ppears to be designed as a form of ‘religious cleansing’ to eradicate non Muslims from Iraq and has resulted in approximately two thirds of Iraq’s 1.4 million Christian population fleeing as refugees to neighbouring countries such as Syria and Jordan. This religious cleansing is a rare case where some Islamist understandings of sharia differ significantly from those of the classical schools of sharia. The latter base their understanding of sharia on medieval interpretations of the Qur’an which grant Christians dhimmi status (i.e. second class citizens who must pay the jizya tax), while Islamists base their understanding of sharia on their own interpretations of the Qur’an.
In Sudan the Sudanese civil war was essentially about the predominantly Arab and Islamic North trying to impose sharia on the mainly Christian and Animist South. On 9th July, in a rare sign of hope in the struggle against the imposition of sharia, South Sudan became independent as the world’s newest country. However, its long term security will always be an issue as sharia dictates that once an area has at any point in history once been subjected to Islamic law and government it becomes an act of ‘defensive’ jihad to fight to reimpose Islamic government and the enforcement of sharia.
Meanwhile in North Sudan on 12th October President Bashir announced government plans to adopt a completely Islamic constitution with sharia as the main source of national law. Already, some Christian pastors in the North have been warned not to hold services on pain of death. While women, including Christian mothers with young babies have been put in prison for not following sharia requirements such as being fully veiled and having a male escort when in public, a situation horribly reminiscent of Afghanistan under the Taliban when many widows with no male family left alive were arrested and imprisoned as they begged for food on streets.
There has also been an increasing issue of religious cleansing taking place in North Sudan with President Bashir having announced prior to the separation that he intends North Sudan to be 100% Muslim (it is currently 98% Muslim). There are reports of daily air strikes, arbitrary arrests and executions aimed at non Muslims living in the border region of North Sudan, with Christian leaders being particularly singled out and tortured.
In Iran the enforcement of sharia has continued to become even stricter. In 2011 supreme court upheld the death penalty imposed on Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani because he had converted to Christianity from Islam. Although in recent years there have been a number of informal executions of converts from Islam, some of which appear to have been orchestrated by the government, apostasy from Islam is not against Iran’s penal code. However, the supreme court’s decision reflects the fact that judges are allowed to draw on fatwas (legal opinions of sharia judges) and Islamic sources where national law is silent and have done so in this case to formalise the death penalty for apostasy from Islam (i.e. leaving Islam for another faith).
In Pakistan 2011 saw the assassination of two liberal politicians who had voiced support for reform of the Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws under which, amongst others, Christian wife and mother of 5 Aasia Bibi who has been sentenced to death for allegedly insulting Muhammud. The assassinations of Salman Taseer, a liberal Muslim who was governor of Punjab Province and Shabaz Bhatti a Pakistani Christian who was minister for religious minorities were welcomed by leading Islamic scholars in Pakistan who viewed them as having committed the sharia offence of blasphemy and therefore deserving of the death penalty because they had advocated the abolition of part of sharia I.e. the blasphemy law.
In the Maldives a revision of the constitution in 2008 just before the dictator Abdul Gayoom departed had already left non Muslim Maldivians in a potentially stateless limbo by restricting the acquisition of citizenship to Muslims. However, Islamists have seen the new democratic process as a road 