Hi Alexei
Thanks but no thanks, I need not PM Carol or anyone, I know Islams teaching on Muslims who convert out of Islam.
What is Apostacy?
Technically, apostacy means to leave a religion. It means to once have been a member or believer in a faith and then to cease to believe or to convert to another faith or to question an important aspect of ones faith.
What is the prescribed punishment for Apostacy in Islam?
Execution for apostasy is not Qur'anic:
The only reference I could find is in (47:25-28. "When the angels take their souls at death and smite their faces and backs". However Prophet Muhammad did kill a number of people who deserted Islam and so the punishment is Sunnah (actions and sayings of Muhammad) and hence Shariah, Islamic Law. One whose name has been left to posterity was Abdullah ibn Saud, one of Muhammad's scribes (Muhammad was illiterate). Abdullah had come to the conclusion that Muhammad himself, and not Allah, was the author of the Qur'an and left Islam.
The Hadith ---Sayings and actions of Prophet Muhammad
(Abu Dawud 38:4357) When the Apostle of Allah cut off the hands and feet of those who had stolen his camels and apostacised and had their eyes put out by fire, Allah reprimanded him and revealed: "The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Apostle and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is execution or crucifixion." (38A359).. or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides or exile from the land" This was "revealed about polytheists and if any of them repent before they are arrested it does not prevent from inflicting on him the prescribed punishment which he deserves"
(Muslim 623) The Prophet said: "It is not permissible to take the life of a Muslim except in one of the three cases: the married adulterer, a life for a life (if the person is Muslim), and the deserter of Islam."
(Bukhari 9:89:271) A man embraced Islam and then reverted back to Judaism Mu'adh said: "I will not sit down unless you kill him as it is the verdict of Allah and His Apostle"
(Bukhari 4:52:260) Ali burnt some people (Zanadiqa, atheists 9:84:57) although the Prophet had said, "Dont punish anybody with Allah's punishment (Fire)" if a Muslim discards his religion, kill him"
Open Your eyes
What actually happens to Apostates who are caught in Muslim countries?
Iran
Ruhollah Rowhani, 52, was executed in 1998 for converting to the Baha'i faith from Islam. The US State Department has called on Iran "to protect the lives of 15 other imprisoned Baha'is. Three of them, Ata'ullah Hamid Nasirizadih, Sirus Dhabih- Magadamme and Hidayad Kashifi, have already been sentenced to death. Moderate President Khatami can do little to help as the courts are controlled by religious hardliners.
The Reverend Mehdi Dibaj had converted from Islam to Christianity 45 years ago. On 21/12/93 he was sentenced to death on charges of apostasy. Released on appeal his body was found on 5 July 1994. The Reverend Haik Mehr, Superintendent of the Church of the Assemblies of God, who had campaigned against Dibaj's death sentence was found dead on 20/1/94. On 2 July 1994 the body of the Reverend Tatavous Michaelian, Chairman of the Council of Protestant Ministers in Iran was found with several gun shots to the head.
Egypt
We wish to raise what, at first glance, may appear to be an inconsequential or even humorous matter [at least in Australia where a good proportion of partners are unmarried]. A Cairo court has ordered the divorce of a couple who wish to stay together. Islamists have claimed that Professor Nasser Hamed Abu Zaid is guilty of heresy in writing that "Islam's teachings should evolve with changes in society." However, a Muslim woman cannot be married to a heretic, a non-Muslim. He and his wife, Ibtihal, also an academic have appealed against the ruling and can remain together for the time being. However if the prosecution stands, they could lose their jobs or even be killed .by fanatics as "adulterers ("living in sin") or as apostates ("deserters of Islam") [From "Some Islamic History]
While there are, as yet, no laws against apostasy from Islam, the missionary or the convert may be convicted on other charges, for example "threatening social peace and intercommunal relations". There is, however, a Supreme Court ruling that a Moslem who apostacises is legally dead. He loses all rights and powers. He cannot withdraw funds from his accounts. Any person who kills him does not commit murder from a legal point of view because he is already legally dead. The "dead" person cannot marry or inherit. Nor is it possible for an apostate to have his identity card changed to "Christian". More than one hundred and fifty Muslims who have adopted Christianity have been detained in maximum-security prisons. They have been accused of threatening national unity.
One example from a Coptic press release, concerned the case of Dr. Abdul-Rahman who has been held in Cairo without trial for two years for breaking with Islam. He is in solitary confinement but his will has not been broken. He is undoubtedly being used as a warning to anyone else contemplating apostasy
Algeria
One story recorded by a Spanish monk, Haedo, of the sixteenth century concerns a young Arab. He had been captured by the Spanish, had embraced Christianity and been baptized as Geronimo. He was recaptured in 1569 by Barbary pirates and taken to Algiers. When threats and pleadings failed to make him apostacise back to Islam, Geronimo was condemned to death. Bound hand and foot he was thrown into a mould in which a block of concrete was about to be made and the liquid concrete poured in upon him. The block containing his body was built into the Fort of the Twenty Four Hours in Algiers.
In 1853, the fort was demolished by French military engineers and, in the spot named by Haedo, the block containing the skeleton of Geronimo was found. His bones were canonized as those of a martyr, Saint Geronimo, and were buried in the Cathedral of St. Philippe. Plaster of Paris was run into the concrete mold and a perfect model obtained showing the agonized features of the youth and the cords which bound him. The cast is in the Algerian Museum.
Sudan
Bit by bit the Islamic fundamentalists, the Ikhwan, were able to consolidate their power in Khartoum. In September 1983 a version of Shariah, the "September Law" was introduced. Many floggings, amputations and stonings were carried out. Incorporated in the law was ijtihad or "free interpretation". If the qazi was unable to find a relevant law to convict a defendant he could search the Qur'an and Hadith at his discretion. For example Mahmoud Taha, the 76 year old leader of the Republican Brothers was hanged in January 1985 for apostasy, although it was not a crime at that time.
A number of southerners living in the north had changed their names to Arabic ones to improve their business prospects. They discovered that they had done a dangerous thing; now they were expected to be practising Muslims and could not use their original names without being subject to the death penalty for apostasy. Similarly at risk were non-Muslim families who adopted Islam or an Islamic name so that they could qualify for relief supplies during a famine. Also trapped were non-Muslim men who had "embraced" Islam so that they could marry Muslim women or to be able to obtain easy divorces.
15/7/98 Mekki Kuku is held in a Khartoum jail awaiting trial on a charge of apostasy from Islam to Christianity. Sudan has the death penalty for "deserting Islam."
Mauritania
"Every Muslim guilty of the crime of apostasy, whether by word or action, will be invited to repent over a period of three days. If he does not repent within this time limit, he is to be condemned to death as an apostate and his property will be confiscated by the Treasury
Every Muslim who refuses to pray will be invited to fulfill the obligation of prayer in the prescribed time limit. .. If he persists in his refusal he will be punished by the death penalty."
India
The Muhtasib saw to it that the Muslims did not omit the five daily prayers and the fasts of Ramadan. State musicians and singers were pensioned off. The death penalty for apostasy from Islam was enforced.
Rushdie claimed (1985) to be a non-Muslim and so is not bound by Shariah blasphemy laws. If he was born of Muslim parents then the Shariah does not allow him to leave Islam even in childhood. The penalty under Muslim law for apostasy is death. Did you know that Islamic leaders in Britain want Muslim religious law to rate as equal to existing British law? A British Pakistani father murdered his daughter for converting to a Jehovah's Witness. He would, of course, have been acquitted, under Shariah which the Muslim fundamentalists are trying to bring into England.
Chechnya
Theologians from Chechnya and Dagestan ordered Muslims to carry out the death sentence against Gov. Aman Tuleyev "at the first possible opportunity". He has been accused of being baptized as an Orthodox Christian on June 25.
The death penalty for apostasy ("deserting Islam") is not Qur'anic but it is Shariah (Islamic Law) as Prophet Muhammad executed a number of apostates.
Tuleyev denies the report that he had been baptized and says he is not religious. Thus he is still technically an apostate as, being of Kazakh origin, he is "a member of a predominantly Muslim ethnic group" as the theologians say.
Libya
Indeed, the only Muslim author to have cast doubts on male circumcision has had legal action brought against him and might be sentenced to death for apostasy. I am speaking of (retired) Judge Mustafa Kamal Al-Mahdawi, a personal friend of mine, who is today under a ferocious attack lead by Libyan religious circles in the mosques as well in the press. The preacher of the Mosque of the Prophet, in Medina, Saudi Arabia, published in July 1992 a pamphlet handed out free of charge in Libya. In this pamphlet, he asks the Muslim Arab League and the Islamic Conference to set up a collective fatwa of all Muslim scholars against this judge and to execute him as an apostate if he does not retract. As for his book, the preacher asks that it be removed from the shelves, burned and forbidden to any reader. He blames the judge for having, among other things, denied that male circumcision is compulsory when there is unanimity in favour of it and when Mohammed was Himself circumcised 54.
Peace
"Oh my Jesus I love you to the point of madness" St Foustina