Freedom to Believe: Challenging Islam’s Apostasy Law
Reviewed by David W. Virtue www.virtueonline.org
by Patrick Sookhdeo, International Director of Barnabas Fund, and Director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity Foreword by Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali
Islam is a one-way street. Non-Muslims can convert to Islam, but Muslims are not allowed to convert from Islam. All schools of Islamic law specify the death sentence for an adult male Muslim who chooses to leave his faith. Although this is rarely carried out, the law imposes many other penalties on apostates, and provokes powerful hostility towards them amongst Muslims.
President Barack Obama's late father and grandfather were Muslims, but the president himself is a professing Christian. According to Islamic shari'a law, the child of a Muslim parent is to be regarded as a Muslim, regardless of the other parent's faith. By embracing Christianity Obama has made himself an "apostate" in the eyes of of Islam, that is, he is someone who has abandoned Islam, and as such under Shari'a he deserves the death penalty
As Islam becomes increasingly conservative and its calls for the full implementation of shari'a become more insistent, the danger of a more consistent and widespread enforcing of the apostasy law increases considerably, says Sookhdeo. Read more
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