Bernard Lewis has an excellent essay, 'The Significance of Heresy in
Islam',
in his volume "Islam in History". From it we learn that ertain cl***** of
heretics were tolerated: charges of bid'a or ghuluww (innovation or
exaggeration) which were uncomplicated by any overt rebellion against the
Islamic state incurred only theological condemnation, but a charge of
zandaqa (usually translated as heresy)
"meant being taken by a policeman to prison, to interrogation, perhaps to
execution. The first recorded prosecution is that of Ja'd ibn Dirham ...
who in 742, during the reign of the Umayyad Caliph Hisham, was condemned,
mutilated and crucified on a charge of zandaqa.
"The Abbasids were more keenly aware of the potentialities of seditious
religious teaching. The repression of zindiqs began during the reign of
al-Mansur (754-755) and some were condemned to death. The Caliph attached
sufficient im****tance to this question to include an injunction to
extirpate zandaqa in his political testament to his successor, al-Mahdi
(775-785), under whom the really serious repression began.In 779 , while
passing through Aleppo, the Caliph ordered a zindiq hunt, in which many
were
caught, condemned, beheaded and quartered. Thereafter the repression
proceeded with vigor, and a kind of inquisition was established under the
control of a Grand Inquisitor..."
It is interesting to note that it was potential sedition against the state
that was the real nub of the matter - a matter of im****tance for Islam
since
the State was not distinguished from the 'Church'. As regards individual
belief, as long as this remained private it was ignored: only overt action
mattered. Heresy in Christianity affords a parallel: it was the State in
the
middle ages that persecuted heretics and executed them - the only
punishment
available to the Church was excommunication. The state extirpated
heretics -such as the Manichaeans - because they threatened the social
structure. Only the leaders of organized heresy were pursued; the simple,
uneducated followers of the cults were ignored.
An exception is Spain in the 15th century when individuals accused of
being
crypto-Jews were tried by the Inquisition. So many Jews had converted that
there were paranoid fears of Jewish conspiracies to inflitrate the Church.
Norman Roth in his recent book has shown that the victims were not
crypto-Jews but sincere converts denounced by malicious individuals as
secret Jews.
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