I made this map based on Razib Khan’s calculated figures of the percentage of Muslims around the world who support the death penalty for apostasy, which he compiled using data from the 2013 PEW global survey of Muslim attitudes.
[This map does not include figures for the Americas, Australasia or Russia where Muslims live who would support the introduction of Sharia Law.]*
These figures were derived on the basis of the percentage of Muslims who agreed that sharia should be the law of the land, and in turn on the percentage of sharia supporters who agree with capital punishment for apostates from Islam, as prescribed in tradition. As Razib Khan points out, these figures represent a minimum, because there might be a few Muslims who don’t support sharia law but support the death penalty for apostasy. Nonetheless, such cases will be few and far between, so the figures can probably be taken more or less at face value.
Commentary is largely superfluous, so I will limit myself to just a few remarks:
(1) A solid majority of Muslims in Egypt support the death penalty. Conservatively assuming 80% of the population is Sunni Muslim, that’s 51% of the population that are essentially Islamist extremists and potential Islamic State sympathizes. That also happens to be the exact percentage that voted for Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi in 2012. This probably makes liberal democracy in Egypt all but impossible: Its either the mustachioed soldiers or the bearded preachers. Choose one.
(2) The majority of Muslims in Malaysia and Jordan, both countries widely seen as “moderate,” support the dealth penalty for apostasy.
(3) The only country of the Arab Spring to transition to a more or less functioning democracy is Tunisia. Probably not coincidentally, it is also the most religiously “progressive” of all the Arab states. In those areas where the Islamic State has been taking power – northern Iraq, eastern Syria, the Sinai, the central Libyan coast, chunks of Afghanistan – it appears that the local population supports the death penalty for apostasy and other extremist interpretations of Islam, far more so than even in the rest of the world. Perhaps ~50% is a sort of “tipping point” for the most rabidly chiliastic Islamist cults to take root?
(4) There is very likely a connection between Islamic radicalism (and depressed IQs) with cousin marriage (see my post on the close correlation between the rate of cousin marriage and support for Islamic State in Syria).
(5) It seems almost banal to point it out, but then again, as Gregory Cochran points out, even very obvious things need to be repeated now and then.
Anyone who supports the death penalty for religious apostasy is, by definition, a fundamentalist. In many, perhaps most, Muslim countries, a majority or close to a majority qualifies as such.
There are very, very big and disturbing figures.
That famous “Moderate Muslim” infographic: Not the same thing as a moderate Christian or Buddhist.
It is highly unlikely would find more than 1% of Christians in any country supporting the death penalty for apostasy, and even that 1% would as often as not be merely trolling the pollster.
The Bible teaches:
For
it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who
have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy
Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of
the age to come, if they then commit apostasy, since they crucify the
Son of God on their own account and hold him up to contempt.
Hebrews 6:4-6 (RSV)
For if we sin
deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer
remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful
prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire which will consume the
adversaries. A man who has
violated the law of Moses dies without mercy at the testimony of two or three
witnesses.29 How much worse
punishment do you think will be deserved by the man who has spurned the Son of
God, and profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and
outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who
said, “Vengeance ism ine, I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.”
Hebrews 10:26-30 (RSV-Revised Standard Version)
The Christian who commits apostasy is answerable to the Creator God, as are all who think they have no need of Him. Herein lies the difference between Christianity and Islam. For Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world." The kingdom of this world is what Islam claims and Judaism claims, but not the true Christian.*
The only surveyed major Muslim countries with a comparable level of insanity are Kazakhstan and possibly Turkey. Regardless of 70 years of secular propaganda, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have three to five times the number of fundamentalists per capita, with 5-6% of their Muslim population supporting death for apostasy; though still an order of magnitude better than neighboring Afpak and the Middle East, these figures can already make themselves felt in events such as the defection of a senior Tajik policeman to the Islamic State.
It only gets worse from there on. Tunisia, with 16% of the population being fundamentalists, gets regularly wracked by terrorist strikes; Bangladesh, with 33%, sees atheist bloggers murdered with impunity. The percentage of Muslims who are fundamentalists in Western Europe is (based on other polls) probably generally around the 25% mark. That is a lot of fundamentalists. And it translates to a permanent, simmering terrorist threat. Which – rather conveniently? – requires an ever expanding security/surveillance state to keep suppressed. Once you go above the 50% mark, as in Jordan, Pakistan, or Egypt, only a dictator or a well-respected monarch prevents the people – the demos – from actualizing their back-to-the-roots fantasies.
This is why apples to apples comparisons of Islamic fundamentalism to extremism in other religions and feel good slogans like #NotAllMuslims are naive and facile at best.
***
| Sharia should be law of land | Muslims who believe sharia should be law who accept death penalty for apostasy | % of Muslims who accept death penalty for apostasy | |
| Afghanistan | 99% | 79% | 78% |
| Pakistan | 84% | 76% | 64% |
| Egypt | 74% | 86% | 64% |
| Palestinian territories | 89% | 66% | “59% |
| Jordan | 71% | 82% | 58% |
| Malaysia | 86% | 62% | 53% |
| Iraq | 91% | 42% | 38% |
| Bangladesh | 82% | 44% | 36% |
| Tunisia | 56% | 29% | 16% |
| Lebanon | 29% | 46% | 13% |
| Indonesia | 72% | 18% | 13% |
| Tajikstan | 27% | 22% | 6% |
| Kyrgyzstan | 35% | 14% | 5% |
| Bosnia | 15% | 15% | 2% |
| Kosovo | 20% | 11% | 2% |
| Turkey | 12% | 17% | 2% |
| Albania | 12% | 8% | 1% |
| Kazakhstan | 10% | 4% | 0% |
Obtained from http://www.unz.com/
* Comment by the Prodigal Son of God
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