4 June 2008: Arrest of Christian Convert in Algeria Highlights Contradictions

An Algerian public prosecutor has asked for a three-year sentence against a converted Christian in western Algeria for “practicing non-Muslim religious rites without a license or trying to convert Muslims to Christianity”.

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Habiba Kouider, 35, was reportedly plucked off an inter-city bus outside of her hometown of Tiaret on 29 March when police found several Bibles and books on Christianity in her handbag. Held for 24 hours and interrogated by police regarding her conversion to Christianity and what she was going to do with a dozen copies of the Bible, Kouider was eventually brought before a state prosecutor and she now faces three years in jail if convicted.

According to a law passed in February 2006, distributing and printing materials with the purpose of preaching or trying to convert people to other religions without a license is punishable with up to five years in prison.

While many see this as discriminatory against non-Muslims, a top diplomat at the Algerian embassy in Pretoria says it is not. To him, the law is applied to everyone across the board, including Muslims. He argues that even if you are a Muslim, you are not allowed to declare yourself Imam (religious scholar) without a license, nor may you build a mosque without one.

Yet the way Muslims converting to Christianity have been treated lately in Algeria prompts one to question this assertion. We have not heard of a Christian converting to Islam having similar problems. And this makes the issue problematic, not only in Algeria but also in other North Africa countries, particularly Egypt. It is problematic in at least two ways. Firstly, punishing Muslims for converting to other religions is based on a misleading reading of Islamic law, upon which the concerned governments claim their laws are based. Secondly, it is contradictory to the practice of the same governments who refuse and even criminalize religious political parties in their countries.

Regarding the first point, many enlightened Muslim scholars are of the view that punishing Muslims for converting to other religions is contrary to Islamic jurisprudence.

In an interview published in the Algerian paper El-Watan on 29 May, the Mufti (expert on Islamic law) of the grand mosque of Marseille in France, says there is only one statement of the Prophet Mohamed that calls for the punishment of those that convert from Islam, but that there are many Koranic verses that overturn this. He argues that this particular prophetic statement was made at a particular time, a period of war, when converting from Islam simply meant going over to the enemy.
Although the scholar did not mention this, one can refer to a Koranic verse to support this point. This verse shows that the Koran does allow for freedom of conscience and that no one should be forced to adopt Islam. It does say that non-Muslims will be punished if they don’t adopt Islam, but that this punishment is the work of Allah not that of humans.

The verse reads: “There is no compulsion in religion [Islam]. Verily, the right path has become distinct from the wrong path [meaning everything is there for people to make their choice]. Whoever believes in Allah [embrace Islam] has grasped the most trustworthy grip that will never break. And Allah hears everything and knows everything’ (see Al-Baqarat, 2:256). It must be noted that of all the sources of Islamic jurisprudence, the Koran is the reference to be consulted first and foremost.

Apart from the religious argument, such action against a convert also clearly contradicts the practice of the states concerned since they regularly outlaw so-called religious fundamentalist political parties. It is a fact that the fratricidal Algerian civil war (1992-1999) was mainly the result of the annulment by the military of the results of the legislative elections in 1991 that had been won by the Islamic Front (FIS). The argument of the Generals was that they could not allow a religious party to come to power. It is the same argument used by the Egyptian authorities against the Muslim Brotherhood. But are these states any different from these so-called fundamentalist parties in light of this kind of action? Is this not contradictory? On the one had, they claim that their constitutions are based on Islam; on the other, they prohibit the creation of any political party based on Islam!

This contradiction could be explained by two factors. Firstly, recognizing the popularity of groups that espouse Islam in their countries, the regimes in the region want to compete with them and show the people that they are even more religious than these groups.

That may explain their actions vis-à-vis non-Muslims, even in contradiction to Islam, as shown above. Their actions against Islamic religious parties, or those that claim to be so, could be explained by the same competition and attempts of the regimes to eliminate their competitors who seem better at using or misusing religion for their political aims. But the danger does not lie in these contradictions alone. It also poses a threat to the social cohesion between Muslims and non-Muslims in these countries. And this is why authorities should revise their strategies and review some of their legal texts.

Issaka Souare, African Security Analysis Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)