Edited from Apostasy in islam , By Syed Iqbal zaheer
To cut the story short, we attempt an aerial survey of the period during which the law of apostasy was vigorously applied: between 1200 and 1800.
The word “Inquisition” will often occur. It is defined as the “papal judicial institution that combated heresy and such things as alchemy, witchcraft, and sorcery” (Britannica).
It was Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) [who had commissioned his own inquisitors, who answered directly to him], who had declared, “anyone who attempted to construe a personal view of god which conflicted with the church dogma must be burned without pity.” (The Dark Side of Christian History by Helen Ellerbe). In 1205, he issued an edict forbidding legal help to a heretic or any council or support. He believed that dissidents were worse than infidels (Saracens, Muslims, and Turks). He called upon Louis VII (1120–1180), and Raymond VI (1156-1222), to assist him. He promised the killers of the heretics a heavenly kingdom.
In consequence, in 1209 an army of the orthodox attacked Beziers and murdered 60,000 men, women, and children. When someone complained that Catholics were being killed as well as “heretics”, the papal legates told them to go on killing and not to worry about it for “the Lord knows His own.”
It was however, Pope Gregory IX who in 1231 instituted the “Papal Inquisition” for the apprehension and trial of heretics. Pope Innocent IV (1243–54), in his bull ad extirpanda, ordered the civil magistrates to extort from all heretics by torture a confession of their own guilt and a betrayal of all their accomplices. He decreed that accusers could remain anonymous. Many churches had a box where informants could slip written accusations against their neighbors. He thus instituted a system that was then honed by popes Alexander IV (1254-1261), Urban IV (1261-1265), and Clement IV (1265-1268), [himself an ex-inquisitor], and finally codified by Boniface VIII in the Liber Sextus of 1298.
The Inquisition took over all of the victims’ possessions upon accusation. Pope Innocent stated that since God punished children for the sins of their parents, they had no right to be legal heirs to the property of their parents. Inquisitors even accused the dead of heresy, and in some cases bones of the dead were exhumed as much as seventy years after their death and all property were confiscated from their heirs.
In 1224 Pope Frederick III declared that heretics convicted by an ecclesiastical court should suffer death by fire. In France it was Pope Gregory IX who began the Medieval Inquisition in 1230 by setting up in Toulouse, France, the first permanent tribunal to deal with heresy. It is reported that in 1239 at Montwimer in Champagne, Robert le Bougre one time burned about 180 persons whose trial began and ended within one week. In 1249 Count Raymond VII of Toulouse had 80 confessed heretics burned in his presence without giving them a chance to recant. In 1252, torture was authorized to elicit confessions, by Pope Innocent IV, through his Bull Ad exstirpanda of 1252, which was confirmed by Pope Alexander IV in 1259, and by Pope Clement IV in 1265. In 1478 Pope Sixtus authorized the Spanish Inquisition.
It is reported that at Minerve, 14,000 Christians were put to death in the flames, and ears, noses, and lips of the “heretics” clipped off (Peter S. Ruckman, Ph.D., History of the New Testament Church, Pensacola, Florida, 1989). But, most interestingly, in 1536 Tyndale was executed for translating the Bible into English (Encyclopedia Britannica).
In 1814 the Spanish Inquisition was reintroduced by Ferdinand VII and approved by Pope Pius VII. It was in 1965 that Pope Paul VI reorganized the Holy Office and renamed it “Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith,” and in 1993 the Church “officially” pardoned Galileo. In other words, he was forgiven for believing that the planets revolve around the Sun, not the Earth.
In 1792(?) Jean Antoine Llorente, secretary to the Spanish Inquisition from 1790-92, admitted: “The horrid conduct of this Holy Office weakened the power and diminished the population of Spain by arresting the progress of arts, sciences, industry, and commerce, and by compelling multitudes of families to abandon the kingdom; by instigating the expulsion of the Jews and the Moors (Muslims: ed.), and by immolating on its flaming shambles more than 300,000 victims.” (Jean Antoine Llorentine, History of the Inquisition; as cited in R.W. Thompson, The Papacy and the Civil Power [New York, 1876]; as cited in Dave Hunt’s, A Woman Rides the Beast).
Witchcraft was also considered as heresy and all suspected of it were similarly treated. In 1586, the Chronicler of Treves reported that the entire female population of two villages was wiped out by inquisitors. Only two women were left alive. A documented case in the Silesian town of Neisse reveals a huge oven over which - during a ten year period - more than a thousand “witches, some as young as two years old” were roasted alive. (Dictionary of Witchcraft by David Pickering, article on “Germany”, page 108). Some accounts say that between the years of 1450-1600, 30,000 alleged “witches” were tortured, and burned. Girls as young as nine and boys as young as ten were tried for witchcraft. Children much younger were tortured to extract testimony against their parents. (The Dark Side of Christian History by Helen Ellerbe).
The provisions of the Bulls were accorded theological respectability by the renowed saint Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica. He wrote: “If forgers and other malefactors are put to death by the secular power, there is much more reason for putting to death one convicted of heresy.” In 1815, Comte Le Maistre defended the Inquisition by advocating: “The Inquisition is, in its very nature, good, mild, and preservative. It is the universal, indelible character of every ecclesiastical institution; you see it in Rome, and you can see it wherever the true Church has power.” (Comte Le Maistre, Letters on the Spanish Inquisition, as cited in R.W. Thompson, The Papacy and the Civil Power (New York, 1876); as cited in Dave Hunt, A Woman Rides the Beast).
To get an idea of the instruments that were used for torture, one might visit any Inquisition site on the Internet. He or she could spend rest of the evening sad and dull. Some of the photographs of the instruments and their description could run a chill in the spine. In Europe and America, some Museums are devoted entirely to these tools, while one or two are available on tour.
What were the numbers that were affected by the Inquisition? This is difficult to judge. Accounts vary. Those who suffered most, e.g. the Protestants, allege that there is effort to conceal and even wipe off the evidences. It is said that prior to 1960, libraries in America were filled with books on the Inquisition. Today however, very few can be found. An extreme account claims that the total number of people murdered, tortured or affected in some way were 68 million. But we do not know the truth of this statement.
We could end by quoting the historian Will Durant (The Story of Civilization), “Making every allowance required by a historian and permitted to a Christian, we must rank the Inquisition, along with the wars and persecutions of our time, as among the darkest blots on the record of mankind, revealing a ferocity unknown in any beast.”
We realize that the above is too sketchy. A thorough research is a work of several years. At the moment, our point is well served. It is far from fair to cite the law of apostasy in Islam as the reason why Islam itself should not be given a fair trial.
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