Blasphemy laws, apostasy trials, prison for a post, a song or a doubt: wherever religion makes the law, thinking freely becomes a crime. The texts set the tone early. "Whoever changes his religion, kill him," says a hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari (3017), and another lists leaving Islam among the three cases in which a Muslim's blood may be shed (Bukhari 6878, Muslim 1676). Quran 33:60-61 threatens the hypocrites and rumour-mongers of Medina: wherever they are found, they will be seized and killed. In Sunan Abi Dawud (4362), the Prophet declares that no blood money is owed for a Jewish woman strangled for insulting him. Fourteen centuries later, about a dozen countries still punish apostasy or blasphemy with death.
Since March, Iran has hanged at least 59 people on political charges, teenagers among them, five of them in public. Their crimes, according to the courts: broken windows, thrown stones, torched motorcycles, all filed under "waging war against God". A UN mission now speaks of crimes against humanity.
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