Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Egypt: Converts to Christianity In Fear for their Lives

I am glad to see Fox News on the case of this Christian man and his daughter.



This is the same man we read about in May. While the Fox report attributes the court ruling against recognizing his conversion to a "threat to social order", it does not mention the report also said it was against Sharia (Islamic) Law. Also, the story doesn't connect the death threats with Islamic Law, i.e., that in Islamic Law, converting away from Islam ("apostasy") carries the death penalty.

See here Punishment for Apostasy
Execution

In Islamic law (sharia), the consensus view is that a male apostate must be put to death unless he suffers from a mental disorder or converted under duress, for example, due to an imminent danger of being killed. A female apostate must be either executed, according to Shafi'i, Maliki, and Hanbali schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), or imprisoned until she reverts to Islam as advocated by the Sunni Hanafi school and by Shi'a scholars.

A minority of medieval Islamic jurists, notably the Hanafi jurist Sarakhsi (d. 1090), Maliki jurist Ibn al-Walid al-Baji (d. 494 AH) and Hanbali jurist Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328), held that apostasy carries no legal punishment.[6] Some contemporary Islamic Shafi`i jurists, such as the Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, some Shi'a jurists such as Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, and some jurists, scholars and writers of other 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 the majority of Islamic scholars.


Hat Tip Ohio Anglican

3 comments:

joe six-pack said...

Islam has great difficulty accepting the authority of the modern natinal government. Although this issue can be considered an internal Islamic issue, this is a major reason why so much violence is internal to Islam. Besides all of the repression, if any Muslim group disagrees with another, it is easily interpreted as having left Islam. This is part of the reason why Sunni and Shitte are unable to heal their differences.

joe six-pack said...

"national government". Sorry about the spelling.

Perpetua said...

Hi Joe,

Thank you for that interesting insight.