan to be killed for apostasy. In Iran, moderate Ayatollah Shariatmadari was also rejected in favour of more extremist leadership. Islam is a moderate creed. There is misdirection in what is happening in Muslim societies.