An uproar over the threatened execution of an Afghan man who converted from Islam to Christianity highlights a disturbing conflict between application of Islamic laws and protection of human rights in Asia and the Middle East, US experts say. The case of Abdul Rahman, who narrowly escaped the death penalty in Afghanistan by fleeing to Italy, reflects a bigger trend of anti-conversion legislation curtailing rights of non-Muslim minorities, the experts told a US Congress-sponsored meeting.Rahman, 41, was spirited out of Afghanistan on March 29 after a US-led Western furore over his trial under Shariah law which says that anyone who leaves Islam must be put to death unless they recant. Though state prosecution for conversion out of Islam is relatively rare in Muslim-majority countries, at least 14 such countries considered apostasy a crime, with Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen, Mauritania and Comoros making it punishable by death, said Nina Shea, director of global rights group Freedom HouseÂ’s centre for religious freedom. Lesser punishments are imposed in Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, the Maldives, Oman and Qatar while some states deny civil rights to those viewed as apostates.
Shea faulted the United States, which has extensive influence in Kabul, for the “fatal flaw” in the Afghanistan constitution that allowed prosecution of apostasy crimes. After all, this is “the very constitution that the United States supported and guided and about which our officials heralded as ‘one of the most enlightened constitutions in the Islamic world,’” she said. “The implication of Rahman’s case is that it points out the unresolved tension in certain Muslim countries between the application of Islamic law and protection of human rights,” said Felice Gaer, vice chairwoman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
She said it was an irony that Islamic nations which considered conversion a crime also vowed, as UN members, to uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which “cleary affirm and protect” the freedom to change religions or beliefs. International experts entrusted with the interpretation of freedom of religion have consistently affirmed that “the freedom to adopt a religion is the freedom to change religion,” Gaer said.
Islamic law or principles are “a source of, or a limitation on, general legislation” in 15 of 44 predominantly Muslim countries studied by the commission, an independent body created by Congress to monitor religious freedom.