Christians Killed Apostates

Chris­tians Killed Apos­tates Too

The saga of Abdul Rehman’s con­ver­sion to Chris­tian­i­ty may be over but the after­math is far from set­tled. Like a clock­work of hate, the episode has brought upon yet anoth­er wave of crit­i­cisms against Islam and its record for reli­gious tol­er­ance. But what few would realise is that the West has a his­to­ry of reli­gious intol­er­ance and per­se­cu­tions that would put Mus­lim Afghanistan to shame.

Exam­ine the fol­low­ing verse closely :

If your very own broth­er, or your son or daugh­ter, or the wife you love, or your clos­est friend secret­ly entices you, say­ing : Let us go and wor­ship oth­er gods, do not yield to him or lis­ten to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must cer­tain­ly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the peo­ple.“Deuteron­o­my 13 : 6 – 9

Despite all the staunch crit­i­cisms they make about Islam, that was not a verse from the Quran. In fact, the Quran is void of any instruc­tions to mur­der apostates.

Instead, the line above has been tak­en tak­en from Deuteron­o­my 13 : 6 – 9 that out­lines very vivid­ly, the fate of apos­tates and fol­low­ers of oth­er reli­gions. Anoth­er verse reads :

And he should go and wor­ship oth­er gods and bow down to them or to the sun or the moon or all the army of the heav­ens, .….and you must stone such one with stones and such one must die.” Deuteron­o­my 17:3 – 5

And fol­low these vers­es they did.

In May 1096, a group of Cru­saders en route to the Holy Land to kill Mus­lims, stopped by a Rhineland town called Worms between Mannnheim and Mainz, near present day Ger­many to preach the mes­sage of God to its pop­u­la­tion of Jews. The Cru­saders urged them to con­vert to Chris­tian­i­ty, explain­ing that it is the only path to salvation.

But when the town refused, the Cru­saders under the com­mand of Count Emmich of Leinin­gen, dragged them out of their homes and put up a mas­sacre of every one in the town. 800 peo­ple met a bloody death at the edge of a sword for their refusal to con­vert. Women and chil­dren were not spared and many were decap­i­tat­ed as blood flowed through the streets of the town. Some of them were even burnt alive as they took refuge in the very same church that the Cru­saders have built and preached from.Mal­colm Billings, The Cru­sades : Five Cen­turies of Holy Wars, Ster­ling Pub­lish­ing New York, 1996

Worms was def­i­nite­ly not the only town that was plun­dered over the years. Chris­t­ian preach­ers storm­ing their way from the West forced the reli­gion upon the locals through threat and ter­ror. In the city of Mainz, 1000 Jews met the same mor­bid fate when they refused to take up Chris­tian­i­ty. Entire fam­i­lies were slaugh­tered systematically.

The author of Ges­ta Fran­co­rum wrote to describe the may­hem dur­ing the inci­dent : All the streets of the city on every side were full of corpses, so that no one could endure to be there because of the stench, nor could any­one walk along the nar­row paths of the city except over the corpses of the dead’. His­to­ri­ans have referred to this obscure inci­dent as the first holocaust”.

The peo­ple of oth­er reli­gion who refused to con­vert into Chris­tian­i­ty were not the only ones who were fever­ish­ly per­se­cut­ed. Chris­tians who were known to opt out of the reli­gion or were seen as heretics, have been mer­ci­less­ly put to death too over the course of history.

Some­where around 1200, a new reli­gion emerged in West­ern France amongst the peo­ple of Langue­doc called Catharism and was gain­ing a steady stream of con­verts from the Chris­t­ian world. The Cathars, as they are called, abjured mar­riage and the eat­ing of meat in an effort to obtain puri­ty. The new reli­gion appealed to the Chris­tians in a very refresh­ing way.

The spread of Catharism alarmed the Chris­tians of Europe great­ly and the Church sent in preach­ers and papals year after year to reverse the sit­u­a­tion. In an effort to dele­git­imise the move­ment fur­ther, Catharism was declared as a heresy and a deviant branch of Chris­tian­i­ty. But the reli­gion con­tin­ued to flour­ish and threat­ened to spread to an even greater part of Europe.

The Chris­tians could take it no more and in 1208, the Pope decid­ed to unleash a full-blown cru­sade against the Cathars, known as the Albi­gen­sian Cru­sade. Thou­sands of apos­tates were slaugh­tered in the ensu­ing cam­paign, includ­ing 7000 res­i­dents of a town called Beziers who were locked and burnt in a church. A hor­ri­fied onlook­er rushed to the papal gates and remind­ed the cru­saders that the some Chris­tians were still trapped in the church togeth­er with the Cathars. The offi­cer over­see­ing the mas­sacre then made a remark that has resound­ed through the cen­turies : Kill them all. God will know his own”.

It would be tempt­ing to list all the oth­er exam­ples of Chris­tians killing apos­tates in order to answer the grow­ing wave of crit­i­cisms from the West against Islam. But that is not the point of this arti­cle. Two wrongs do not make one right.

The point is to com­pare the atti­tude of Chris­tian­i­ty towards apos­ta­sy then and now. Chris­tian­i­ty today has none of these vio­lent char­ac­ter­is­tics against apos­tates. Peo­ple who leave the reli­gion are not giv­en death threats nor per­se­cut­ed vio­lent­ly at the edge of a sword — unlike what hap­pened before dur­ing the medieval times. It is now a large­ly peace­ful reli­gion and has tak­en few qual­i­ties of its ear­li­er prac­ti­tion­ers from the ear­li­er periods.

But this peace­ful nature of Chris­tians towards apos­ta­sy took time and a con­sid­er­able amount of evo­lu­tion over the cen­turies. Edu­ca­tion, tol­er­ance and enlight­en­ment did not find its way into Chris­tian­i­ty overnight. It took an awful part of 2000 years for Chris­tian­i­ty to be where it is today.

Islam must be giv­en the same chance. At only 1400 years old, Islam is a rel­a­tive­ly young reli­gion when com­pared to oth­er faiths of revealed scrip­tures. It is unfair to keep putting Islam to the per­pet­u­al ridicule of vio­lence and intol­er­ance, when Chris­tian­i­ty has been giv­en a much longer time to evolve in a head start of about 600 years.

Apos­ta­sy is still a very touchy sub­ject in much of the Mus­lim world, sim­i­lar to Chris­tian­i­ty dur­ing the times of the cru­sade. Dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions may exist, but Islam is def­i­nite­ly not a reli­gion of vio­lence nor mur­der towards any group includ­ing apos­tates who leave the reli­gion peace­ful­ly and mean no harm.

Already bea­cons of tol­er­ance and excel­lence can be seen emerg­ing in a hand­ful of Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties around the world, such as Sin­ga­pore, the Unit­ed States and the Unit­ed King­dom. The rest of the Mus­lim Ummah must be giv­en that same chance.Endmark


Published:

in

, , ,

Author:

Comments

19 responses to “Chris­tians Killed Apos­tates Too”

  1. Prince Avatar
    Prince

    Dear Broth­ers and Sisters,

    May God’s grace be upon us.
    I read the above com­ments and like to com­ment some­thing. Nobody becomes a true Mus­lim or true Chris­t­ian by birth. Unless we real­ize the grace of God in our heart there is no mean­ing in liv­ing. Reli­gion is a way to this realization.

    No reli­gion in this world is the Truth, all are dif­fer­ent ways to the Truth. And the Truth is only one. Accord­ing to dif­fer­ent cul­ture and lan­guages we call it using dif­fer­ent names.
    It is actu­al­ly the peo­ple who are wrong, not the reli­gion. We can see that the Hin­dus wor­ship­ing idols when they are not sup­posed to do so. The reli­gion tells that the idol is not God ; it is only a instru­ment for the con­cen­tra­tion of the mind. When you reach that lev­el you have to dis­card the idol and search for the high­er truth. Islam tells not to wor­ship any­thing or any­one oth­er than God (Allah in Ara­bic). But there are Mus­lims who pray in front of tombs (one of my Mus­lim friend told me). Islam for­bids the use of mag­ic (black mag­ic) I know Mus­lim peo­ple who do black mag­ic. In Bible it is writ­ten not to make (and wor­ship) any idols of any one in earth or in the sea or in the heav­en. But we can see Chris­tians wor­ship­ing idols. Both Islam and Chris­tian­i­ty for­bid drink­ing liquor. But there are Mus­lims and Chris­tians who drink liquor. There are many exam­ples like these where the peo­ple are wrong, not the religion.

    Let me tell you a sto­ry which was once told by a great philoso­pher. There was a frog that was liv­ing in a well. He had lived only in the well and its close sur­round­ings. Once a frog from the sea hap­pened to fall in the well. The frog in the well asked Where are you from?”. The frog from the sea replied, ” I live in the sea”. Then the frog in the well asked, The sea ! Is it big­ger than this well?”. The frog from the sea replied, This well is very small when com­pared to the sea. The sea is so big that this well is not even com­pa­ra­ble with it”. The frog in the well got angry and told ” You are a liar ! There is noth­ing big­ger than this well. Can’t you see how much water is there in this?”. He even insult­ed the oth­er frog. The oth­er frog just smiled and walked away.
    We all are in our own small well. And our aim is to reach the sea and enjoy the bliss in it.
    It is the God who cre­at­ed all of us, not to hate each oth­er but to love each oth­er and real­ize the love itself. So let us study and prac­tice our scrip­tures with a heart full of love inclined towards God. So, are you a Chris­t­ian ? Fine, know your reli­gion and prac­tice it in love and with the urge for real­iza­tion. Are you a Mus­lim ? Fine, know your reli­gion and prac­tice it in love and with the urge for realization.
    First let us all do Cru­sade and Jihad in our own heart, with our own evil thoughts, bad words and bad deeds and pure our heart.
    Let us stop judg­ing oth­ers and argu­ing, and start work­ing with­in our­self to reach the Ocean of eternity.

    Salam Wa alaikum. May God Bless us.

  2. Gajibur Avatar
    Gajibur

    Zeno, from the way you speak you seem to be a devi­ous non mus­lim pre­tend­ing to be a mus­lim. If you are such a per­son i would advise you to get a life. As for Tim­o­thy charles and his argu­ment about the prophet think­ing he was under demon­ic influ­ence. I bet he would love for Islam to be a demon­ic reli­gion, but it’s not. The only demon­ic influ­ence here is him.

  3. zeno Avatar
    zeno

    Greet­ings !

    After read­ing the var­i­ous exchanges of com­ments there seems to be more crit­i­cism. I am a mus­lim and I feel we get more offend­ed and tend to explain our reli­gion by com­par­ing it with oth­er faiths. Why ? To blas­pheme the prophet is death but to blas­pheme Allah is noth­ing to us. Is’nt Allah greater that the great­est of all ? Also as I read that Moses feared when Allah spoke to him,in fact he did not fear, he was awed so was the Moth­er of Prophet Essa when the Angel appeared to her, they did not feel that they were pos­sessed by the demons, when a heav­en­ly being appears why does one have to feel so ter­ri­fied. Nor did Angel Gabriel tell him he was a prophet, where did the com­ment writer get that, i wonder.

  4. meaku Avatar
    meaku

    No need to argue. Just answer these question

    1) Why in one of the euro­pean coun­try, wear­ing the head scarf is not allow in school ? You are not allow/​banned from attend­ing school because of wear­ing it.
    2) If your reli­gion is so good, why allow your leader to kill oth­er peo­ple in dif­fer­ent coun­try ? Isn’t there any guide line to select leader in your holy book” ?
    3) If you think your reli­gion is soo good, look at Afga­hanistan and Iraq ? Look at the sta­tis­tics before and after the war, how many peo­ple are mus­lim and how many are Chris­t­ian ? FYI, Iraq and Afghanistan have their own Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty before the war. Isn’t that show you that your reli­gion is spread through violence/​war. Assume also the case of East Asian coun­try, read the his­to­ry book, when was your reli­gion start to grow ? Before inde­pen­dance (dur­ing colo­nial time), isn’t it ? Look at Islam, when they start­ed to grow ? I think in Mela­ka (Malaysia) and Indone­sia, Islam reach there not because of war but because of the traders.
    4)You say Mus­lim coun­tries are bad, so why so many ex-patri­ate want to go to our coun­tries ? Why the Amer­i­can or the Euro­pean want to INVADE some of the coun­try in the mid­dle east ? Why not Venezuela or oth­er coun­tries in Europe (ie Nor­way)? If oil is the only rea­son, they can go to these 2 coun­try but I think there is oth­er agen­da ? Why ? Because Iraq and Afgan are Mus­lim not Chris­t­ian country.
    If you want to say because of ter­ror­ist, why in the earth the US govt don’t allow peo­ple from oth­er coun­try (Mid­dle east or Mus­lim )to inves­ti­gate the 911 tragedy and made pub­lic the report ?

  5. akram khari Avatar
    akram khari

    Al-salaam alakum,
    You Mus­lim brothers,are too kind,to these typ­i­cal chris­t­ian DEVILS!They and their WHITE POWER,DEMON cult,called christianity”,are noth­ing but a con­tin­u­a­tion of 2,000yrs.of MURDER,RAPE,RACIAL SLAVERY,GEOCIDE & WAR!Their GODLESS BOOK,the bible,supports all these“gifts from SATAN”(deut.7:16;1 – 2;joshua 10:30;10:40;matt.10:34 – 35;eph.6:5 – 7)!They like to play their sick,little game about chris­tian­i­ty being about“peace & love“and that EVERYONE who EVER prac­ticed that gut­ter-reli­gion of theirs,has ALWAYS been GOOD PURE,&HOLY.Christianity has NEVER been about MURDER,SLAVERY,& WAR to those PAGAN BLASPHEMERS,who are a part of it!But if they REALLY served a TRULY MERCIFUL GOD,like we do,why do they con­tin­ue to lie & slan­der oth­er peo­ple’s faith?Because they serve the SAITAN(SATAN)and his FILTHY apostle,the hyp­ocrite Paul of Tarsus!You don’t have to proove any­thing to KUFR SCUM,like ALL christians(esp.evangelical christians)are!They should be explain­ing why they have a EVIL,RACIST sto­ry about Canaan being“cursed“by Noah in genesis,and using this IDIOTIC,FALSE MYTH,to ENSLAVE TENS of MILLIONS of AFRICAN &AMERINDIAN men,women,& children!MILLIONS of AFRICAN MUSLIMS where FORCED to accept there EUROPEAN-CENTERD religion!So let ALLAH han­dle them.ALLAH ALWAYS knows how to take care of HIS & OUR enemies.Usually by putting them where they belong,in HELL !

  6. Hamza Avatar
    Hamza

    Well, as they told you in schools, your first instinct is usu­al­ly correct. ”

    Nah, not real­ly. You for­get that most prophets who receive rev­e­la­tion are scared out of their minds ! Moses him­self was fright­ened when he saw the burn­ing bush and heard God’s voice. He was even more fright­ened when he was giv­en the respon­si­bil­i­ty to lead his peo­ple against Pharaoh. So afraid that he gave excuse after excuse after excuse to get out of it.

    Like­wise, when Gabriel told Muhammed that he was a prophet, and that he was to be the leader of an entire nation, he was down­right hys­ter­i­cal. He want­ed noth­ing of it. Gabriel then com­mands him to Read…in the name of your lord”. Of course, Muhammed was illit­er­ate and responds by say­ing I can­not read”. (Just like when Moses says I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” when God tells him to spread his message)

    At this moment Muhammed can­not bear the mag­ni­tude of respon­si­bil­i­ty any longer so he runs away and tries des­per­ate­ly to explain away the inci­dent as a sim­ple spir­it pos­ses­sion. In fact, you could say that he was so fright­ened of the respon­si­bil­i­ty that he almost pre­ferred to be pos­sessed ; it was­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly the case that he actu­al­ly thought he was pos­sessed. How­ev­er, just like Moses, he was reas­sured that he was tru­ly a prophet lat­er on in the day by Gabriel himself.

    That’s all I’ll com­ment on. The rest of your post sounds like para­noid Chris­t­ian polem­i­cal dia­tribe — argue­ments that specif­i­cal­ly leave out infor­ma­tion to sup­port erre­neous beliefs. (such as the oft-repeat­ed vio­lent” begin­ning of Islam, but of course there’s a fail­ure to note that the Prophet had hun­dreds of tribes eager to slit his throat on a day by day basis. You would only infer that vio­lence would result from ene­mies who want noth­ing but vio­lence. How­ev­er, the supris­ing anec­dote is that Prophet still par­doned whole cities that were so vehe­ment­ly against him in the begin­ning like Makkah.)

  7. Timothy Charles Avatar
    Timothy Charles

    The argu­ment of Chris­tian­i­ty hav­ing a 600 year head start” is non­sen­si­cal. By that log­ic, we Amer­i­cans could jus­ti­fy our past sins on the grounds that the Unit­ed States is only 230 years old.” One of the most impor­tant rea­sons enlight­ened man stud­ies his­to­ry is to avoid the mis­takes of ear­li­er gen­er­a­tions. Islam may be only” 1400 years old, but the present real­i­ty of the reli­gion is still one of blood­shed and oppres­sion – includ­ing slav­ery of minori­ties not 150 years ago, but as this is being typed. While it is true that a great num­ber of crimes have been per­pe­trat­ed in the NAME of Chris­tian­i­ty, nobody in their right mind could make the case that the peo­ple com­mit­ting them were act­ing like Jesus.

    The same is not true with Islam and Muhammad.

    If you real­ly love mus­lims, prove islam wrong by fight­ing a fair fight, not by demol­ish­ing it from within.”

    If Islam is worth ANYTHING, it will not be in dan­ger of demo­li­tion from with­in or with­out. Even with­out the vio­lence, from the begin­ning years to the real­i­ty of today, just the way Islam began is amusing.….Muhammed, mar­ried to a woman fif­teen years his senior, is vis­it­ed by a pres­ence claim­ing to be the angel Gabriel. Muhammed’s first instinct is to inter­pret it as a demon­ic influ­ence, but his wife Kadi­jah con­vinces him otherwise.

    Well, as they told you in schools, your first instinct is usu­al­ly correct.

  8. Gajibur Rahman Avatar
    Gajibur Rahman

    Chris­tians have killed many peo­ple for not con­vert­ing to their reli­gion or for being heretics. And now they have the cheek to act all good, bloody two faced liers. The only rea­son chris­tian­i­ty has become so civilised now is because their church­es no longer have any pow­er. Most west­ern coun­tries that were major­i­ty chris­t­ian chose to sec­u­larise their coun­tries and seper­ate reli­gion from state. Only after sec­u­lar­i­sa­tion did the chris­tians stop killing peo­ple (for heresy, apos­ta­sy etc)and that is because they had lost pow­er in the new polit­i­cal make up. It is fun­ny how these chris­tians have a bible teach­ing things like killing peo­ple for sug­gest­ing anoth­er God to wor­ship and killing peo­ple for adul­tery etc, and now they take cred­it for the human rights estab­lished in the west. Notice how these jews and chris­tians don’t imple­ment the bib­li­cal laws found in deu­tron­o­my and else­where in the bible. That’s because they know a lot of those laws found in the bible will now be con­sid­ered as bar­bar­ic and against human rights.

    Here are a few exam­ples if those two faced chris­tians care to see :

    1) And the man that com­mit­teth adul­tery with anoth­er man’s wife, even he that com­mit­teth adul­tery with his neigh­bour’s wife, the adul­ter­er and the adul­ter­ess shall sure­ly be put to death.” — Leviti­cus 20:10

    2)“He that blas­phemeth the name of the LORD, he shall sure­ly be put to death, and all the con­gre­ga­tion shall cer­tain­ly stone him.” — Leviti­cus 24:16

    3)“Six days may work be done ; but in the sev­enth is the sab­bath of rest, holy to the LORD : whoso­ev­er doeth any work in the sab­bath day, he shall sure­ly be put to death.” — Exo­dus 31:15

    4)For not being a Vir­gin on the night of the wedding

    If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her … and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid : Then shall the father of the damsel, and her moth­er, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel’s vir­gin­i­ty unto the elders of the city in the gate.… But if this thing be true, and the tokens of vir­gin­i­ty be not found for the damsel : Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die : because she hath wrought fol­ly in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house : so shalt thou put evil away from among you.” — Deuteron­o­my 22:13 – 22

    5) Bible on homosexuals
    If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have com­mit­ted an abom­i­na­tion : they shall sure­ly be put to death ; their blood shall be upon them.” — Leviti­cus 20:13

    I think that is enough, there are more exam­ples but that should suf­fice. Mus­lims are more hon­est in that they admit they have laws with very harsh pun­ish­ments, some sim­i­lar to the above i.e. ston­ing adul­ter­ers etc. We know they are con­sid­ered by peo­ple to be bar­bar­ic and out of date, but we wont bad mouth peo­ple who imple­ment such laws because we believe they are from God.

  9. al-zarqawi Avatar
    al-zarqawi

    In the name of Allah most gra­cious, most merciful.

    I wish to counter a few state­ments by Mr. Jason which in my opin­ian is debatable :-

    how could Chris­tian­i­ty evolve’ to a peace­ful reli­gion. Jesus Him­self on the Cross said, Father, for­give them for they know not what they do.” Chris­tian­i­ty is about turn­ing the oth­er cheek’, bless­ing those who curse you’, do good to those who hate you’. Prov 25:21 – 22 says, If your ene­my is hun­gry, give him bread to eat ; And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink ; For so you will heap coals of fire on his head, and the LORD will reward you.”

    But yet why did US (a pre­dom­i­nant­ly chris­t­ian nation which has evolved since 1500 ) feed muslims
    in Afghanistan with nepalm bomb and laser guid­ed missles just 2 weeks post Sept 11 2001, and before that deprive inno­cent Iraqi civil­ians with trade embar­go since 1991 and lat­er invad­ed Iraq in 2003
    killing more inno­cent civil­ians in col­lat­er­al dam­age in view of remov­ing Sad­dam and search­ing for weapon of mass destruc­tion ( till today not found ). You preached about grace in chris­tian­i­ty but the real­i­ty is qui­et the con­trary, you talk of reli­gious free­dom uphold by the west but they mas­sacre mus­lims nation over­seas in the name of free­dom, ter­ror­ism and defence of Democracy.

    ” The ear­ly Chris­tians were a peace­ful peo­ple. Would a hos­tile peo­ple allow them­selves to be sent to the lions, to be thrown into pris­ons, to be cru­ci­fied in bun­dles (re : Nero)? Chris­tian­i­ty was spread through the low­er class­es and thrived in persecution.”

    Islam on the oth­er hand spread through vio­lence. You either had to con­vert or die and that is why all of North Africa became Mus­lim, espe­cial­ly ear­ly Chris­t­ian strong­holds like Egypt.”

    Do you think only ear­ly chris­tians suf­fer per­se­cu­tion, Mus­lims in the begin­ing too were tor­tured, mas­sa­cred, robbed of their belong­ings, dri­ven away from their homes and forced to live like refugees
    Even after the Hijrah to Med­i­nah, the per­se­cu­tion still continued.Only then did god allow mus­lims to fight back in self defense in surah al- Baqarah 190 – 193 : Fight in the way of God against those who fight against you​.Dri​ve them out of the places where they have dri­ve you out. For per­se­cu­tion is worse than slaughter.Fight them till per­se­cu­tion is no more and reli­gion is for god.But if they stop, let there be no more war, for god nev­er loved the staters of war.
    The Quran being the final rev­e­la­tion, not­ed Allah has allowed mus­lims to fight in self-defence so that peace and jus­tice may pre­vail over oppre­sion. It is a rule that every mankind should agree.
    For your infor­ma­tion Islam for­bids the forced con­ver­sion of non-believ­ers, and why are there still
    many Ortho­dox Chris­tians in Egypt with church­es still stand­ing there.

    We are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. Tell me where do you find peo­ple in the Chris­t­ian’ west being mur­dered for con­vert­ed to Islam ? Tell me where in the Chris­t­ian’ west is it ille­gal to set up a mosque. Even in evil’ Amer­i­ca and wicked’ Britain there are mosques every­where. But can you build a church in Sau­di Ara­bia ? Can you preach Chris­tian­i­ty in the open streets of Pak­istan. Of course not. You will be thrown in prison, tor­tured and killed.”

    Yes there are places that is ille­gal in Chris­t­ian West to build mosque, try set­ting one in Vat­i­can city. And in many oth­er mus­lim coun­tries, there are many church­es being build for exam­ple in Indone­sia and Malaysia. And for your infor­ma­tion there is no Chris­t­ian” west since the church lost its influ­ence and sec­u­lar­ism was intro­duced sep­a­rat­ing church from state. As a result the West and US are Sec­u­lar Demo­c­ra­t­ic nations. Even in sec­u­lar Mus­lims coun­tries like Malaysia, there are
    laws pre­vent­ing apos­ta­sy against mus­lims but so far no mus­lims apos­tate is exe­cut­ed by the law here.
    And yes Amer­i­ca and Britain are wicked and evil, in which although through sec­u­lar­ism they maintain
    absolute reli­gious free­dom they still per­se­cute direct­ly or indi­rect­ly for­eign mus­lim nation for becom­ing Islam­ic in the name of free­dom and democracy.

  10. Jason Whitcher Avatar
    Jason Whitcher

    how could Chris­tian­i­ty evolve’ to a peace­ful reli­gion. Jesus Him­self on the Cross said, Father, for­give them for they know not what they do.” Chris­tian­i­ty is about turn­ing the oth­er cheek’, bless­ing those who curse you’, do good to those who hate you’. Prov 25:21 – 22 says, If your ene­my is hun­gry, give him bread to eat ; And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink ; For so you will heap coals of fire on his head, and the LORD will reward you.”

    The ear­ly Chris­tians were a peace­ful peo­ple. Would a hos­tile peo­ple allow them­selves to be sent to the lions, to be thrown into pris­ons, to be cru­ci­fied in bun­dles (re : Nero)? Chris­tian­i­ty was spread through the low­er class­es and thrived in persecution.

    Islam on the oth­er hand spread through vio­lence. You either had to con­vert or die and that is why all of North Africa became Mus­lim, espe­cial­ly ear­ly Chris­t­ian strong­holds like Egypt.

    The prob­lem with Chris­tian­i­ty isn’t that it evolved into a peace­ful reli­gion but it degrad­ed to a part pagan, part Chris­t­ian organ­i­sa­tion called Catholism that imposed itself on peo­ple. Chris­tian­i­ty only start­ed to get on back (with the main­stream) in the 1500s. Though I do not agree with Catholi­cism (which did per­se­cute) they did stop Islam from invad­ing Europe oth­er­wise Europe would have been just like North Africa.

    We are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. Tell me where do you find peo­ple in the Chris­t­ian’ west being mur­dered for con­vert­ed to Islam ? Tell me where in the Chris­t­ian’ west is it ille­gal to set up a mosque. Even in evil’ Amer­i­ca and wicked’ Britain there are mosques every­where. But can you build a church in Sau­di Ara­bia ? Can you preach Chris­tian­i­ty in the open streets of Pak­istan. Of course not. You will be thrown in prison, tor­tured and killed.

    We have dif­fer­ent ori­gins and as a result we have dif­fer­ent outlooks.

  11. Grace Avatar
    Grace

    My aunt told me some­thing that inter­est­ed me.

    Before she became a Chris­t­ian, the did­n’t under­stand the Bible at all no mat­ter how many times she read it — it just did­n’t fit in.

    But after she accept Christ, the Holy Spir­it gave her the under­stand­ing to His word.

    And that is why you don’t see the Bible as we do.

  12. muslim4ever Avatar
    muslim4ever

    Good arti­cle I invite read­ers to read also

    Apos­ta­sy and Reli­gious Freedom”

    at http://​www​.islam​o​pho​bia​.org/​r​e​a​d​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​p​h​p​?​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​_​i​d​=80

  13. aian jaafar Avatar
    aian jaafar

    to anony­mous ;

    we would high­ly appre­ci­ate it if you can tell us what was tak­en out of con­text from the bible.

  14. islamispeace Avatar
    islamispeace

    To anony­mous,

    What con­text are you refer­ring to ? Isn’t the verse quot­ed in the arti­cle in its con­text ? Also, many more have read the Bible and con­vert­ed out or Chris­tian­i­ty and many have read the Bible and not con­vert­ed. What is your point ? Instead of going off on tan­gents, why don’t you try to explain why the Bible says that apos­tates shoud have been killed ?

  15. anonymous Avatar
    anonymous

    you all are inter­pret­ing the Bible out of its con­text, please don’t inter­pret it by just look­ing at a small por­tion, look at the big­ger pic­ture, read it all ! many have read the Bible and con­vert­ed. many have tried their best to dis­prove the Bible but in the end got con­vert­ed to Chris­tian­i­ty them­selves. we do not need to do any­thing for any­one who is against God wil not stand for long. that’s my advise for every­one out there, espe­cial­ly Muslims.

  16. Imran Avatar
    Imran

    isn’t the bomb­ing of iraq and oth­er Mus­lims coun­tries a new way of chris­t­ian compulsion ?

  17. aian jaafar Avatar
    aian jaafar

    i ful­ly agree with you, broth­er danny.

    while the Beloved Prophet Muham­mad (sal­lal­lahu alay­hi wa salaam) said some­thing to the effect that Mus­lim judges should active­ly seek out any way pos­si­ble to avoid cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the verse from the bible cit­ed by the writer of the arti­cle specif­i­cal­ly stat­ed that no mer­cy should be shown to some­one who secret­ly entices wor­ship of any deity oth­er than the israelite god.

    chris­tians are tol­er­ant nowa­days not because of the bible (though admit­ted­ly there are vers­es of com­pas­sion and mer­cy in the bible, pos­si­bly unadul­ter­at­ed by the lying pens of the scribes, but Allah knows best) but inspite of the bible.

    regard­ing apos­tates in islam, there is gen­er­al­ly an agree­ment that an apos­tate of legal age (if i remem­ber cor­rect­ly, in the hanafi mad­hab, adult women are not includ­ed, and of course, chil­dren, the lame, and the insane are not includ­ed in all 4 mad­hahib as well. it can be seen that the sta­tus of the apos­tate is clear­ly iden­ti­fied as an ene­my sol­dier in wartime) should be killed. i once wres­tled with my con­science regard­ing this. if islam is real­ly a tol­er­ant reli­gion, teach­ing us that there is no com­pul­sion in reli­gion, why that kind of verdict ?

    this could be answered if we view the stance of islam towards oth­er reli­gions and the nature of our holy shari­ah. first­ly, the shari­ah is not a mind-read­er. irtid­dad or apos­ta­sy could only be ver­i­fied and the life and prop­er­ty of the apos­tate declared lic­it (a sub­tle point, but one to which i may stand to be cor­rect­ed : lic­it, not oblig­a­tory, in as much as we dont have to kill every ene­my sol­dier in the bat­telfield but we are PERMITTED to do so) if a pub­lic dimen­sion accom­pa­nies the per­son­’s denial of his islam, for in that case he would be treat­ed as an ene­my com­bat­ant in the bat­tle­field. it begs the ques­tion : why should some­one who left islam pub­licly announce it, if that per­son is not hos­tile towards islam and the islam­ic com­mu­ni­ty ? take note that there is no doc­tri­nal inqui­si­tion in islam, and hence, no death penal­ty could apply, say if a per­son leaves islam, (Allah for­bid!) con­verts to anoth­er reli­gion, and man­ages to keep it to him­self with­out incit­ing pub­lic atten­tion (such a per­son becomes a kafir, but not a mur­tad). no one is ques­tioned about his pri­vate beliefs. thus, those who pub­licly announce their con­ver­sion are real­ly hos­tile, and are ful­ly aware that they are incit­ing sedition.

    a chris­t­ian may argue that oh, i love mus­lims, but i hate islam, that’s why im ready to become a mar­tyr for Christ, if that would mean win­ning many souls to him. so i will pub­licly blas­pheme Allah, Muham­mad and islam, so that these mus­lim souls would be enlight­ened, even if it means my death. islam is the dev­il’s reli­gion, and this is proven by the fact that they per­se­cute the believ­ers in christ’. well, this could be answered by say­ing that, dev­il’s reli­gion or not, islam is the basis of that nation (assum­ing that it is an islam­ic coun­try), and, as broth­er dan­ny so skill­ful­ly puts it, those who wish to leave islam and pub­licly announce it have the option to leave that islam­ic coun­try and live with the kuf­far. if you real­ly love mus­lims, prove islam wrong by fight­ing a fair fight, not by demol­ish­ing it from with­in. would it be God’s work to over­throw the basis of a nation through slan­der and libel ? an apos­tate can blas­pheme islam all they like if they are in a hos­tile kafir coun­try (dar-ul harb), that way, mus­lims could respond appro­pri­ate­ly to their attacks, since jihad through the tongue, pen,or sword, or against the base desires (nafs) is oblig­a­tory (fard).

    let’s have an exam­ple. you are a guest in a house­hold, how­ev­er, your fam­i­ly is hos­tile to that house­hold. over­time, you are treat­ed as part of the house­hold since you are a peace­ful guest. then you find out that the father of the house­hold is a drunk­ard and immoral man. how­ev­er, he is still a good host (and the mere fact that islam tol­er­ates oth­er reli­gions with­in its realm proves that it is a good host). would it be alright for you to say out loud in that immoral man’s house this is an immoral man, do not fol­low his evil ways, he is not worth fol­low­ing as a father. i myself am dis­obey­ing and con­demn­ing him,’ all the while you are eat­ing at his table ? if you are real­ly dis­gust­ed at his evil ways, leave the house imme­di­ate­ly, do not eat at his table, do not incite sedi­tion with­in his house­hold, join his ene­mies out­side his house, con­demn him out­side his house­hold, that way he can respond. but if you live with­in his house, and plan to con­tin­ue liv­ing there, it would be bet­ter for you to shut up, rather than turn his own fam­i­ly against him in such an unfair way. all of this is assum­ing that the house­hold (or islam) is real­ly evil. even if it is real­ly evil, there would still be no prob­lem if that house­hold takes mea­sures from being destroyed from the inside, for every house­hold, insti­tu­tion, or com­mu­ni­ty has the right to pro­tect itself. those who would say that that house­hold should just allow itself to be slan­dered and demol­ished from with­in are them­selves hos­tile to that house­hold, in much the same way that those who are against islam’s apos­ta­sy and blas­phe­my laws are just against islam, and are real­ly not for free­dom of religion.

    mus­lim broth­ers, please cor­rect me if i said any­thing wrong about our reli­gion. And Allah knows best.

  18. danny Avatar
    danny

    I don’t entire­ly agree with the assess­ment of the author. It is not that Chris­tian­i­ty evolved” into a peace­ful reli­gion, it’s just that Chris­tians decid­ed not to fol­low their reli­gion so vehe­ment­ly any more. Present Europe and Amer­i­ca are sec­u­lar, not Chris­t­ian. They are peace­ful towards apos­tates, athi­ests, agnos­tics and non-Chris­tians not because of Chris­tian­i­ty but because of putting Chris­tian­i­ty aside and adopt­ing secularism.

    Does that mean we should ditch Islam like the Chris­tians” have ditched Chris­tian­i­ty ? Or that Islam also need an evo­lu­tion”? No. Although Islam is a much younger reli­gion, it is already far more advanced than Chris­tian­i­ty when it comes to deal­ing with adher­ents of oth­er faiths and deal­ing with every­day issues. Islam has a much bet­ter record of per­for­mance than Chris­tian­i­ty. For instance, even though Islam is not a paci­fist reli­gion, nonethe­less, Mus­lims have treat­ed minori­ties far far more humane­ly than Chris­tians. Not that Mus­lims have been angels, but Islam gave them enough sense to offer a bet­ter treat­ment towards oth­ers and dis­play kindness/​mercy. The prob­lem in the cur­rent world is that Mus­lims gen­er­al­ly are them­selves igno­rant of Islam and when any­thing comes up, they react angri­ly instead of Islamically.

    Com­ing to apos­ta­sy, although the pun­ish­ment is death accord­ing to most schol­ars, some promi­nent schol­ars insist it is not. So the mat­ter is not so clear. But, for argu­ments sake, even if we grant that the pun­ish­ment for apos­ta­sy is death, it remains that there are very strict pro­ce­dures to fol­low. You can­not just kill an apos­tate instant­ly. There are many ways how his life can be spared, as has hap­pened in Afghanistan. Plus, the pun­ish­ment of apos­ta­sy is not met­ted out at women and chil­dren. It is only direct­ed towards the sane male. So we do not wipe off entire com­mu­ni­ties even if they apos­tize and if such large num­bers do leave Islam, then they are to be left alone. In the case of an indi­vid­ual make, even then, there are many oppor­tu­ni­ties for him to go free, for instance, giv­en assy­lum in anoth­er land with the guar­an­tee that he would not act against the Islam­ic state.

    It would be no exager­ra­tion to state that Chris­tians have killed more than 10 times the num­ber of apos­tates ever killed by Muslims.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *