Apostasy Punishment in a Liberal State?.

7 months ago
10

This is a spin on the usual question posed to Muslim traditionalists of what the punishment of apostasy is in an Islamic state. The question under investigation in this video is the extent to which social contract models (in liberal states) could allow punitive punishment for 'anti-state' expressions in a public domain.

This is what John Locke had to say in his letter concerning tolerance:

The case of idolaters, in respect of the Jewish commonwealth [i.e. the Kingdom of Ancient Israel], falls under a double consideration. The first is of those who, being initiated in the Mosaical rites, and made citizens of that commonwealth, did afterwards apostatise from the worship of the God of Israel. These were proceeded against as traitors and rebels, guilty of no less than high treason. For the commonwealth of the Jews, different in that from all others, was an absolute theocracy; nor was there, or could there be, any difference between that commonwealth and the Church [i.e. the Jewish religion]. The laws established there concerning the worship of One Invisible Deity were the civil laws of that people and a part of their political government, in which God Himself was the legislator. Now, if any one can shew me where there is a commonwealth at this time, constituted upon that foundation, I will acknowledge that the ecclesiastical laws do there unavoidably become a part of the civil, and that the subjects of that government both may and ought to be kept in strict conformity with that Church by the civil power.

Immanuel Kant says in the metaphysics of morals:
A Law which is so holy and inviolable that it is practically a crime even to Cast doubt upon it, or to suspend its operation for a moment, is represented of itself as necessarily derived from some Supreme, unblameable Lawgiver. And this is the meaning of the maxim, ‘All Authority is from God ‘ which proposition does not express the historical foundation of the Civil Constitution, but an ideal Principle of the Practical Reason. It may be otherwise rendered thus, ‘It is a Duty to obey the Law of the existing Legislative Power, be its origin what it may.

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