Since this point in history, however, Akyol said the Islamic world has begun to fall behind in the development of human rights.
The implication here is that the Islamic world was at one time equal to, or perhaps even superior to, the West in its recognition of human rights. When was this ever the case?
Let’s start with the rights of women. The deep misogyny of Islam guaranteed that the treatment of women was always behind that of the West. A husband has Qur’anic sanction to “beat” his wife (4:34); the status of men is always above that of women (4:228). The Muslim male could practice polygyny, and go unto his wives who are as a tilth to him (4:223); he could divorce any of his wives merely by uttering the triple-talaq. In Islam, daughters inherit half that of sons. A woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man. Muhammad himself justified this rule in a hadith: “it is because of the deficiency in her intelligence.”
As to the treatment of minorities, was Islam, which offered those conquered the options of death, conversion to Islam, or the permanent status of dhimmi (burdened with a host of disabilities), really superior to the West at one time, as Akyol claims? It’s true that in Western Christendom there were those who attacked and murdered Jews, based mainly on the blood libel, that is, the charge of ritual murder of Christian children, whose blood was supposedly used to make matzohs for Passover. There was nothing that bad in the Islamic treatment of Jews, for they could remain alive and practice their religion, as long as they met the conditions imposed on them as dhimmis. But we should also remember that the Qur’an has several dozen antisemitic verses, and sudden murderous Muslim outbursts against Jews were not unknown. The most striking example of this was in Granada in 1066, where the appointment of a Jew, Joseph ibn Naghrela, to be vizier to the Berber king, led to the killing of almost all of the 4,000 Jews in the city. Both Jews and Christians were not to be taken as friends, it says in the Qur’an, for they “are friends only with each other.”
Other human rights that finally came to be recognized, albeit very slowly, in the West, after the Enlightenment — including the right of freedom of speech, and of freedom of religion — never existed in the Islamic world, not 1400 years ago, not in medieval times, and not now. Any criticism of Islam or of Muhammad was treated as “blasphemy,” a charge which greatly limited “the freedom of speech.” As for “freedom of religion,” apostates from Islam could be executed. Unbelievers could practice their religion, but with so many disabilities, as dhimmis, that it would be inaccurate to describe this as “freedom of religion” as that is understood in the West. Many non-Muslims converted to Islam not out of conviction, but to escape the hardship and humiliation of being a dhimmi.
“In the face of this modern development [of human rights] … there is a friction today still between the modern definition of human rights and Islamic authorities and Islamic interpretations,” he [Mustafa Akyol] said.
Akyol said change is happening, but such massive change does not occur overnight.
The definition of human rights that the Muslim states adhere to is not the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but rather, those found in the very different “Islamic” version, known as the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights of 1990, which was put forth to promote the idea that Muslims, too, respected human rights. But it was very different in its effect from the Universal Declaration. The Cairo Declaration declares that all human rights must be subject to the Sharia. Thus the Cairo version upheld the unequal treatment of women and of non-Muslim minorities. Freedom of speech according to the Sharia does not include the freedom, by Muslim or non-Muslim, to “blaspheme” the Prophet or Islam in any way. Religious freedom, too, is limited, both for Muslims who can still be severely punished, even executed, for apostasy, and for non-Muslims, many of whom felt compelled to convert to Islam in order to escape the miserable condition of dhimmi, and especially the payment of the Jizyah.
“Now, are there Muslims trying to deal with this issue and offer this reformation? Yes,” he [Akyol] said. “There are Muslim rulers, intellectuals, institutions, countries — this is a thing that’s been going on for more than a century. It began in the 19th century, it’s still going on, the battle is still going on. Let me tell you, it’s not that easy and fast to change a culture and civilization.”
Akyol does not offer any evidence of this “reformation” succeeding. The would-be “reformers” of Islam came into existence in the late nineteenth-century, when the power of Muslims was at a low ebb; they recognized that the condition of Islamic peoples suggested that “reform,” or “modernization” as Akyol prefers to call it, was needed. He declares that it “has been going on for more than a century,” but the only country where real reformation — change — seemed to have succeeded was in his own country, Turkey, thanks to the forced secularization promoted by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Ataturk was determined to limit the power of the religion as much as he could, for he was an atheist, convinced that Islam was holding his country back. He empowered women, giving them the right to vote before they won it even in Western Europe. He banned polygamy and the triple-talaq. He gave women the right to inherit equally with men. A woman’s testimony became equal to that of a man. Dress because un-islamized. Women were allowed to show themselves without the hijab. As for men, the fez and turban, identified with Islam, were abolished by the Hat Act of 1925; Turkish men began to wear suits in the Western manner. All of this was part of Ataturk’s campaign to secularise Turkish society. Nowhere else in the Islamic world was such a thoroughgoing attempt to de-emphasize Islam attempted.