overview

This page considers religious apostasy,.

It covers -

• introduction - making sense of apostasy
• issues
• law
• studies

It complements more detailed discussion elsewhere on this site regarding human rights, blasphemy, sacrilege and the law.

     introduction

Apostasy involves abandoning a religious faith, whether through conversion to another creed or through implicit/explicit agnosticism and atheism.

That abandonment has significant consequences in theocratic states such as Iran and in ostensibly secular states such as Malaysia and Egypt, including denial of the apostate's civil identity and penalties such imprisonment or capital punishment.

Apostasy is not punished in advanced economies, which typically regard religious belief as something of concern to the individual rather than the state and consider that society is not threatened by movement from one faith to another. That absence of punishment reflects article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 (UDHR) and article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights 1966 (ICCPR), discussed here.

However, Australia - along with other liberal democratic states that aspire to respect human rights - has recognised apostasy in relation to refugee law, acknowledging that apostates in other states may face substantial discrimination and strong civil/criminal penalties.

     issues

-On some traditional accounts of justice, no injustice is implied by the claim that one is not permitted to leave one’s religion of birth. For many Muslims the very idea that one might legitimately leave Islam would void the religion of meaning. Apostasy is formally punishable by death: Islam means submission, not choice.

     studies

Studies regarding Islam include Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam (Aldershot: Ashgate 2004) by Abdullah Saeed & Hassan Saeed, 'Apostasy and Public Policy in Contemporary Egypt: An Evaluation of Recent Cases from Egypt's Highest Courts' by Maurits Berger in 25(3) Human Rights Quarterly (2003) 720-740, 'Apostasy in Egypt: Contemporary Cases of Hisbah' by Susanne Olsson in 98(1) The Muslim World (2008) 95-115, The Rights of God: Islam, Human Rights & Comparative Ethics (Washington: Georgetown Uni Press 2007) by Irene Oh, Human Rights and the Conflict of Cultures: Western and Islamic Perspectives on Religious Liberty (Columbia: Uni of South Carolina Press 1988) edited by David Little and the 1998 paper 'The apostasy law in the age of universal human rights and citizenship: Some legal and political implications' by Anh Longva. Statements by Islamic apostates are provided in the controversial Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out (New York: Prometheus 2003) edited by Ibn Warraq.

Among works on religious toleration in the contemporary West see Peter Zagorin's How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 2003). For a human rights perspective see Michael Kirby's lucid 2007 'Fundamental Human Rights and Religious Apostasy' (The Griffith Lecture 2007) (PDF).

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