Iranian Government Intends to Embody in Law the Death Penalty for Apostates

BONN (February 28, 2008) – The scholar of Islam Dr. Christine Schirrmacher, from the Institute of Islamic Studies, characterizes the planned Iranian law establishing the death penalty for Muslim apostates as an alarming violation of human rights and religious freedom. Since a legal stipulation of this punishment was lacking to the present, judges were permitted to impose correspondingly long sentences of imprisonment or hard labor. Since the draft law makes reference, in Article 112, to all actions directed against the internal and external security of the country, Iranian Christians who might be deported from Germany or other countries in the future also would be threatened with a conviction under this law and, thus, would be in mortal danger. After approval of the draft law by the cabinet already in January, the expected consent of Parliament is still pending. Along with converts to Christianity, liberal thinkers and members of the religious minority of the Baha’i also would fall under the provisions of the law. (The draft law provides for the death penalty not only for apostasy, but also for drunkenness, rape, murder, armed robbery, drug dealing, adultery, and male homosexuality.)

Repentance Period for “National” Apostates and Life Imprisonment for Women

The draft law differentiates between “born” and “national” apostates. Those in the first group have grown up in families with at least one Muslim parent and have turned away from Islam later. Article 225, paragraph 7, demands for them unreservedly: “The punishment for a ‘born’ apostate is death.” A “national” apostate is understood to be an Iranian citizen who has grown up in a non-Muslim household, then has converted to Islam, and later has turned away from it once again. A three-day period for repentance is granted to him before the final sentence of death. According to Article 225, paragraph 10, women can be spared death and instead can be sentenced to life in prison. They, however, are to be moved through hard prison conditions to return to Islam, and are to be released immediately as soon as they recant.

Muslim Legal Schools are Agreed in Regard to the Death Penalty

Although in Islamic history individual Muslim legal scholars repeatedly have expressed reservations against the death penalty for apostates, and representatives of a non-political, liberal Islam today demand that a change of religion not be considered as a crime worthy of death, but rather as a private matter, nothing has changed in regard to the fundamental Sharia position of official theology on apostasy. The four Sunni legal schools, as well as the Shiite school, are agreed on the fact that traditional Islamic law demands the death sentence for defection from the faith. Reference is made to Sura 4:89, among others: “But if they turn renegades (from the faith), seize them and slay them wherever you find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks!” Also, the “Cairo Declaration of Human Rights” from 1990 and the “Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights” from 1981 grant a right to life only to the one who does not act counter to the standards of Sharia and its laws. This one-sided understanding of the freedom of belief and religion is one of the central points at issue in national and international religious dialogue. On both sides, differing religious and social-political content is associated with concepts such as human rights, freedom of belief, and religious tolerance, so Schirrmacher.

Background: Christians in Iran

Christians comprise at present about 0.3% of the Iranian population. Among these are 150,000 Armenian and Assyrian Christians. The number of converts, most of whom lead an underground existence, is estimated at 250,000. Christians of the hereditary Christian churches are forbidden to support converts. So-called religious guards carry out inspections in the hereditary churches in order to determine whether there are also Muslims among those attending worship. When the well-known convert and later pastor Mehdi Dibaj was to be executed in 1994 on the grounds of his conversion, an international protest arose and Dibaj finally was released. A few years after his release, however, Dibaj and four other Protestant pastors were brutally murdered. Since the murderers never were brought to trial, local Christians do not rule out the possibility of connivance or even participation on the part of official circles in the events.

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