Pakistan's Apostasy Act 2006.

Pakistan's Apostasy Act 2006.
One of these days we're going to get around to telling you what we really think about Islam. Until then, note this pending legislation in Pakistan:

So far, the Apostasy Act of 2006 is not law, apparently. In essence, it's yet another Islamic abomination that gives new meaning to the word "fundamentalism," namely, legislation that would cause the Pakistani government to take on the role of lethal enforcer of the execrable Islamic doctrine of apostasy.

The apostate (which is to say, the person seeking to exercise the freedom of conscience taken for granted in the West) can be convicted and executed (we kid you not) on the strength of:

• the testimony of two adults that he has left Islam, or
• his own confession.

The accused has 30 days to see the error of his ways and return to the his Islamic brethren. Even returning to the fold does not necessarily forestall a two-year prison sentence.

The part that's incredible is that the apostate's property is to be forfeited to his Muslim relatives. The relatives also get custody of the apostate's children.

As our foregoing post, "Religion of no compulsion," makes clear, Pakistani law creates an ungodly incentive for a Muslim to turn any kind of a dispute with a Christian into a "blasphemy" issue with crushing disincentives for any Christian to do anything but lick the hand of any neighborhood Muslim dog rustler or chicken thief. Dhimmitude on the half shell!

Now, the Pakistani legislature intends to create a huge incentive for any Muslim's relatives to fabricate charges of apostasy with a view to acquiring the accused's possessions and even his children.

English law took notice of the perverse incentives in allowing people with no "insurable interest" in the lives of others to take out insurance on the lives of those other persons. Similarly, the law forbade any spouse or relative from inheriting property from a deceased spouse or relative whom they had helped to become deceased.

The great movie "The Sorrow and the Pity" told of the experience of the Germans during the occupation of France. Gestapo officers received a steady stream of denunciations of Frenchmen by Frenchmen and came to have a relaxed and jaundiced view of these denunciations as their experience with them grew. In one town, the doctors were informing on the other doctors in town as a way of ridding themselves of competition.

Members of La Resistance!

Thomas Jefferson's widow understood this matter of incentives better than her late husband who bequeathed his slaves to her, the slaves to be freed upon her death. Wisely, Martha freed her slaves after they became aware of the one remaining obstacle to their being free.

These lessons, however, are lost on the Pakistani bretheren. Caught up in their ardor to be good little Muslims, they are intent on enacting cheesy legislation with built-in incentives of the basest kind.

It is legislation that bespeaks a fundamental ignorance of human nature. The mere proposing of it demonstrates a conclusive disqualification for any kind of public office. No legislator who supports it should ever exercise any power over the lives and fortunes of other human beings.

By Western standards, that is. In the East it's the glories of Islam on their lips and the celebration of envy, greed, and oppression in their pens.

"Apostasy bill would require death for leaving Islam." By Mark Kelly — BP News, Christian Examiner Online, 6/7/07.

ADDENDUM:

Here's another description of perverse incentives leading to the denouncement of innocent people. Solzhenitsyn's estimate of the death toll of Communism in the U.S.S.R. was 66,000,000 people, which figure does not cover Soviet battle casualties in WWII. The plight of the Kulaks described below is obviously unknown to the ignorant political leadership in the Pakistani legislature:

Millions of people, mostly entirely families, denounced as enemies of the socialists were arrested because they owned a cow, a tractor, had employees, had more goods than a neighbor, were simply disliked or because a Communist functionary needed to meet a quota. They were forced into box cars without adequate food, water or sanitation and sent hundreds or thousands of miles away into exile. Thousands died enroute, still more thousands were executed. And many more thousands died when they were forced to labor in forests, mines and on primitive farms in the name of socialist glory.

~ Jerry Saperstein's review of The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin's Special Settlements.

What the Soviets got was not a fairer, juster political arrangement (hardly their actual goal, though it was their stated goal at all times during their reign over the Soviet abbatoir) but a political system that rewarded envy and expropriation -- precisely the result that Pakistan can now expect if the Apostasy Act becomes law.

Years back the Wall Street Journal reported on an effort in Italy to reduce the number of snakes by paying a bounty for their capture and delivery to the local government. The end result was an increase in the number of snakes because locals took to breeding snakes to claim larger bounties.

The increase in bona fide snakes was probably not that detrimental to the locals. The increase in the two-legged variety from the pathetic institutionalization of bedrock Islamic principles in Pakistan won't be as benign.

Perhaps our local schools can cover this point when they swoon over Pakistan's National Day with special celebrations and cultural awareness sessions.