The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and Atheist Alliance International have just published a new report on the Political and Legal Status of Apostates in Islam with the support of The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science UK.

The report examines sources for laws that prohibit apostasy from Islam, reviews legislation and government policies in various countries that persecute apostates and blasphemers, and highlights the cases of some of the many persecuted individuals, with a focus on atheists, secularists and freethinkers.You can read it: Apostasy_Report_Web

This report examines sources of Sharia law, namely the Quran, Hadith and Islamic jurisprudence which form the basis for laws that prohibit apostasy from Islam in a large number of countries. In countries such as Malaysia, Morocco, Jordan and Oman, punishments for apostasy include fines, imprisonment, flogging and exclusion from civil or family rights (such as the right to child custody). In 11 countries—Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, UAE, and Yemen—apostasy is punishable by the death penalty. Other countries without apostasy laws, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, use blasphemy and other religious protection laws to persecute apostates.

This report reviews legislation and government policies that persecute apostates, and highlights individual cases to provide a better understanding of the appalling situation of apostates from Islam.

Other countries without apostasy laws, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, use blasphemy and other religious protection laws to persecute apostates.

How a creationist fatwa proved a shocking example of Wahhabi Islam's influence

Usama Hasan was the imam of a mosque in Leyton until he was driven from the post by death threats. This is perhaps [!] the most extreme reaction there has ever been to an article on Comment is free: the death threats were the response of a section of his congregation to a piece he wrote here defending the truth of evolution. He kept his head down for a couple of years after that, to protect his family, but has now resurfaced as a fellow at the Quilliam Foundation, the counter-extremism thinktank.

At the weekend, he was in Salisbury, at the Muslim Institute's Winter Gathering, and I chaired a discussion with him there on creationism among Muslims. In close-up his story was even more shocking than it appears in summary. A visiting Saudi cleric issued a fatwa, from the Green Lane mosque in Birmingham, that supported his enemies in the congregation: not only did it explain that anyone who denied creationism was an apostate, who could (and should, in an ideal state) be killed, but that his support for women going bareheaded if they wished, and for a secular form of government, were also sufficient grounds for a death sentence.

Since these judgments were circulated in jihadi circles, Hasan and his family were in real danger as a result and were granted police protection for a while.

Sendraks wrote:Depressing. Unsurprisingly so.