Whiter Islam?

[Calandale]

Fuck your family. They're out to get you.

[Peter]

Peter, Lit,

Ahmad Sa`d, an Islamic scholar, thinks
otherwise. Others share similar views, such as Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, another scholar specializing in Shari'ah Thought.

Here's a quote from the latter (but do read his entire comment):

Freedom of conscience is one of the fundamental rights of humans enshrined in the Qur'an; it is therefore, absurd for anyone to suggest that Islam allows putting people to death just because they convert to another religion.

Even a casual reader of the Qur'an will not fail to be impressed by its emphasis on the freedom of conscience as a cornerstone of its moral structure. To cite a few verses as follows:

[There shall be no compulsion in religion. Distinct has now become the right way from [the wayof] error: hence, he who rejects the powers of evil and believes in God has indeed taken hold of a support most unfailing, which shall never give way: for God is all-hearing, all-knowing] ( Al-Baqarah 2:256)

Your guys are more dramatic than mine, I'd say. They are Christians, however, not Muslims, and it seems that  they are modern missionaries to boot. They like the drama, it seems. Hmm... I wonder, who should I trust?

How about wikipedia?

All five major schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree that a sane male apostate must be executed. A female apostate may be put to death, according to some schools, or imprisoned, according to others.

Some contemporary Shi'a jurists, scholars, writers and Islamic sects have argued or issued fatwas that either the changing of religion is not punishable or is only punishable under restricted circumstances, but these minority opinions have not found broad acceptance among Islamic scholars.[3][4][5][6][7]

While your guy may very well have a lot of merit in his argument, it remains that Muslim apostates must fear for their lives, since the majority Islamic view is that they must be killed.  Your guy is in the minority, and not representative of the situation as it stands.

[Peter]

In most interpretations of Sharia, conversion by Muslims to other religions, is strictly forbidden and is termed apostasy. Muslim theology equates apostasy to treason, and in most interpretations of sharia, the penalty for apostasy is death.

In many Muslim countries, the accusation of apostasy is even used against non-conventional interpretations of the Quran. The severe persecution of the famous expert in Arabic literature, Prof. Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, is an example of this. In some countries, Sunni and Shia Muslims often accuse each other of apostasy. The current civil strife in Iraq is explained by many in terms of the extremely harsh religious opposition between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq.

[Peter]

"Whoever changes his religion shall be killed", Abu Dawud.

"Kill those who believe in many gods" Sura al-Tawba 9:5

"If a Muslim is found guilty of the crime of apostasy, either through words or through actions, he will be asked to repent during a three day period. If he has not repented within this time limit, he will be sentenced to death as an apostate and his property will be seized by the Revenue office. Every Muslim who refuses to pray will be asked to comply with the obligation to pray within the prescribed time limit. If he persists in his refusal, he will be punished by death." Article 306 of the Mauritanian Constitution

Islam teaches that a newborn has an innate ability to know and believe in his creator, and to understand good and evil. Muhammad (pbuh) stated: "Every child is born with the believing nature...it is his parents who make him into a Jew or a Christian." There is to be no force used to convert a non-believer to Islam. The Qur'ãn, quoted above, prohibits the use of compulsion to force a person or a society to accept Islam.

However, once a person freely "enters into the fold of Islam, the rules change." 4 The word "Islam" means "submission to the will of God." The Qur'ãn says that: "No believing man and no believing woman has a choice in their own affairs when Allãh and His Messenger have decided on an issue." (33:36) On the issue of apostasy, "Islam clearly says: No! You cannot become an apostate." 4 Apostasy is viewed as a form of treason.

In many predominately Muslim countries, the punishment for apostasy is death.

Assuming that the individual:
bullet   Was a Muslim
bullet   Openly rejects Islam,
bullet   Has made this decision freely and without coercion,
bullet   Is aware of the nature of his/her statements, and
bullet   Is an adult. then the penalty prescribed by Shari'a (Islamic) law is execution for men and life imprisonment for women. Drunkards and mentally ill persons are excluded from this punishment because they are considered to be not responsible for their statements.

A person born of a Muslim parent who later rejects Islam is called a "Murtad Fitri" (Apostate - natural). This is viewed a treason against God. They are given a second chance. If they repent of their decision, they will be released. A person who converted to Islam and later rejected the religion is a "Murtad Milli" (apostate - from the community.) This is viewed as treason against the community. Male apostates are executed even if they repent. Female apostates are released from imprisonment if they repent.

Additional factors:
bullet   If either spouse apostatize from Islam, a divorce is automatic.
bullet   If both apostatize they are generally allowed to stay married.
bullet   An under-aged male is imprisoned, and only executed if he remains an apostate when he becomes of age.
bullet   The will of a male apostate is not valid.
bullet   A female apostate's will remains valid.
bullet   In the rare instances when an apostate is executed, it is traditionally done by severing his neck with a sword.
bullet   Among Malikites, Shafi'ites, and Hanbalites, adult women receive the same penalty as men: execution.
bullet   The Shi'ite schools of law allow for Islamic law towards apostates to be applied in non-Muslim countries. The majority "Sunnites do not believe in extraterritorial jurisdiction." 4

Justification for the death penalty is mainly based on two Hadith texts:
bullet   "Whoever changes his religion shall be killed." (Abu Dawud)
bullet   "It is not lawful to kill a man who is a Muslim except for one of the three reasons: Kufr (disbelief) after accepting Islam....." (Abu Dawud).

[Peter]

And a case study:

...
Yasmin, who was raised in the North of England, has been forced out of her town once, and is now trying to resist being chased out again. Brought up in a Muslim family, she converted after having a vision of Jesus when she gave birth to her youngest son, and was baptised in her thirties.. “My family completely disowned me. They thought I had committed the biggest sin — I was born a Muslim, and so I must die a Muslim. When my husband found out, he totally disowned my sons. One friend tried to strangle me when I told him I was converting,” she said.

“We had bricks though our windows, I was spat at in the street because they thought I was dishonouring Islam. We had to call the police so many times. I had to go to court to get an injunction against my husband because he was inciting others to attack me.”

She fled to another part of Britain, but the attacks soon started again as locals found out about her. “I wasn’t going to leave again,” she said, adding that it was the double standards of her attackers that made her most angry. “They are such hypocrites — they want us to be tolerant of everything they want, but they are intolerant of everything about us.”
...

Seems that whatever ideas of tolerance are being batted around in the universities, the status quo on the street is still that apostates are harassed and endangered, even in the UK.

[Peter]

More from that article:

Although some are beaten “black and blue” for their faith, others suffer even more. The family of an 18-year-old girl whomYasmin was helping found that she had been hiding a Bible in her room, and visiting church secretly. “I tried to do as much as possible to help her, but they took her to Pakistan ‘on holiday’. Three weeks later, she was drowned — they said that she went out in the middle of the night and slipped in the river, but she just wouldn ’t have done that,” said Yasmin.

Ruth, also of Pakistani origin, found out recently that she had only just escaped being murdered. When she told her family that she had converted, they kept her locked inside the family home all summer.

“They were afraid I would meet some Christians. My brother was aggressive, and even hit me — I later found out he wanted me dead,” she said. A family friend had suggested taking her to Pakistan to kill her, and her brother put the idea to her mother, who ruled against it. “You are very isolated and very alone. But now, my brother is thinking about changing and a cousin has made a commitment to Christianity.”

Noor, from the Midlands, was brought up a Muslim but converted to Christianity at 21. “Telling my father was the most difficult thing I have ever done. I thought he would kill me on the spot, but he just went into a state of shock,” she said. He ended up almost kidnapping her.

“He took drastic actions — he took the family to Pakistan, to a secluded village with no roads to it. He kept us there for many years, putting pressure on me to leave my Christian faith. I endured mental and emotional suffering that most humans never reach,” she said. Eventually, her father realised that he could not shake her faith, and released her with strict conditions. “In desperation, my father threatened to take my life. If someone converts, it is a must for family honour to bring them back to Islam, if not, to kill them.”

Imams in Britain sometimes call on the apostates to be killed if they criticise their former religion. Anwar Sheikh, a former mosque teacher from Pakistan, became an atheist after coming to Britain, and now lives with a special alarm in his house in Cardiff after criticising Islam in a series of hardline books.

“I’ve had 18 fatwas against me. They telephone me — they aren’t foolhardy enough to put it in writing. I had a call a couple of weeks ago. They mean repent or be hanged,” he said. “What I have written, I believe and I will not take it back. I will suffer the consequences. If that is the price, I will pay it.”

The most high-profile British apostate is Ibn Warraq, a Pakistani-born intellectual and former teacher from London, who lost his faith after the Salman Rushdie affair and set out his reasons in the book Why I am not a Muslim.

He recently edited the book Leaving Islam, but finds it hard to explain the hostility. “It’s very strange. Even the most liberal Muslim can become incredibly fierce if you criticise Islam, or, horror of horrors, leave it.”

He himself has taken the precaution of using only a pseudonym, and lives incognito in mainland Europe. He thinks that Islamic apostasy is common. “In Western societies, it is probably 10-15 per cent. It’s very difficult to tell, because people don’t admit it.”

These are Muslims in the UK too; not in some Saudi shithole.

[McGiver]

i wonder how this would play out in the US, where we have a clear seperation of church and state.

can a religious organization be charged with murder?

[odeon]

It seems that you're a faster typist than I am, Peter...

First of all, my guyS. Plural form. I quoted two scholars.

It seems that the references aren't as conclusive as the Wikipedia article would have it. Your guy Heffening of Encyclopaedia of Islam, for example (the guy is, or at least was, a Western scholar), seems to hold the opinion that the punishment is in the afterlife only:

W. Heffening states that in Qur'an "the apostate is threatened with punishment in the next world only" however "in traditions, there is little echo of these punishments in the next world ... and instead, we have in many traditions a new element, the death penalty."

Not as conclusive as the article but I'd agree that there is doubt, and yes, several Islamic nations ("Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan, Mauritania, the Comoros and, most likely, Iraq", according to Wikipedia) do have death penalty for apostasy. OTOH, Egypt, to pick but one other Muslim nation (about 90% Muslims, ca 70 million people, that is, about ), claim to have freedom of religion but seem to make it tough for minority religions other than Islam, Christianity and--yes--Judaism. They do not have death penalty for apostasy, though.

Here's another Wikipedia quote :

Today, out of 57 mostly Islamic countries in OIC, five make apostasy from Islam a crime punishable by death, including Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, and Yemen. However, according the US State Department, there have been no reports of such executions by the government of Saudi Arabia for several years.[53] On the other hand, in Pakistan, vigilante attacks against alleged apostates are common.[54]

To me, five out of 57, while worrying and just as wrong as any threat against freedom of speech, religion or any other (in my view) inalienable human right, doesn't present a convincing case. Indeed most Wikipedia articles and the articles referenced, specifically point out that the Qu'ran does not impose the death penalty for apostasy.

I'm well aware of the persecution of some converts--these cases tend to be highly publicized throughout the Western world even though, shocking as they may be, they are few in number when compared to, for example, plain old domestic violence. The headlines for the latter, unfortunately, are utterly boring because there's no clear-cut bad guy, no-one to blame right away.

My first reaction, however, was against Omega Male's statement, "In the sharia penalty for Muslims converting to another religion is death, which explains why many Muslim converts to Christianity keep quiet", and the truth just isn't that simple.