This is a corollary to my previous article, “Blasphemy can lead to apostasy,” (The Star, 25 May), to re-emphasize certain positions and to provide further clarification on a few.
I deem this extension necessary as there are still Muslims who-out of ignorance, misunderstanding, confusion-advocate ideas and translate them into acts that may lead to blasphemy, thus putting their religious status consciously or unconsciously at risk.
It must be clear that blasphemy, originally associated with Christianity, is here applied as a generic term and concept referring primarily to words or utterances that may ruin one’s belief in one’s religion. It may take place in any religious community, Muslim or otherwise. Therefore, blasphemy is basically a crime against all religions.
To reiterate, in the case of Islam, blasphemy is synonymous with heresy (zandaqah). There scarcely exists any distinction between the two. Hence heretics, in Islamic traditions, are also known as zindiqs.
In modern terms, loosely speaking, zindiqs are free thinkers, or atheists, i.e. those who either do not believe that God exists or turn skeptical about His existence.
They also refer to any group or groups of ‘Muslims’ who deviate from the right teachings of Islam as enshrined by the Quranic or established prophetic texts and their correct interpretations by authoritative true scholars.
We may, at this point, cite examples of some deviant individuals or groups like Ayah Pin, the propounder of the “Kingdom of Heaven”, Abdul Kahar, the self-proclaimed Malay Prophet, al-Arqam and al-Ma’unah.
Zindiqs may also be attributed to those who externally claim to follow a certain religious tradition but internally embrace an anti-religious attitude, whose deviant interpretation of textual pronouncements belittle religious principles and threaten the peaceful living in any given state. Perhaps Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses well illustrates this situation.
To make it more complete, inexhaustive though, manifestations of zandaqah may be categorized into three: those that pertain to God; those that relate to prophethood; and those that concern revelation and its interpretation.
As indicated, the first category includes the denial of God, doubting His existence, and any expression that insults and disparages Him.
The second category relates to words or acts that dishonour, defame the Prophet, make fun of him, creates satires on or caricatures about him, call him or any other prophets liars, and so forth.
The third segment refers to words like calling divine revelation a lie, profaning the Quran, questioning its sacred texts, criticizing laws, statements, figures, or actions within the text, carrying out acts with the intention of defaming or belittling with contempt the Islamic injunctions, i.e. the shariah,
The list continues to things like introducing into religion anything that is at variance with the revelation, fault-finding using taunting or derogatory or sarcastic language, wisecracking remarks, oaths and imprecations of irreligious nature, denying or rejecting something agreed upon by the whole Muslim ummah, freeing oneself from religious observances and laws and seeking liberation from obligatory duties.
In short, zindiqs in our context is applied for those who outwardly profess Islam but inwardly subscribe to infidelity, a heinous act of religious hypocrisy. These people may appear religious or sympathetic to religion but in reality they repudiate God, deny prophethood and revelation-the very foundations of religion itself.
Since this mischief is happening first and foremost in human mind largely through words, zandaqah signifies an intellectual rebellion insulting, ridiculing, denying or unjustified questioning of the authority of God, the Prophets, the angels; the validity of the holy books, i.e. the revelation, or anything rightly established as authentic part of the divine religious teaching.
Another term for heresy in Islam is ilhad. It is derived from the Arabic root l-h-d (la-ha-da), meaning “to incline” or “to deviate”. In the form of alhada, it means “to deviate from that which is lawful and right”, or “to put to a perverted use”, or “to act profanely towards something”.
Therefore ilhad, like zandaqah, is ‘heresy’, ‘apostasy’, ‘deviation’, ‘disbelief’. All simply refer to the rejection of religion per se. Thus mulhid also means a deviator, an apostate, a heretic, an atheist in religious belief, or a religious doubter inclining to atheism.
Obviously, there are no substantial differences between heresy (zandaqah, ilhad), apostasy (riddah) or infidelity (kufir). In fact, they have been interchangeably used in Islamic history and literature.
They represent just one reality – denunciation of Islam. All usages point to certain unjustified religious dissensions of individuals or groups, either on purpose or otherwise.
It should be discernible from my previous writing and the foregoing discussion that any expression of zandaqah may change one’s status of Muslim into a hypocrite (munafiq), a heretic (zindiq, mulhid), a renegade/apostate (murtad) and ultimately an unbeliever (kafir), all of which are abhorred by Islam.
Again, Muslims must be careful as any utterances or acts of zandaqah or ilhad entails hypocrisy, apostasy and infidelity. All are “treason against God”. Muslims today must seek proper knowledge and guidance from reliable scholars to understand their religion better.
In religious matters, they are not supposed to resort to reason and rational explanation alone at the expense of revelation. They must not become the modern “neo-zindiqs and mulhids”, deviating from the right path, and worse, multiplying confusions in the community by propagating their misunderstandings, misconceptions and ignorance.
