The death penalty for leaving Islam

The case of Abdul Rahman, an Afghan convert to Christianity, brought forth one of Islam's dirty secrets: becoming a Muslim is much easier than becoming an ex-Muslim.

Reverberations from the case are still being felt world wide.

From the Middle East Times:

Sher Ali Zarifi, head of religious jurisprudence in (Afghanistan's) Science Academy of leading intellectuals, did not refer to Abdul Rahman by name but told a meeting of scholars that punishment for apostasy under Islam was death unless the convert recanted.

Such brutish views on religion of course run contrary to the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but I doubt Mr. Zarifi cares about that resolution.

Last week, Dr. Yusuf Al-Qaradawi in Islam Online.net, wrote a long-winded essay on apostasy. Now if someone like Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch wrote something like this, cries of "Islamophobia" would be heard world wide.

Here is Al-Qaradawi's biography:

Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi is a world-renowned scholar and head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) and president of the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS). His best known books include The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam, Priorities of the Islamic Movement in the Coming Phase, and Islamic Revivalism Between Rejection and Extremism. Many scholars consider him to be one of the most reputable mujtahids of the modern age. He has been active in the field of da`wah and the Islamic movement for more than half a century.

Al-Qaradawi doesn't condone the condemnation of all Muslim apostates to death, he divides leaving the faith into "minor and major apostasies."

But read this:

The death penalty with regard to apostasy is to be applied only to those who proclaim their apostasy and call for others to do the same. Islam lays down this severe punishment in order to protect its unity and the identity of its community. Every community in this world has basic foundations that are to be kept inviolable, such as identity, loyalty, and allegiance. Accordingly, no community accepts that a member thereof changes its identity or turns his or her loyalty to its enemies. They consider betrayal of one's country a serious crime, and no one has ever called for giving people a right to change their loyalty from a country to another whenever they like.

Apostasy is not only an intellectual situation whose handling is confined to discussing the principle of freedom of belief; it also involves a change of loyalty and identity. People who apostatize from Islam give up their loyalty to the Muslim nation and pay allegiance, heart and soul, to its enemies. This is denoted in the agreed-upon hadith that clarifies the kinds of people whose blood is lawful to shed and describes among those people the apostate, by saying, "Or someone who abandons his religion and the Muslim community" (Ibn Mas`ud).

(Emphasis was Al-Qaradawi's.)

For another Muslim viewpoint, visit Irshad Manji's Muslim Refusenik site.

Islam may not be incompatible with democracy, but I believe Al-Qaradawi's vision of it is.

Technorati tags: Islam Abdul Rahman Apostasy Christianity Religion Afghanistan الإسلام افغانستان Death Penalty