Friday, December 15, 2006

Clandestine Apostates

Dhimmi Watch links to this depressing article about Morocco:

"For many of us, Islam is perceived as a social straitjacket and not as a real faith, and Christianity as a religion of tolerance and love," said the businessman, who converted at the age of 19 and was later followed by his family.

Yet in the eyes of the state they remain Muslim.

"Officially, my son and I are Muslim," said Abdelhalim. "We hold Christian marriages and bless the young couple but this is not recognized by the state. They must go before the Muslim clergy and marry according to Sharia (Islamic law). If they don't do this, they can be charged with adultery."

The same goes for death. "I cannot be buried in a Christian cemetery, only in a Muslim one," he said.

The same principle applies in Pakistan. For example, Ahmadiyya is a tiny Islamic sect. However, most Muslims consider its followers to be heretic. If Islamists find out that a person buried in a common graveyard is an Ahmadi, then they exhume the body.

The Christian converts also have article 220 of the penal code hanging over their heads, which provides for prison sentences of between six months and three years for anyone who tries to undermine a Muslim's faith or to convert him to another religion.

Oddly enough, the faith of infidels doesn't get the same treatment.

"To deny one's religion, it is the biggest sin that a Muslim can commit," he said.

All four major schools of Islamic "thought" prescribe death for apostasy. See this Egyptian ruling and its translation from 1978.

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