When Apostasy Is A Felony
By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam
23 May 2025
A 22-year-old woman, Zainab Muhamadu, is facing a possible death sentence in Zamfara State after being charged with apostasy following her conversion from Islam to Christianity.
Zainab’s ordeal began after her conversion, which reportedly followed her interaction with a National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) member, identified simply as Pastor Samuel, who was posted to her area, according to Sahara Reporters.
Courtesy, NAI Report
Agreed, the Sahara region and those African countries are quite backward in all respects, yet, the prevalence of apostasy and blasphemy in Islamic societies is really shocking. Death for apostasy in the 21st century is not only strange and shocking, it underlines the inherent barbarism of Islam and the ambiguity of Quranic verses, not to say the turbidity of Hadees (Muhammad's dubious teachings).
You may project Islam and its books as perennially peaceful, the facts prove otherwise. Let anyone change his/her faith or relinquish all religions. What difference does it make? Christians are becoming Muslims and vice versa. Hindus are becoming Muslims; Muslims are becoming Hindus. Is this a newsworthy phenomenon? Have you ever pondered why apostasy is viewed as a felony in Islam?
Most of the Muslims, even the educated ones are deluded enough to think that Islam being the final revelation, it has to be the perfect faith and it's every Momin's (true Muslim) religious and moral duty to protect the unalloyed purity and perfection of 'Allah's faith' as Muslims love to call it. So, it's incumbent upon a Momin to stop a fellow Muslim from embracing any other 'untrue' faith. Needless to say, this is a supremacist belief.
Christianity also suffers from this malady but it has subsided considerably and Christians have also mellowed down significantly. Otherwise, the Church also ordered the heretics and apostates to be burnt at the stake until a few centuries ago. Today, an apostate in Christianity may be frowned upon but he or she will not be killed or burnt. That's for sure.
Likewise, not all Muslims will openly condemn or kill those (Muslims) converting to other faiths, but they'll certainly cast aspersions on the fellow Muslims choosing some other religion.
Apostasy in Islam is tantamount to defying Allah, not god. This misplaced religious snobbery and superciliousness of Muslims will not allow a Murtad (Arabic word for an apostate) to live after converting to some other faith. He has to be punished, if not killed.
This monomania is still prevalent in the African and North African Muslim countries as well as in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and South Asian Muslim nations, viz, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Somalia-born and now a Dutch citizen and ex-Muslim Ayan Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji and Taslima Nasrin have vividly described this hardcore mentality of Muslims in their books, write ups and memoirs.
First of all, apostasy and blasphemy must be removed from the corpus and vocabulary of Islam. A civilised society has nothing to do with apostasy and sacrilege. A Muslim has every right to leave the fold of Islam and become an ex-Muslim or embrace some other faith.
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A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including Persian.
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/apostasy-felony/d/135637
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