"It is part of the misery of Arab life that the 'sheikhs of excommunication' have the right to excommunicate and declare apostasy against intellectuals, while no one has the right to sue these 'sheikhs' in court. This contradiction is a travesty of Arab law, for you have the right in Arab law to sue someone who insults you and slanders you, but you do not have the right to sue a person who declares you an infidel, which is the most serious and the most dangerous accusation! And why?

"The reason is that the religious sheikhs are placed above the people and have immunity, which prevents their being prosecuted. Several years ago 'Imam University' in Riyadh granted a Ph.D. 'with distinction' to a Saudi researcher who, in his doctoral thesis, declared 200 Arab intellectuals – prominent proponents of modernity, rationality and enlightenment – to be infidels. He said 'they are infidels and it is legal to kill them,' and not one of these accused intellectuals is able to demand justice for himself!

"Imagine the misery, absurdity, and contradictions in the Arab world when one person is able to excommunicate all of the Arab reformists in a Ph.D. thesis without any of them having the right to go to court against him!"

"And if an ignorant person believed what that researcher wrote and assassinated one of the scholars who was labeled and infidel, because the researcher made the shedding of his blood licit, there is no legal blame on the researcher who instigated the crime and misled the killer.

"It is time for Arab states to make declarations of apostasy (tafkir) a crime, just as murder is a crime, and an issue of great gravity not to be left to the unilateral declaration of an individual sheikh. We must have legislation to govern this matter to prevent anarchy and protect the dignity and reputation of the Muslim and his family...."