More on Muslim Apostates in the UK

In this post I commented on an article from the Times Online which described the violence and threats experienced by one young convert from her own family. Today, in the Telegraph, we read another very similar story about another young Muslim woman who converted to Christianity:-

When Sofia Allam left the Muslim faith for Christianity, the response from her family was one of persecution and threats. Alasdair Palmer explores the dangers facing Islam's apostates

Sofia Allam simply could not believe it. Her kind, loving father was sitting in front of her threatening to kill her. He said she had brought shame and humiliation on him, that she was now "worse than the muck on their shoes" and she deserved to die.

And what had brought on his transformation? He had discovered that she had left the Muslim faith in which he had raised her and become a Christian.

"He said he couldn't have me in the house now that I was a Kaffir [an insulting term for a non-Muslim]," Sofia - not her real name - remembers.

"He said I was damned for ever. He insulted me horribly. I couldn't recognise that man as the father who had been so kind to me as I was growing up.

"My mother's transformation was even worse. She constantly beat me about the head. She screamed at me all the time. I remember saying to them, as they were shouting death threats, 'Mum, Dad - you're saying you should kill me… but I'm your daughter! Don't you realise that?'?"

. . .

Religious persecution of the kind Sofia suffers, however, is increasingly common in Britain today. It is hard to get an accurate notion of the scale of the problem, not least because very few of the people who leave Islam are willing to complain to the police about the way they are treated.

"Intimidation is very widespread and pretty effective," says Maryam Namazie, a spokesperson for the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain. She believes that many of the deaths classified as "honour killings" are actually murders of people who have renounced Islam.

. . .

But it is not only extreme Muslim families that believe it is their religious duty to threaten, and even kill, members who renounce the religion.

"My father could not be described as an extremist," insists Sofia, who is now 31. "We read the Koran and prayed regularly together, but he never insisted on my wearing Islamic dress and he was quite happy that I went to the local comprehensive, which was all girls, but not by any means dominated by Muslims."

The violent reaction to this young woman's conversion is typical, or at least common. While the Shari'a punishment of death for apostasy is well-known, what I cannot understand is the violence shown towards the apostate by his or her own family.

The article continues:-

Ibrahim Mogra, of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), says that it is "absolutely disgraceful behaviour… In Britain, no Muslim has the right to harm one hair of someone who decides to leave Islam."

Inayat Bunglawala, also a spokesman for the MCB, insists that such behaviour in Britain is "awful and quite wrong. The police should crack down on it."

And yet a significant portion of British Muslims think that such behaviour is not merely right, but a religious obligation: a survey by the think-tank Policy Exchange, for instance, revealed that 36 per cent of young Muslims believe that those who leave Islam should be killed.

Does Ibrahim Mogra believe that this behaviour is wrong only in Britain? Would it be acceptable somewhere else, like Pakistan perhaps?

There is considerable support, from the Koran and other sacred Islamic texts, for that position - which may explain why, out of the 57 Islamic states in the world today, seven have a legal code that punishes Muslims who leave the religion with death.

That number may soon increase: Pakistan is currently considering a Bill that would make apostasy a capital crime for men and one carrying a sentence of imprisonment for women.

As it is, ordinary Pakistanis take the law into their own hands and kill Muslim apostates.

It would be nice to have an unqualified condemnation of this behaviour from Muslim spokesmen.