Islamaniacs!

In thirteenth-century Baghdad, Jewish philosopher Ibn Kammuna published a book called Examination of the Three Faiths. It was a reasoned critique of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and as such provoked insane anger amongst the faithful who then gathered outside Kammuna's home and called loudly for his death. Kammuna was sentenced to immolation, but managed to escape the city and live nearby in hiding until his death.

In April 1967, Ibrahim Khalas published an article in a Syrian army magazine that labeled all gods and religions as "mummies which should be transferred to the museums of historical remains." Once again, hysterical mobs filled the streets, consumed with righteous rage. Khalas and two editors of the magazine were court-martialed, found guilty, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Also in the 1960s, Mahmud Muhammad Taha, a Sudanese theologian, attempted to reform the heavily Islamic laws of his country. Religious authorities prosecuted Taha, finding him guilty of apostasy - punishable by death. Taha temporarily escaped that death sentence long enough to see his works destroyed by the holy men of Allah. In 1985 his sentence was finally carried out when he was publicly hanged in Khartoum. Taha was seventy-six.

In 1986, Rachid Boudjedra wrote in a collection of essays by Arab writers that "Islam is absolutely incompatible with a modern state" and that he didn't "see how Islam could be a system of government." Boudjedra has had a death sentence (death fatwa) pronounced against him since 1983 for his views. An Algerian himself, Boudjedra attacked the Algerian Islamicist Party in a 1992 article, demonstrating its undemocratic practices and comparing it to the Nazi Party of the 1930s.

In February 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced a death fatwa on Salman Rushdie after publication of Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses. To this day, despite pleas from human rights organizations and the global community, good Muslims seek Rushdie's death.

In September of 1992, Sadek Abdel-Kerim Malallah was beheaded by the Saudi Arabian government after he was convicted of slandering God, the holy book of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. "This is not mere apostasy ... it is a sacrilegious crime punishable by death irrespective of repentance," declared the interior ministry.

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