Why aren't Muslims around the world expressing public outrage over the case of Youcef Nadarkhani? A Christian minister who was born to Muslim parents, Nadarkhani was condemned to death by courts in Iran. His alleged crime: apostasy. But there's no evidence that he ever left Islam for Christianity -- courts have simply insisted that he has Muslim "heritage," so I guess if anyone in your direct lineage was ever Muslim, you're an apostate too.
This decision not only contradicts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but even Iran's own constitution: "The investigation of individuals' beliefs is forbidden, and no one may be molested or taken to task simply for holding a certain belief."
Pleas for clemency from the archbishop of Canterbury, the UK's foreign secretary and Amnesty International, among others, have fallen on deaf ears in Tehran. Meanwhile the silence from the world's Muslims - especially the UK's usually voluble Muslim organisations and self-appointed "community leaders" - has been shameful.
The irony is that I have yet to come across an ordinary Muslim who agrees that a fellow believer who loses, changes or abandons his or her faith should be hanged. Yet frustratingly few Muslims are willing to speak out against such medieval barbarism. We mumble excuses, avert our eyes.
There is a misguided assumption among many Muslims that such an abhorrent punishment is divinely mandated. It isn't. Classical Muslim jurists wrongly conflated apostasy with treason. The historical fact is that the prophet Muhammad never had anyone executed for apostasy alone. In one well-documented case, when a Bedouin man disowned his decision to convert to Islam and left the city of Medina, the prophet took no action against him, remarking only that, "Medina is like a pair of bellows: it expels its impurities and brightens and clears its good".
Nor does the Qur'an say that a Muslim who apostasises be given any penalty. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by Islam's holy book in the famous verse: "Let there be no compulsion in religion" (2:256). Apostasy is deemed a sin, but the Qur'an repeatedly refers to punishment in the next world, not this one.
Take the 137th verse of chapter 4: "Those who believe then disbelieve, again believe and again disbelieve, then increase in disbelief, God will never forgive them nor guide them to the Way" (4:137). This verse, which explicitly allows for disbelief, followed by belief, followed once again by disbelief, suggests any punishment is for God to deliver - not judges in Iran, Saudi Arabia or anywhere else.
Source: The Guardian
Ayatollah Murtaza Muttahari, once an important ally of the Ayatollah Khomeini and a respected leader in Iran, wrote a condemnation of forced conversion that is so well put that it bears repeating here: "It is not possible to spank a child into solving an arithmetical problem. His mind and thought must be left free in order that he may solve it. The Islamic faith is something of this kind."
Note that this is not expressed from a secularist perspective. Muttahari assumes that the truth of Islam should be as obvious as the truth of arithmetic and that this will become clear to anyone who is free to study the matter. I obviously don't agree, but it's a sentiment that needs to be emphasized because it's exactly the perspective a person should have if they really are confident that their religion is not only true, but obviously true. Only a person whose faith is weak would support the use of force and coercion to compel belief.
Even if Youcef Nadarkhani were an apostate, he shouldn't be put to death for it and the silence of Muslims around the world would be outrageous. Given all these circumstances, though, Muslims don't even have bad excuses and rationalizations. So why aren't they speaking out? Why aren't they making as much noise about this as Christian leaders? There is something rotten at the heart of any religious community, but especially any Muslim community, that remains mute in the face of such events.
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