dTemple Mount, the holiest of all sites in Judaism and Western-Wall-Old-City-of-Jerusalem
Judaism is the world’s oldest monotheistic religion, dating back nearly 4,000 years. Followers of Judaism believe in one God who revealed himself through ancient prophets. The history of Judaism is essential to understanding the Jewish faith, which has a rich heritage of law, culture and tradition.
Judaism, monotheisticreligion developed among the ancient Hebrews. Judaism is characterized by a belief in one transcendent God who revealed himself to Abraham, Moses, and the Hebrew prophets and by a religious life in accordance with Scriptures and rabbinic traditions. Judaism is the complex phenomenon of a total way of life for the Jewish people, comprisingtheology, law, and innumerable cultural traditions.
Let us understand it first. Religion is human beings’ relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual, divine, or worthy of especial reverence. It is also commonly regarded as consisting of the way people deal with ultimate concerns about their lives and their fate after death. In many traditions, this relation and these concerns are expressed in terms of one’s relationship with or attitude toward gods or spirits; in more humanistic or naturalistic forms of religion, they are expressed in terms of one’s relationship with or attitudes toward the broader human community or the natural world. In many religions, texts are deemed to have scriptural status, and people are esteemed to be invested with spiritual or moral authority. Believers and worshippers participate in and are often enjoined to perform devotional or contemplative practices such as prayer, meditation, or particular rituals. Worship, moral conduct, right belief, and participation in religious institutions are among the constituent elements of religious life. Source Britannica
Definition of religion
1: a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices 2a(1): the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2): commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance 2b: the state of a religious a nun in her 20th year of religion 3: a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardour and faith 4: archaic: scrupulous conformity: CONSCIENTIOUSNESS Source M.Webster
Many people explained Religion as:
“Religion is the way of life made up of beliefs, rules, regulations, and legislations embedded in the law of doing and not doing. If we look at the meaning of religion this way, then whatever human believes is a religion in this regard. Secularism, Atheism, and the positive law are religions too made by humans. Briefly, anything that humans believe in is a religion.”
“religion” involves believing in an outer-worldly God or supernatural being, a deity. And a person simply believing in an ethic or moral, or law, does make them religious. This is what separates religion (believing in a God) from spirituality (believing in something greater than yourself)”
“the derivation of the word “religion” has been a matter of dispute from ancient times. Not even today is it a closed question. Cicero, in his “De natura deorum“, II, xxviii, derives religion from relegere (to treat carefully): “Those who carefully took in hand all things pertaining to the gods were called religiosi, from relegere.”
The term “religion” originated from the Latin noun religio, which was nominalized from one of three verbs: relegere (to turn to constantly/observe conscientiously); religare (to bind oneself [back]); and reeligere (to choose again). Because of these three different potential meanings, an etymological analysis alone does not resolve the ambiguity of defining religion, since each verb points to a different understanding of what religion is. During the Medieval Period, the term “religious” was used as a noun to describe someone who had joined a monastic order (a “religious”). Source The freedictionary
Max Muller favoured this view. But as religion is an elementary notion long antedating the time of complicated ritual presupposed in this explanation, we must seek elsewhere for its etymology
“Apparently, religions are man-made folly that controls the sanity of dishevelled souls.” “Religion is a system designed to enslave and imprison the mind of those it is imposed on.”
Many religious forms have been monothetic, seeking to determine a key, essential element which a section of religions share, which can be used to define “religion” as a category, and which must be necessary in order for something to be classified as a “religion”.There are two forms of monothetic definition; The first is substantive, seeking to identify a specific core as being at the heart of religion, such as a belief in a God or gods, or an emphasis on power. The second is functional, seeking to define “religion” in terms of what it does for humans, for instance defining it by the argument that it exists to assuage the fear of death, unite a community, or reinforce the control of one group over another. Other forms of definition are polythetic, producing a list of characteristics that are common to religion. In this definition, there is no one characteristic that needs to be common in every form of religion.
Causing further complications is the fact that there are various secular world views, such as nationalism and Marxism, which bear many of the same characteristics that are commonly associated with religion, but which rarely consider themselves to be religious.
Conversely, other scholars of religious studies have argued that the discipline should reject the term “religion” altogether and cease trying to define it. In this perspective, “religion” is argued to be a Western concept that has been forced upon other cultures in an act of intellectual imperialism. According to a scholar of religion Russell T. McCutcheon, “many of the peoples that we study by means of this category have no equivalent term or concept at all”. There is, for instance, no word for “religion” in languages like Sanskrit. And Islamic concept of religion also forces upon other religions as an act of Imperialism by means of terrorism.
Philosophy of religion uses philosophical tools to evaluate religious claims and doctrines. Western philosophy has traditionally been employed by English speaking scholars. (Some other cultures have their own philosophical traditions including Indian, Muslim, and Jewish.) Common issues considered by the (Western) philosophy of religion are the existence of God, belief and rationality, cosmology, and logical inferences of logical consistency from sacred texts.
Origin of religion
The “origin of religion” refers to the emergence of religious behavior in prehistory, before written records. Prehistoric religion, the beliefs and practices of Stone Age peoples. General characteristics Burial customs and cults of the dead
The oldest known burials can be attributed to the Middle Paleolithic Period. The corpses, accompanied by stone tools and parts of animals, were laid in holes in the ground and sometimes the corpses were especially protected. In some cases, the findings give the impression that the dead were to be “held onto.”Whether or not that meant that the dead were to be cared for lovingly or that their return was to be feared, it implies, in any case, a belief in life after death in some form. But it is not necessary to infer a belief in separate souls; rather, it could also indicate the concept of a “living corpse.”
It is not necessary to interpret these findings as remains of headhunting or developed skull cults, for even today some simple hunting and gathering societies have the custom of preserving such parts of corpses for long periods of time and even of carrying them around on their bodies. The same practice is observed also to have occurred in the Upper Paleolithic and even later periods, but it is not possible to infer an elaborated ancestor cult directly from such prolonged connections of the living with the dead.
We are most familiar with Homo sapiens. A species that FIRST evolved in East Africa about 200,000 years ago and has since spread to most parts of the Earth. Neanderthalls (Homo neanderthalensis) lived in Eurasia from about 200,000 to perhaps 24,000 years ago.
Evidence shows that Neanderthals and H. Sapiens bred with one another. Most Homo sapiens DNA contains some Neanderthals genes. Living 1.9 Million -200,000 years ago Homo erectus was first species to control fire and they dispersed throughout much of the old world. Homo Habilis lived in sub saharan Africa 2.4 million- 1.5 million years ago. and was long thought to have been the first to use stone tools.
The tools includes sharp-edged flakes, hammers and anvils They were unearthed from the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya, and date to 3.3 million years ago. They are 700,000 years older than any tools found before, even pre-dating the earliest humans in the Homo genus. The find, reported in Nature, suggests that more ancient species, such as Australopithecus afarensis or Kenyanthropus platyops, may have been more sophisticated than was thought. source BBCUntil now, some thought that Homo habilis – known as “handy man” – was the earliest of our ancestors in the Homo genus to use tools. But with Homo fossils dating back to only 2.4-2.3 million years ago, it now seems unlikely that this was the first toolmaker. Other finds, such as animal bones found in Ethiopia with cut marks that date to 3.39 million years ago, also suggest tool use began before H. habilis. Scientists now believe the 3.3-million-year-old implements were crafted by another, more primitive species.
If stone tool use is the key to being human tools discovered in 2011 dating to 3.3 million years ago could indicate that humanity predated Homo habilis…. possibly evolving in members of australopithecus – including A. africanus, A.Sediba, and others – whose remains have been linked with stone tool use.
Homo_erectus
During excavations near Peking (Beijing), China, between 1929 and 1937, researchers discovered several partial skulls of the species Homo erectus. These hominids lived around 400,000 years ago and came to be known as Peking Man. The first complete skullcap discovered at the Peking Man site was unearthed by a Chinese team in a candlelit pit in 1929. The sloping forehead and thick brow ridge in front and protruding occipital torus in back are typical Homo erectus features. source American Museum of Natural History
Megalith, huge, often undressed stone used in various types of Neolithic (New Stone Age) and Early Bronze Age monuments, noteworthy kind of burial. at the left side: South Korea: dolmen One of many dolmens in Ch’unch’ŏn (Chuncheon), Kangwŏn (Gangwon) province, South Korea.
From the Upper Paleolithic Period on, the burials manifest richer grave goods; other burial practices, as, for example, secondary burials, in which the bodies were first allowed to decompose fully and then the bones were buried, or in the burning of bodies (evident from the Neolithic Period). Analogies to recent (primitive) phenomena demonstrate that it is not possible to connect particular burial customs with particular notions of the beyond or to any other religious conceptions. Other than the burial of the whole body, the disposition of the individual parts of the body, and especially the skull, is important. Ritual deposition of skulls is confirmed for the Middle Paleolithic Period. From even earlier periods, multiple human skulls and long bones have been found within a single site (for example, associated with Peking man).
The situation is different with findings from permanent settlements of agrarian people, in contrast to constantly shifting hunter-collectors. Evidence for ancestor cult practices dating to the 7th millennium bce were first discovered at Jericho in Palestine, where several skulls were found to have been deposited in a separate room, some of them covered with a plaster modeling of faces similar to that found on the ancestral skulls preserved by present-day agrarian peoples of South Asia and Oceania.An elaborated skull cult is usually connected with the veneration of ancestors. An important theme of ancestral cults is the belief in a connection between the dead and the fertility of the land of their descendants.
The spread and development of megalithic monuments are in Spain, Portugal, and the Mediterranean coast the most ancient of the cyclopean stone tombs was probably the dolmen. The dolmen consisted of several upright supports and a flat roofing slab, all covered by a protective mound of earth. In northern and western Europe, two principal plans developed from the dolmen: one, the passage grave, was formed by the addition of a long stone-roofed entrance passage to the dolmen itself; and the other, the long, coffinlike cist or covered gallery grave, consisted of a long, rectangular burial chamber with no distinct passageway.
An especially noteworthy kind of burial is that of the megalithic (huge stone) graves that appear in various areas from the Neolithic Period on. It is probable that in this practice there was also a vital believed link between the living and the dead, and that occasionally sacred areas and gathering places were connected with such graves. The practices of the megalith builders were probably rooted, to a considerable extent, in ideas about the dead and in ancestor cults to which their stones gave a particular durability and a monumental form. The cult of the dead, nevertheless, played an important role in religion.
I have observed a moot point and the religious study asked me a strong question; there are three major religions ie Christianity, Islam and the Hindu faith of god. According to many sources Hindus are the oldest culture and faith of god which has no prophet or preachers on record. Christianity began from Jesus Christ and Islam (According to WIKIPEDIA) at the start of the 7th century CE.
Religion in the context of God and spirit is personal faith and belief, and a religious building is a meeting place for a particular faith-based community. A concept that is old for a thousand years can not be used as a canopy over mankind today. The idea degrades humanity, violates human rights and kills humans. Religious faith is not above the country’s law and constitution. In other words, religious belief and scripture are personal matters has no power to dictate or coerce society or individuals to follow those who do not conform to the idea of it or deny a religious belief or scripture. Any Blasphemy has no legal power in the country’s lawbook, whether it hurts a single man or a community at large. The secular states should take the strictest action against fanatics/ fundamentalists who try to overpower individuals and the country’s law. Fanatics and fundamentalists are puppets of undercover politics and foreign agents to destabilise a country. Blasphemy should be seen as a tool of bloody riots, killings, chaos and political strategy of a hidden conspiracy and master’s plan. The citizen can not live under constant fear of terror and death threats, So, therefore, the government should nip the rise of blasphemy in the bud.
An Important question, should blasphemy override free expression?
The human progress of ongoing civilisation requires examination of everything good and evil of the past and dissection of all records to explore the fact or truth. Many things are to be marked as needed and needless; to do this, one has to experience setting things upside down he has doubts about or questions. If he is not allowed to do so then human progress will stop.
Free expression speaks, criticising an idea that someone feels has harmful effects. Criticism is an idea that dissects an action of the past/activities or any prejudice/ superstitions/ culture that wrap/ restrict a concept/story/history not to touch as a taboo at large. In the line of civilisation/ human history, from the primitive age, nothing remains perpetual. One idea overlapped an old idea. People, according to their beliefs, accepted what was better for them. There is no record of God/Goddess or scriptures six thousand years ago from today. Today, in a complex society, dictators rule states in the name of democracy, communism, and authoritarian states. All they do is rob common men, the labour and wealth of ordinary men in the name of law and religion. Politics turned out to be a definition that combines murder, threat, religious order, illegal rule and other sorts of heinous crimes. To stop a dictator, ruler, or religious leader, from dishonest activities demand public rebuke and criticism. Hence free expression is the essential and initial action to bring a change for good.
Existence-belief of God and religious scriptures are the worst hindrance/obstacle to human life and progress. Especially in places where people are illiterate and economically bankrupt. The religious scriptures ask humans for total surrender to god, but have you found anywhere on this planet that the rich people surrender their wealth to god or follow life according to god’s word. Feed the poor or try to eliminate poverty? Or remove the misery of the weaker class.
What Does Islam Teach About…’The Religion of Peace’ –
Violence?
Does the Quran really contain over a hundred verses that sanction violence?
The Quran contains at least 109 verses that speak of war with nonbelievers, usually on the basis of their status as non-Muslims. Some are quite graphic, with commands to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding. Muslims who do not join the fight are called ‘hypocrites’ and warned that Allah will send them to Hell if they do not join the slaughter. Read it more here or read the PDF
ONE of the enduring topics of Muslim sectarian polemics has been the hadith attributed to the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) according to which he had predicted that his ummah would be divided into 73 sects, but only one would be saved.
All Muslim sects happily claim that their sect is the ‘saved one’ (naji) and the ‘others’ are destined for hell. This hadith, if we were to follow the traditional line of argument, divides the Muslim ummah into two sections: the saved ones and the hell-bound ones.
Few people ask why the number 73 is and where it comes from. Luckily, there is now a tendency to see this hadith in a more objective way, beyond sectarian interpretations. There is an attempt to see the sects more in a pluralistic and inclusive light than in exclusive ways. In recent times, attempts have been made to unravel the context of this hadith and examine its implications.
The most frequently cited hadith regarding the 73 divisions of the Muslim faith is reported as the Jews are divided into 71 sects (firqa), the Christians into 72 sects, and my community will divide into 73 sects (Ibn Majah, Abu Daud, al-Tirmidhi and al-Nisa’i). The hadith also occurs in many other versions as well. Read more Wikipedia
The world is full of greedy people. Religion for potential powerful leaders/clerics/administrators is a tool or a weapon to apply to ordinary people so that they can not reach knowledge and become learned.
The laws have often been used to get revenge after personal disputes, to show dominance over other religious groups or to show religious hatred of Muslims versus non-muslims and convictions are based on thin evidence. In Pakistan, among Muslims- the vast majority of those convicted are also Muslims or members of the Ahmadi community. Who areThe Ahmadiyya Muslim
The Ahmadiyya Muslim community represents the followers of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908), a charismatic leader whose claims of spiritual authority brought him into conflict with most other Muslim leaders of the time. The controversial movement originated in rural India in the latter part of the 19th century and is best known for challenging current conceptions of Islamic orthodoxy. Despite missionary success and expansion throughout the world, particularly in Western Europe, North America, and parts of Africa, Ahmadis have effectively been banned from Pakistan. Adil Hussain Khan traces the origins of Ahmadi Islam from a small Sufi-style brotherhood to a major transnational organization, which many Muslims believe to be beyond the pale of Islam. (Source: From Sufism to Ahmadiyya. A Muslim Minority Movement in South Asia. By Adil Hussain Khan )
Mirzā[a] Ghulām Ahmad (13 February 1835 – 26 May 1908. – 73 years) was an Indian religious leader and the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam. He claimed to have been divinely appointed as the promised Messiah and Mahdi—which is the metaphorical second coming of Jesus (mathīl-iʿIsā), in fulfilment of Islam’s latter-day prophecies, as well as the Mujaddid (centennial reviver) of the 14th Islamic century. Mirza Ghulam Ahmed, the founder of the movement, claimed himself to be a prophet in the Islamic and Christian senses and, on occasion, an avatar of Krishna in the Hindu sense. Read more in Wikipedia
Mirza sahib initially accepted the claim that the Prophet Muhammad was not only the best but also the absolutely last prophet to be sent to this world. This has, after all, come to be the authoritative understanding of the phrase, Finality of Prophethood (Khatam al-Nabbuwat). In his early writings, Mirza sahib claimed to be a mujaddid (renewer) of the faith. Slowly he started to introduce the term muhadith in place of mujaddid, which implied that he was in conversation with angels, if not yet with the Prophet and with God. Later, he claimed himself to be Zilli-e-Muhammadi and Buruz-e-Muhammadi. In other words, if the Prophet Muhammad was the shadow (zil) of God upon the universe, Mirza sahib claimed to the shadow of the Prophet upon the world. If the Prophet was so perfectly constituted as to be a reflecting surface for God’s personality, Mirza Sahib claimed himself to be a reflecting surface for the Prophet’s virtues, his manifestation (buruz) upon the world. In either case, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad considered himself to be only a ‘partial Prophet’, a mursal (a messenger sent by the Prophet). This claim alone is quite controversial, for it suggests that the Prophet operates independently of God in sending messengers of his own. But Mirza sahib then went on to claim himself a prophet in his own right. He said that he had so abjectly merged himself with the Prophet that he transmitted the Prophet’s being through himself. He was in effect the Prophet. In his own words: “A man should sink himself to such an extent in the obedience of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) that he may reach a stage ‘I have become you and you have become I’” (PLD 1985: 58). Drawing upon the thought of the 12th-century Sufi saint Ibn-Arabi, Mirza sahib claimed the status of a non-legislative prophet whose coming did not undo the law brought by the legislative prophet, the Prophet Muhammad, but only enhanced it. Read more here or the PDf file below
Islam Ahmadiyyat – Revival of Faith – Documentary An Introduction and a short sketch of the history of the worldwide Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. http://www.alislam.org
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community are Muslims who believe in the Messiah, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad(peace be on him) (1835-1908) of Qadian. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad founded the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in 1889 as a revival movement within Islam, emphasizing its essential teachings of peace, love, justice, and sanctity of life. Today, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is the world’s largest Islamic community under one Divinely appointed leader, His Holiness, Mirza Masroor Ahmad(may Allah be his Helper) (b. 1950). The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community spans over 200 nations with membership exceeding tens of millions.
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad claimed to be the metaphorical second coming of Jesus Christ and the Mahdi, whose advent Prophet Muhammad(peace and blessings of Allah be on him) foretold. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community believes that God sent Mirza Ghulam Ahmad to end religious wars, condemn bloodshed, and restore morality, justice, and peace. He reformed Muslims of fanatical beliefs and practices by vigorously championing Islam’s true teachings. He also recognized the noble teachings of the great religious founders and saints, including Zoroaster, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu, and Guru Nanak, and explained how their original teachings converge into true Islam.
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is the leading Islamic organization to categorically reject terrorism. Over a century ago, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad emphatically declared that “jihad by the sword” has no place in Islam. He instead taught Muslims to follow the Qur’an and Prophet Muhammad’s example and defend Islam with a bloodless, intellectual “jihad of the pen.” Accordingly, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad penned over 80 books and tens of thousands of letters, delivered hundreds of lectures, and engaged in scores of public debates. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community continues to use education to peacefully reform Muslims and revive Islam worldwide.
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad reminded Muslims of God’s promise to safeguard Islam through khilafat (the spiritual institution of successorship to prophethood). The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community believes that only Islamic khilafat can peacefully unite humanity. Five Khalifas have succeeded Mirza Ghulam Ahmad since his demise.
The current Khalifa, Mirza Masroor Ahmad, resides in the United Kingdom and serves as the community’s spiritual and administrative head. Under the leadership of khilafat, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has built over 16,000 mosques, 600 schools, and 30 hospitals. It has translated the Holy Quran into over 70 languages. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community propagates Islam’s true teachings of peace and tolerance through a 24-hour satellite television channel (MTA), the Internet (www.alislam.org), and print (Islam International Publications). It stands at the forefront of disaster relief worldwide through Humanity First, a non-profit charity.
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is the only Islamic organization to endorse the separation of mosque and state. Despite facing bitter faith-based persecution in numerous Muslim majority nations, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community continues to advocate for universal human rights for all religious and other persecuted minorities. It likewise invests heavily in women’s equality, education, and empowerment programs. Its members are among the most law-abiding, educated, and engaged Muslims in the world. Source Ahmadiyya Muslim Community
Islam is a religion that was born in the Arabian Peninsula at the beginning of the 7th century. In Arabia Preislamic many of the major clans and tribes were nomadic. Bedouins travelled through the desert on their camels. Nomadic tribes received the hospitality of the different Arabian tribes. This is the reason why the new religion spread so fast because Islam collects the precepts of hospitality, protection, help and charity. Desert conditions are hard (climate, dryness, etc.) and people along the Arabian peninsula welcome these bedouins and travelling.
It spread quickly through Asia, Africa, and some parts of Europe. To expand their religion, Muslims fought the Byzantine Empire, the Persian Sassanid Empire and the Christian West. But they didn´t use a lot of violence, because they could take the new religion with capitulations (pact of surrender) and convincing native people with fewer taxes.
Early Islam arose within the historical, social, political, economic, and religious context of Late Antiquity in the Middle East. The second half of the 6th century CE saw political disorder in the pre-Islamic Arabian peninsula, and communication routes were no longer secure. Religious divisions played an important role in the crisis. Judaism became the dominant religion of the Himyarite Kingdom in Yemen after about 380 CE, while Christianity took root in the Persian Gulf. There was also a yearning for a more “spiritual form of religion”, and “the choice of religion increasingly became an individual rather than a collective issue.” While some Arabs were reluctant to convert to a foreign faith, those Abrahamic religions provided “the principal intellectual and spiritual reference points”, and Jewish and Christian loanwords from Aramaic began to replace the old pagan vocabulary of Arabic throughout the peninsula. The Ḥanīf (“renunciates”), a group of monotheists that sought to separate themselves both from the foreign Abrahamic religions and the traditional Arab polytheism, were looking for a new religious worldview to replace the pre-Islamic Arabian religions, focusing on “the all-encompassing father god Allah whom they freely equated with the Jewish Yahweh and the Christian Jehovah.” In their view, Mecca was originally dedicated to this monotheistic faith that they considered to be the one true religion, established by the patriarch Abraham.
According to the traditional account, the Islamic prophet Muhammad was born in Mecca around the year 570 CE. His family belonged to the Arab clan of Quraysh, which was the chief tribe of Mecca and a dominant force in western Arabia. To counter the effects of anarchy, they upheld the institution of “sacred months” when all violence was forbidden and travel was safe. The polytheistic Kaaba shrine in Mecca and the surrounding area was a popular pilgrimage destination, which had significant economic consequences for the city source Wikipedia
Most likely Muhammad was “intimately aware of Jewish belief and practices,” and acquainted with the Ḥanīf. Like the Ḥanīf, Muhammad practised Taḥannuth, spending time in seclusion at Mount Hira and “turning away from paganism.” When he was about 40 years old, he began receiving at mount Hira what Muslims regard as divine revelations delivered through the angel Gabriel, which would later form the Quran. These inspirations urged him to proclaim a strictly monotheistic faith, as the final expression of Biblical prophetism earlier codified in the sacred texts of Judaism and Christianity; to warn his compatriots of the impending Judgement Day, and to castigate social injustices of his city. Muhammad’s message won over a handful of followers (the ṣaḥāba) and was met with increasing opposition from Meccan notables. In 622 CE, a few years after losing protection with the death of his influential uncle ʾAbū Ṭālib ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, Muhammad migrated to the city of Yathrib (subsequently called Medina) where he was joined by his followers. Later generations would count this event, known as the hijra, as the start of the Islamic era
The Mediterranean world and the Middle East at the beginning of the 7th century
This map is part of a series of 7 animated maps showing the history of the Origins of Islam and the Arabo-Muslim Empire.
At the beginning of the Middle Ages, two major empires, at war with each other for several centuries, dominated the Mediterranean and the Middle East.
The Eastern Roman Empire, which we now call the Byzantine Empire, covered Southern Europe, Northern Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean. Its capital was Constantinople. Its literary and administrative language was Greek, and the dominant religion was Christianity. Following the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Christians were divided into the “chalcedonians”, also known as “diophysites”, who believed that Christ was both divine and human and the “monophysites” who believed that Christ was solely divine. In addition, there were numerous Jewish communities in the Byzantine Empire.
The other great empire was that of Persia. Governed at this time by the Sassanid dynasty, it stretched from Mesopotamia to today’s Pakistan. Its capital was Ctesiphon. The main language was Persian. The official religion was Zoroastrianism, a monotheism which celebrated fire as a divine symbol. Many Jews and Christians also lived in the Persian Empire.
To the South, as the land gradually gave way to the desert, the inhabitants were mostly nomadic or semi-nomadic Bedouins, although some tribes lived in the towns. They spoke an early form of Arabic. While most of the inhabitants were polytheists, believing in several gods, Christian and Jewish tribes could also be found in their midst.
In order to strengthen their positions, the Byzantines and the Persians sought to establish alliances: both empires wanted the Arab tribes on their side and enlisted nomadic warriors in their armies.
In the first decades of the 7th century, the war between the two Empires broke out once more. The Persian armies captured Syria and Palestine and then Egypt and went on to threaten Constantinople. Meanwhile, the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius and his army invaded Mesopotamia and reached Ctesiphon, the heart of Sassanid power, before taking back control of territories previously lost to the Persians.
These wars greatly weakened both empires, especially Persia, and as a result, the Arab tribes launched raids along their southern frontiers. source The Map as History
The history of Christianity concerns the Christian religion, Christian countries, and the Christians with their various denominations, from the 1st century to the present. Christianity originated with the ministry of Jesus, a Jewish teacher and healer who proclaimed the imminent Kingdom of God and was crucified c. AD 30–33 in Jerusalem in the Roman province of Judea. His followers believe that, according to the Gospels, he was the Son of God and that he died for the forgiveness of sins and was raised from the dead and exalted by God, and will return soon at the inception of God’s kingdom.
The earliest followers of Jesus were apocalyptic Jewish Christians. The inclusion of Gentiles in the developing early Christian Church caused the separation of early Christianity from Judaism during the first two centuries of the Christian era. In 313, the Roman Emperor Constantine I issued the Edict of Milan legalizing Christian worship. In 380, with the Edict of Thessalonica put forth under Theodosius I, the Roman Empire officially adopted Trinitarian Christianity as its state religion, and Christianity established itself as a predominantly Roman religion in the State church of the Roman Empire. Various Christological debates about the human and divine nature of Jesus consumed the Christian Church for three centuries, and seven ecumenical councils were called to resolve these debates.Arianism was condemned at the First Council of Nicea (325), which supported the Trinitarian doctrine as expounded in the Nicene Creed.
In the Early Middle Ages, missionary activities spread Christianity towards the west and the north among Germanic peoples; towards the east among Armenians, Georgians, and Slavic peoples; in the Middle East among Syrians and Egyptians; in Eastern Africa among the Ethiopians; and further into Central Asia, China, and India. During the High Middle Ages, Eastern and Western Christianity grew apart, leading to the East–West Schism of 1054. Growing criticism of the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical structure and its corruption led to the Protestant Reformation and its related reform movements in the 15th and 16th centuries, which concluded with the European wars of religion that set off the split of Western Christianity. Since the Renaissance era, with the European colonization of the Americas and other continents actively instigated by the Christian churches. Christianity has expanded throughout the world. Today, there are more than two billion Christians worldwide and Christianity has become the world’s largest religion. Within the last century, as the influence of Christianity has progressively waned in the Western world, Christianity continues to be the predominant religion in Europe (including Russia) and the Americas, and has rapidly grown in Asia as well as in the Global South and Third World countries, most notably in Latin America, China, South Korea, and much of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Map showing the spread of Christianity, showing both strongly Christianized areas before 325 CE and generally Christianized areas until 600 CE. The map also shows major Christian centres and the cities in which Christian councils were held.
The church and its history
Jesus and the earliest members of the Christian faith tradition were Jews, and thus they stood in the faith tradition inherited by Hebrew people in Israel and the lands of the Diaspora. They were monotheists, devoted to the God of Israel. When they claimed that Jesus was divine, they had to do so in ways that would not challenge monotheism.
Insofar as they began to separate or be separated from Judaism, which did not accept Jesus as the Messiah, the earliest Christians expressed certain ideas about the one on whom their faith focused.
Emerging from a small sect of Judaism in the 1st century CE, early Christianity absorbed many of the shared religious, cultural, and intellectual traditions of the Greco-Roman world. In traditional histories of Western culture, the emergence of Christianity in the Roman Empire is known as “the triumph of Christianity.” This refers to the victory of Christian beliefs over the allegedly false beliefs and practices of paganism. However, it is important to recognize that Christianity did not arise in a vacuum.
Jews claimed an ancient tradition with law codes for daily life (the Laws of Moses) and revelations from their god through Prophets. While recognizing various powers in the universe, Jews nevertheless differed from their neighbours by only offering worship (sacrifices) to their one god, Yahweh. After suffering several national defeats by the Assyrians in 722 BCE and the Babylonians in 587 BCE, their prophets claimed that God would eventually restore Israel to its former independence. In those ‘final days’ (eschaton in Greek), God would designate a descendant of David, an ‘anointed one’ (Messiah in Hebrew, or Christos in Greek), who would lead the righteous against the enemies of Israel. God would then establish a new Eden, which came to be known as ‘the kingdom of God.’ After a short-lived rebellion against Greek rule (the Maccabean Revolt, 167 BCE), Galilee and Judea were conquered by Rome (63 BCE). By the 1st century CE, many messiah figures rallied Jews to call upon God to help them overthrow the overlords. Most of these figures were killed by Rome for stirring up mobs against law and order. A sect of Jews known as Zealots convinced the nation to rebel against Rome in 66 CE, which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem and their temple (70 CE).
The first significant Jewish Diaspora was the result of the Babylonian Exile of 586 BCE. After the Babylonians conquered the kingdom of Judah, part of the Jewish population was deported into slavery. Although Cyrus the Great, the Persian conqueror of Babylonia, permitted the Jews to return to their homeland in 538 BCE, part of the Jewish community voluntarily remained behind.
The largest, most significant, and culturally most creative Jewish Diaspora in early Jewish history flourished in Alexandria, where in the 1st century BCE 40 per cent of the population was Jewish. Around the 1st century CE an estimated 5,000,000 Jews lived outside Palestine, about four-fifths of them within the Roman Empire, but they looked to Palestine as the centre of their religious and cultural life. Diaspora Jews thus far outnumbered the Jews in Palestine even before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Thereafter, the chief centres of Judaism shifted from country to country (e.g., Babylonia, Persia, Spain, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, and the United States), and Jewish communities gradually adopted distinctive languages, rituals, and cultures, some submerging themselves in non-Jewish environments more completely than others. While some lived in peace, others became victims of violent anti-Semitism.
Jews hold widely divergent views about the role of Diaspora Jewry and the desirability and significance of maintaining a national identity. While the vast majority of Orthodox Jews support the Zionist movement (the return of Jews to Israel), some Orthodox Jews go so far as to oppose the modern nation of Israel as a godless and secular state, defying God’s will to send his messiah at the time he has preordained.
Israelites, descendants of the Hebrew patriarch Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel after an all-night fight at Penuel near the stream of Jabbok (Genesis 32:28). In early history, Israelites were simply members of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. After 930 BCE and the establishment of two independent Hebrew kingdoms in Palestine, the 10 northern tribes constituting the kingdom of Israel were known as Israelites to distinguish them from the southern kingdom of Judah. The northern kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians in 722/721 BCE, and its population was eventually absorbed by other peoples.
Gentile, the person who is not Jewish. The word stems from the Hebrew term goy, which means a “nation,” and was applied both to the Hebrews and to any other nation. The plural, goyim, especially with the definite article, ha-goyim, “the nations,” meant nations of the world that were not Hebrew. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), also called Mormonism, members regard themselves as Israelites, and “Gentile” is used to denote any person who is not of the house of Israel (i.e., not a member of one of the 12 tribes of Israel) through blood descent or adoption by means of baptism into the LDS. The term is also sometimes used to refer to any person who is not a Mormon.
From all of the evidence, Jesus of Nazareth was an end-time preacher, or an apocalyptic prophet, proclaiming that the kingdom of God was imminent. He was crucified by Rome (between 26-36 CE), perhaps for stirring up crowds at the festival of Passover. Crucifixion was the Roman penalty for rebels and traitors; preaching a kingdom other than Rome was subversive. Shortly after his death, his disciples claimed that he had risen from the dead. Whatever this experience was, it motivated them to the mission or to spread the ‘good news’ (‘gospel’) that the kingdom of God would arrive soon.
The followers of Jesus first took this message to the synagogue communities of Jews in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire. Many Jews did not believe that Jesus was the expected Messiah, but to the surprise of these apostles (messengers), Gentiles (pagans) wanted to join the movement. This unexpected occurrence raised questions of inclusion: should these pagans become Jews first, entailing circumcision, dietary laws, and Sabbath observance? At a meeting in Jerusalem (ca. 49 CE, The Apostolic Council), it was decided that pagans could join without becoming Jews. However, they had to observe some Jewish principles such as draining blood from meat, sexual morality, and the cessation of all idolatry (Acts 15). By the end of the 1st century, these Gentile-Christians dominated the Christianoi (“the followers of the Christ”).
Paul, a Pharisee, was the founder of many of these communities. He claimed that Jesus told him in a vision to be his “apostle to the Gentiles.” Jesus was now in heaven but would soon return.
A map illustrating the rise and spread of Christianity from a small, unorganized sect in the Roman province of Judea, across the urban centres and rural areas of the Empire, through Constantine the Great‘s 325 Council of Nicaea (which codified the Nicene Creed as set formal beliefs) and the 380 Edict of Thessalonica under Theodosius I (when Christianity officially became a state religion) until the 451 Council of Chalcedon when debates about the human and divine nature of Jesus consumed the early Church. The map also depicts the spread of some of the significant heresies of that era – Arian Ascendancy, Nestorianism, and Monophysitism. source
Christianity is major religion stemming from the life, teachings, and death of Jesus of Nazareth (the Christ, or the Anointed One of God) in the 1st century CE. It has become the largest of the world’s religions and, geographically, the most widely diffused of all faiths. It has a constituency of more than two billion believers. Its largest groups are the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox churches, and the Protestant churches. The Oriental Orthodox churches constitute one of the oldest branches of the tradition but had been out of contact with Western Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy from the middle of the 5th century until the late 20th century because of a dispute over Christology (the doctrine of Jesus Christ’s nature and significance). Significant movements within the broader Christian world and sometimes transcending denominational boundaries are Pentecostalism, Charismatic Christianity, Evangelicalism, and fundamentalism. In addition, there are numerous independent churches throughout the world. See alsoAnglicanism; Baptist; Calvinism; Congregationalism; Evangelical church; Lutheranism; Oriental Orthodoxy; presbyterian; Reformed and Presbyterian churches. source Britannica
The essence and identity of Christianity
At its most basic, Christianity is the faith tradition that focuses on the figure of Jesus Christ.
In this context, faith refers both to the believers’ act of trust and to the content of their faith. As a tradition, Christianity is more than a system of religious belief. It also has generated a culture, a set of ideas and ways of life, practices, and artefacts that have been handed down from generation to generation since Jesus first became the object of faith. Christianity is thus both a living tradition of faith and the culture that the faith leaves behind. The agent of Christianity is the church, the community of people who make up the body of believers. To say that Christianity “focuses” on Jesus Christ is to say that somehow it brings together its beliefs and practices and other traditions in reference to a historical figure. Few Christians, however, would be content to keep this reference merely historical. Although their faith tradition is historical—i.e., they believe that transactions with the divine do not occur in the realm of timeless ideas but among ordinary humans through the ages—the vast majority of Christians focus their faith in Jesus Christ as someone who is also a present reality. They may include many other references in their tradition and thus may speak of “God” and “human nature” or of the “church” and the “world,” but they would not be called Christian if they did not bring their attention first and last to Jesus Christ. Source Britannica The focus of this faith tradition is in the context of monotheistic religions. Christianity addresses the historical figure of Jesus Christ against the background of, and while seeking to remain faithful to, the experience of one God. It has consistently rejected polytheism and atheism.
The believers in the church picture themselves as in a plight from which they need rescue. For whatever reason, they have been distanced from God and need to be saved. Christianity is based on a particular experience or scheme directed to the act of saving—that is, of bringing or “buying back,” which is part of what redemption means, these creatures of God to their source in God. The agent of that redemption is Jesus Christ.
A temple (from the Latin ‘templum’) is a structure usually built for the purpose of, and always dedicated to, religious or spiritual activities including prayer, meditation, sacrifice and worship. The templum was a sacred precinct defined by a priest (or augur) as the dwelling place of a god or gods and the structure built there was created to honour the Deus Loci (spirit) of a certain place. Early temples were constructed on sites which the people felt had a numinous quality to them which indicated the presence of a god, gods, or spirits.
In Judaism, the original ancient Hebrew language refers not to a ‘temple’ but to a “sanctuary”, “palace” or “hall”. Each of the two ancient temples in Jerusalem were called Beit Hamikdash, which translates literally as “the Holy House” and, in this, the Hebrews either copied or independently arrived at the same conception of a temple that the ancient Egyptians had: that the temple was the house of the god. The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is the site where the First Temple of Solomon and the Second Temple were built. and at the centre of the temple was the Holy of Holies, where, as in Egypt, only the high priest could enter. The Greek word synagogue came to describe Jewish places of worship during the Babylonian Captivity and meant ‘to gather together’. The original Hebrew words Bet Knesset (“House of Meeting”) and synagogue designate Jewish temples today.
What is Blasphemy?
Blasphemy, irreverence toward a deity or deities and, by extension, the use of profanity.
In Christianity, blasphemy has points in common with heresy but is differentiated from it in that heresy consists of holding a belief contrary to the orthodox one. Thus, it is not blasphemous to deny the existence of God or to question the established tenets of the Christian faith unless this is done in a mocking and derisive spirit. In the Christian religion, blasphemy has been regarded as a sin by moral theologians; St. Thomas Aquinas described it as a sin against faith. For the Muslim, it is blasphemy to speak contemptuously not only of God but also of Muḥammad. In many societies blasphemy in some form or another has been an offence punishable by law. The Mosaic Law decreed death by stoning as the penalty for the blasphemer. Under the Byzantine emperor Justinian I (reigned 527–565) the death penalty was decreed for blasphemy. In the United States, many states have legislation aimed at the offence. In Scotland, until the 18th century, it was punishable by death, and in England, it is both a statutory and a common-law offence. It was recognized as the latter in the 17th century; the underlying idea was that an attack on religion is necessarily an attack on the state. This idea probably has been the reason why penalties have been laid down for blasphemy in some secular legal codes. Source Britanica The blasphemy laws are much criticised by human rights groups who say hundreds of people, mostly members of religious minorities, have been convicted for insulting Islam, often on flimsy evidence. The government can never change the blasphemy law because the majority is Muslims, a nation of Muslims.
In 2009, nearly 40 houses and a church were burnt by a mob in Gojra town in Punjab, with eight people burnt alive
In 2005, hundreds fled their homes in Faisalabad as churches and Christian schools were set on fire by a mob, after a resident was blamed for burning pages of the Koran.
Free speech and hate crime
In Europe, there have also been blasphemy cases in a number of countries.
The use of such laws has sometimes become tied up with attempts by the authorities to curtail hate crime – particularly as directed against religious minorities.
Denmark – a man was charged with blasphemy in 2017 for posting a video of himself burning the Koran on social media
Finland – a man was fined in 2009 under blasphemy laws for comments about paedophilia and Islam in a blog post
Germany – a man was prosecuted in 2006 under laws about insulting religious communities for distributing rolls of toilet paper with the words “Koran, the Holy Koran” on them
Germany – a man was fined 500 euros in 2016 for displaying anti-Christian stickers on his vehicle
Ireland – British comedian Stephen Fry was investigated after a complaint about comments he made on a TV show there, although the case was dropped last year.
In Pakistan, most victims of the blasphemy laws have actually been Muslim or from the Ahmadi sect (declared non-Muslim by Pakistan), not Christian or other minorities, according to one Pakistani rights group which looked back at cases over the last 30 years. Source BBC
The penalties for blasphemy in such countries can be severe. Apart from Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Mauritania have also handed down death sentences in recent years.
However, it’s not always clear how many death sentences have been imposed.
“Accusations are often heard in Sharia courts, where reportage is bad or the process of any kind of statistical analysis is lacking,” says Bob Churchill of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), an alliance of humanist groups that campaigns against blasphemy laws.
Some high-profile cases that have attracted international attention have ended with the death sentence being commuted.
In 2016, a poet in Saudi Arabia was sentenced to death after being accused of insulting Islam, but this was later commuted to lashes and imprisonment.
According to the IHEU, a key concern is that the authorities in some countries do little to intervene and allow mob justice to take its course, or blame the victim if they are targeted by extremists.
“Officials in Bangladesh, including the prime minister, responded to the murder of atheist bloggers by saying that they shouldn’t express things that radical Islamists don’t want to hear,” says Mr Churchill.
A network of lawyers who offer their services for free to people lodging blasphemy cases has helped drive up the number of cases in recent years, with 336 filed in Punjab province alone in 2014. In 1997 a retired high court judge who acquitted two Christians of blasphemy charges was murdered in his office. In 2014 a lawyer was shot dead in the city of Multan after agreeing to defend a man charged with blasphemy.
Ireland has now voted in a referendum to decriminalise blasphemy, which was enshrined in the constitution.
Iceland, Norway and Malta have also abolished blasphemy laws in recent years.
Some history You can read here Muhammad’s Sword (Outlook Magazine) Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers’ expedition becomes a Crusade. The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell the dire con
Outlook argues that Islam was not spread by the sword. I have found a book which tells also the same read the PDF below
The trial stems from an argument Asia Bibi had with a group of women in June 2009. They were harvesting fruit when a row broke out about a bucket of water. The women said that because she had used a cup, they could no longer touch it, as her faith had made it unclean.
Prosecutors alleged that in the row which followed, the women said Asia Bibi should convert to Islam and that she made offensive comments about the Prophet Muhammad in response. She was later beaten up at her home, during which her accusers say she confessed to blasphemy. She was arrested after a police investigation.
In a ruling, the Supreme Court said that the case was based on unreliable evidence and her confession was delivered in front of a crowd “threatening to kill her”.
Islam is Pakistan’s national religion and underpins its legal system. Public support for the strict blasphemy laws is strong. Hard-line politicians have often backed severe punishments, partly as a way of shoring up their support base. But critics say the laws have often been used to get revenge after personal disputes, and that convictions are based on thin evidence. The vast majority of those convicted are Muslims or members of the Ahmadi community, but since the 1990s scores of Christians have been convicted. They make up just 1.6% of the population. The Christian community has been targeted by numerous attacks in recent years, leaving many feeling vulnerable to a climate of intolerance. Since 1990, at least 65 people have reportedly been killed in Pakistan over claims of blasphemy. Source BBC
Asad Jamal, a leading human rights lawyer, said the court had no option but to acquit Bibi. Both her original trial and her first appeal in the Lahore high court in 2014, which upheld her conviction, were hopelessly flawed, he said
According to Jamal, it is the first time the supreme court has heard a case under section 295-C of the country’s basic criminal law, which bans insults to the prophet Muhammad.
He said if the court ruled that the prosecution failed to meet the prescribed Islamic method of testing the truthfulness of witnesses – which is so tough as to be practically impossible to achieve – then blasphemy cases would dwindle.
“Every trial court will have to see whether the evidence comes up to the Islamic standard. The conviction rate will go down many fold,” he said. “Ultimately it could contribute to the eventual abolition of these laws.”
Bibi was sentenced to death in 2010 in what became Pakistan’s most infamous blasphemy case. She always maintained her innocence. One of Bibi’s highest-profile supporters, the governor of Punjab Salman Taseer, was killed by one of his own security guards in January 2011 after he publicly appealed to the president of Pakistan to pardon Bibi.
Taseer was shot 27 times at close range by Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, who was showered with rose petals by supporters when he appeared in court. He was executed in 2016.
Pakistan’s first federal minister for minority affairs, Shahbaz Bhatti, who also supported Bibi and called for the reform of blasphemy laws, was killed by self-described Taliban gunmen in March 2011.
The only Christian in the cabinet at the time, Bhatti had predicted his own death and recorded a farewell tape that was released to television channels after he was killed, in which he vowed to fight for Christian and other minority rights whatever the cost.
“I will die to defend their rights,” he said on the tape released to the BBC and al-Jazeera. “These threats and these warnings cannot change my opinions and principles.”
Blasphemy is a highly inflammatory issue in Pakistan, where even unproven accusations of insulting Islam can spark lynchings. Human rights activists say blasphemy charges are frequently used to settle personal scores. Source The Guardian
There are other Muslims who leave Islam
American Humanist Association Presented at the American Humanist Association 74th Annual Conference, May 7-10, 2015, in Denver, Colorado. #ahacon15 Reformists in Muslim countries are routinely silenced, through persecution or violence, which has been increasing over the last few decades as Islamism gains traction. Liberals are in a unique position to make a nuanced and compassionate critique of harmful conceptions of religion- a position which we are ceding. As a result, the only visible voices are those of hate-mongers from the far-right, Islamists and outright apologists. It is of the highest priority that liberals exert pressure on both groups towards positive change. Sarah Haider is a co-founder of Ex-Muslims of North America, a community-building organization for Ex-Muslims across the non-theist spectrum, for which she currently works to reduce discrimination against those who left Islam.
Ex-Muslims of North America (Ex-MNA) is a charity that advocates for acceptance of religious dissent, promotes secular values, and aims to reduce discrimination faced by those who leave Islam. Muhammad Syed grew up in Pakistan and became an ex-Muslim in 2007. He moved to the United States in his early 20s. After one of his Pakistani friends became “ultra-conservative,” Muhammad attempted to discredit his perspective using Islamic texts. After considering these, he decided “that his perspective was actually the Islamic perspective.” This contributed to his deconversion. After Muhammad told his parents that he was an ex-Muslim, they were “traumatised and shocked.” At one social event, Muhammad met Sarah Haider, who was born in Pakistan and raised in Texas, and left Islam when she was around 16. He was the first ex-Muslim she had ever met. After meeting each other, Muhammad and Sarah decided to find other ex-Muslims and built a small, informal network. They then started in-person meetings. Attendees were vetted via phone call. In late 2013, Muhammad and Sarah created Ex-Muslims of North America. In November 2017, it had around 1,000 ex-Muslims in 25 cities in North America.[1] In June 2014, the organisation led the campaign for Pakistan to cease censoring Twitter content deemed blasphemous. It was one of fourteen organisations that wrote to the Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations.[2] In October 2014, the organisation was granted 501(c)(3) status.[3] Wegmans dispute In June 2016, a Virginia branch of the supermarket chain Wegmans refused to make a cake celebrating the third anniversary of the organisation, because a worker and supervisor decided that their name was offensive. In response to the incident, Muhammad Syed said “There is nothing about our name or logo that can be considered offensive to any reasonable individual.” An attorney from the Freedom From Religion Foundation wrote a letter to Wegman’s, describing the situation as a potential civil rights violation. After corporate found out, the cake order was filled for free, and workers were coached on ways to better handle similar situations.[4][5] Normalizing Dissent Tour In August 2017, they introduced the Normalizing Dissent Tour, an effort to bring apostates from Islam to campuses across the United States and Canada.[6] The tour began at the University of Colorado Boulder.[7] 2020-2021 In 2020, the organisation released its Persecution Tracker, which catalogues incidents of violence, hate, and state punishment directed against ex-Muslims. In 2021, they added country profiles. Also in 2020, they worked with other secular organisations to advocate for the adoption of the Blasphemy Resolution, which calls for an end to blasphemy, heresy, and apostasy laws. At the end of 2020, the US Senate joined the House in adopting the Resolution.[8] In 2021, Ex-MNA released the results of their Apostate Report, a quantitative survey to explore ex-Muslims’ lives, beliefs, values, and experiences. Ex-MNA contracted researchers at George Mason University to help develop a questionnaire. Nearly 600 ex-Muslims participated in the survey. Also in 2021, Ex-MNA participated in a meeting with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, along with other secular groups, organized by the Secular Coalition for America. It was the first meeting of ex-Muslims with the White House.[9] Activities Emergency Aid Every year, Ex-Muslims of North America establish a small fund to aid apostates in emergencies, including escaping physically abusive family members, homelessness, forced marriages, and forced relocation to Muslim countries. Whenever possible, aid is given directly to a vendor or creditor to ensure it serves its intended purpose.[10] Support Communities Since 2013, Ex-Muslims of North America have supported exclusive, underground communities for Ex-Muslims across the US and Canada. These private networks are accessible only to other ex-Muslims who are approved to join, due to safety concerns.[11]
There are organisations which advocate against religious persecution/execution. one of its kind is The Freedom of Thought Report The Freedom of Thought Report is a unique worldwide survey of discrimination and persecution against humanists, atheists and the non-religious published by Humanists International ⬤ The Report contains an entry for every country in the world ⬤ We apply a specially-developed rating system to every country ⬤ You can download the latest “Key Countries” edition as a PDF
A global report on the rights, legal status and discrimination against humanists, atheists, and the non-religious can be found here
Among the 79 countries that criminalized blasphemy, penalties varied widely, from fines to prison sentences and in some cases lashings and execution. In some countries – such as Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – violations of blasphemy laws can carry the possibility of the death penalty, according to sources used for this analysis. In Pakistan, at least 17 individuals were sentenced to death on blasphemy charges in 2019, including a university lecturer accused of having insulted the Prophet Muhammad verbally and on Facebook, although the Pakistani government has never actually executed anyone for blasphemy.
Some blasphemy laws came off the books in 2019. In New Zealand, a long-standing blasphemy law was repealed in 2019 after media in the country reported that it had not been enforced since 1922. Greece also repealed its blasphemy law in 2019, following campaigns against it by human rights activists.
Meanwhile, in Pakistan, the Supreme Court in 2019 upheld the acquittal of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who had been sentenced to death for blasphemy, sparking violent protests and calls to execute her. And in Indonesia, the government had considered a bill to expand the criminalization of blasphemy but ultimately delayed it following protests by civil society groups.
In some countries, including Pakistan, Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados, blasphemy laws date to their periods of British rule. While citizens in Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago did not face criminal penalties for blasphemy charges in 2019, the number of blasphemy charges increased from 2018 to 2019 in Pakistan. source PEW research
The ex-Muslim Britons who are persecuted for being atheists
And among some of Britain’s urban Muslims – nearly half of whom were born in the UK and are under 24 – there’s a belief that leaving Islam is a sin and can even be punished by death.
An investigation for the BBC has found evidence of young people suffering threats, intimidation, being ostracised by their communities and, in some cases, encountering serious physical abuse when they told their families they were no longer Muslims
Ayisha (not her real name) from Lancashire was just 14 when she began to question Islam after reading the Koran. She started rebelling over wearing the hijab but eventually decided she wasn’t a Muslim and the situation at home rapidly got worse.
“My dad threatened to kill me by getting a knife and holding it against my neck and saying: ‘We might as well do it if you’re going to bring this much shame to the family.'”
He used to beat her so badly that eventually she called the police and he was convicted of child cruelty. Ayisha hadn’t anticipated the shock of being immediately cut off from her mother and siblings.
Now just 17 and studying for A-levels, she’s been placed by the council under the guardianship of her boyfriend’s father. It’s hardly ideal, but she understands why. “They thought I wasn’t at much risk and that was the end of it.”
Aaliyah, 25, who also did not wish to be named, lives in South Yorkshire. She left Islam while at university and realised she couldn’t move back home, where her parents had a marriage arranged for her and the fear of violence was very real.
“I know my family wouldn’t hurt me, not my immediate family,” she says, looking back. “But I haven’t told my relatives. My dad’s actually told me that if the wrong people found out then he doesn’t know what’s going to happen.”
Aaliyah offers advice to other ex-Muslims on online forums and urges them to get financially independent before they tell their parents, so they can cope with being thrown out.
Like other ex-Muslims, she says the importance of being true to herself outweighs the very real loneliness of being disowned and the guilt placed on her.
“When I came out to my family my auntie told me my brothers and sisters wouldn’t be able to get married because their honour would be tarnished. And it would all be my fault.”
The fear is constant too. “I used to live in Bradford for a time and I’d be very quiet about it because there are Muslims everywhere. I still have this innate fear, it’s hard to explain. You just want to keep quiet about it. It’s just safe to stay quiet.”
Afzal Khan came from Pakistan, where blasphemy laws and conservative social attitudes have left apostates at risk of violence, to study theology at Bradford University. Over the course of his studies, he made the decision to leave Islam and told friends in Pakistan, via posts on a social media network. “I personally concluded that this faith is primarily a very misogynistic faith and that was a clear turning point. All my Muslim friends they were just shocked. Initially they thought I was just joking, but when they realised that I’m serious they started abusing me, cursing me and, in a mild way at the start, they started threatening me.”
His family disowned him. “I spoke to my mother over the phone and she yelled that ‘you are no more my son’. Then my brother picked up the phone and their message was that you do not belong to us and since then I’ve not heard anything back from them.” Afzal subsequently heard from relatives that his mother had said he should be killed, “because that’s what the Islamic state requires from blasphemers”.
Conflict, Security and Peace 