I was brought up in an orthodox Jewish home, being of a generation in the midst of the process of secularization that occurred among those whose origin was the great immigration of Jews from eastern Europe around the turn of the century. The practices of the religion was an ever fading echo of what defined life when my mother was born in Europe in 1902
I used my experience in attending an after school "Chader," or Hebrew School that was taught by a Rabbi who was born in a Polish Ghetto, and intellectually never left it. His world, unlike mine that meant living among non Jews, was in a bubble where he would only interact with those like him. I verified with Muhammad that as Hebrew (before Israel) was a sacred language that was used in prayer even among those who didn't fully understand the words, so it is with Arabic in countries such as Indonesia, the most populous of Islamic countries, where Arabic is not common.
Mohammad was quite candid in confirming what I had heard about the Madrasa, unlike the more politically correct Wikipedia article. He confirmed that often children learn the Koran by rote without any understand of the meaning, or even what the words mean, if they do not speak Arabic. The term includes a more broad Islam focus education but also this type of indoctrination that perpetuates ignorance.
This was enough for me to see that he was not only knowledgeable, but truthful. I then went on to the concept of Jihad, and one aspect of it that was most damning to the religion that he represented. It is the subject of apostasy, the treatment of those who leave a religion. I have strong feelings about this, as it is a cause of great pain in many religions. I have a good friend who happens to be a Jehovah's Witnesses, and my affection for him increased when I learned how during the Nazi era those co-religionists in Germany joined the Jews, Gypsies and Gays in the Concentration camps rather than accede to the demands of overt symbolic respect to the state.
This affection for the religion was strained when I found out that they practice shunning of apostates, even members of one's own family are so discarded if they leave the church. I knew that Islam went further than this, much further. My question to Muhammad was: "If your own child denounced Islam, would you accept the edict that he is to be put to death?"
He responded by not only confirming that this is the command of the Koran, but a firm, "I agree with it." At that moment I realized the width of chasm that separated us in spite of our reaching some common ground. So, I probed a bit further, and here's where it gets interesting.
I asked him what if he were a small child who had been kidnapped, and lived a life outside of Islam and rejected the religion, would he faces such a punishment. "No", he said, explaining that such a person would not be considered a Muslim and therefore not one who leaves the fold.
At one point Muhammad pointed out to me that the command to kill apostates is not only Islamic, but it applied to Jews, and is in Deuteronomy 13, with extra viciousness such as destroying the entire town of the blasphemer. And he is right, as excerpted here.
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6 “If your brother, the son of your mother, your son or your daughter, the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul, secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ which you have not known, neither you nor your fathers, 7 of the gods of the people which are all around you, near to you or far off from you, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth, 8 you shall not consent to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him or conceal him; 9 but you shall surely kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. 10 And you shall stone him with stones until he dies, because he sought to entice you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. 11 So all Israel shall hear and fear, and not again do such wickedness as this among you.
12 “If you hear someone in one of your cities, which the LORD your God gives you to dwell in, saying, 13 ‘Corrupt men have gone out from among you and enticed the inhabitants of their city, saying, “Let us go and serve other gods”’—which you have not known— 14 then you shall inquire, search out, and ask diligently. And if it is indeed true and certain that such an abomination was committed among you, 15 you shall surely strike the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying it, all that is in it and its livestock—with the edge of the sword. 16 And you shall gather all its plunder into the middle of the street, and completely burn with fire the city and all its plunder, for the LORD your God. It shall be a heap forever; it shall not be built again.
17 So none of the accursed things shall remain in your hand, that the LORD may turn from the fierceness of His anger and show you mercy, have compassion on you and multiply you, just as He swore to your fathers, 18 because you have listened to the voice of the LORD your God, to keep all His commandments which I command you today, to do what is right in the eyes of the LORD your God.
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We then discussed the fine points of this issue, which shows how different are the values of Islam and other "Western values," a term I use to include everything from the Catholic Church to myself, an atheist. It turns out that the crime that he strongly believes deserved being killed for is not the leaving the church, it is blasphemy The confusion is described in the Wikipedia article on the word.
Apostasy ( /əˈpɒstəsi/; Greek: ἀποστασία (apostasia), a defection or revolt, from ἀπό, apo, "away, apart", στάσις, stasis, "stand", "standing") is the formal disaffiliation from or abandonment or renunciation of a religion by a person. One who commits apostasy apostatises and is an apostate. These terms have a pejorative implication in everyday use. The term is used by sociologists to mean renunciation and criticism of, or opposition to, a person's former religion, in a technical sense and without pejorative connotation.......
Many religious groups and some states punish apostates. Apostates may be shunned by the members of their former religious group[1] or subjected to formal or informal punishment. This may be the official policy of the religious group or may be the action of its members. A Christian church may in certain circumstances excommunicate the apostate, while some Abrahamic scriptures (Judaism: Deuteronomy 13:6–10, and Islam: al-Bukhari, Diyat, bab 6)[citation needed] demand the death penalty for apostates. The death penalty is still applied to apostates by some Muslim states (such as Iran[2]), but not in Christianity or Judaism.
Well, I can add that it's not only Iran where this is approved of, but among those who represent the religion in the United States. And this is what was illuminating. While the foundational text of both of our religions mandate death for apostates, I don't believe that there are more than a tiny fraction among Jews who would say that they agree, even going to the practice of execution, with this stricture.
But the Gentleman I spoke to yesterday, was clear, if someone born and bred to his religion overtly and publicly proclaimed their rejection of Islam, he affirmed that not only his religion, but he as an individual believes such such a person should be killed.
Muhamad, a pleasant erudite courteous man, is still existing in a primitive village that his namesake experienced fourteen centuries ago, one that has not been encroached upon by concepts of freedom of thought and expression. Those orthodox Jews like my Rabbi, may among themselves share this condemnation of apostates, but I doubt it, as too many of them have their own families who would be so condemned. Jews, using the racial definition, encompass a wide ranging of thinking about God and humanity. In the United States as well as in Israel, most Jews are secular, and even if we have place in our hearts for what we, or our parents, learned as children, we have a greater place for the enlightenment values of understanding others.
Muhamad was not an aberration, as he was in charge of that booth that was sponsored by a national Islamic information organization. I engaged him in open conversation hoping to find that the public image was wrong, that those he represented were more like those who call themselves Jews, yet whose values have been formed by so much more.
I don't know how his attitude can be reconciled with this county's values, much less it's laws. Not only may we not kill someone for expressing any opinion, we may not prevent them from doing so. There were two people in the booth who agreed with everything he said, so I would guess that there is more validity to this than we would like to believe.
