Religion & Ethics: Content from Across the ABC




Date/Time 28 Dec 2014 7:57:04am

This is factually incorrect. There is no earthly punishment anywhere in the Quran for apostasy. On the contrary, freedom of conscience is guaranteed:

"There is no compulsion in religion. Surely the right way has become distinct from error" (Quran 2:257)

To conflate what has happened in Sudan with true Islamic teaching is lazy at best and intellectually dishonest at worst. God in the Quran does not distinguish between a "Muslim by commitment" and any other sort. Nor, with regards to the threat to life, is there a distinction between whether that threat comes from a non Muslim or indeed another Muslim.

The lying you talk of in the Australian legal sense is unrelated to what God talks of in the Quran. The verse specifies only the allowance of recantation of faith in the face of an extreme threat.

"Whoso disbelieves in Allah after he has believed - save him who is forced thereto while his heart finds peace in the faith - but such as open their breasts to disbelief, on them is Allah's wrath; and they shall have a severe punishment" (Quran 16:107)

Australian law does not proscribe recantation of faith. It obligates truth when under oath, i.e. in court, and this is the only context in which it would theoretically be illegal to lie to save ones own neck. Since there is no death penalty in Australian law, i.e. the law through the courts does not threaten death, your comparison is irrelevant. Secondly, whilst Meriam has undoubtedly been brave, she is not proof that every Christian faced with similar circumstances has told the truth. Nor does the fact that the Quran gives the option for recantation in extreme circumstances, proof that every Muslim in such a situation has recanted. By your logic, any Christian who does not prefer death over temporary recantation is "gutless" and does so for "convenience". That's absurd.