Whatever happened to 'no compulsion in religion'?

Further, Abdul Rahman is said to have converted to Christianity while living in the United States. Whether this gives the Afghan courts jurisdiction over his "offence" is unclear.

Various scholarly views of apostasy

Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim-majority country. Its largest Islamic organisation (which is also the world's largest) is the Nahdlatul Ulama (Council of Scholars). One of the most senior Sharia scholars and lawyers in the NU is Professor Mohammad Fajrul Falaakh.

Professor Falaakh is Vice Dean for Academic Affairs at the prestigious Gadjah Mada University Law School in Yogyakarta where he teaches both undergraduate and graduate studies in government and public law. He is also a member of the National Law Commission of the Republic of Indonesia (2000-03), and Deputy Chairman of the Central Executive Board of NU. Apart from extensive studies in Indonesia and the UK, Professor Falaakh has also worked within the traditional pesentran system of religious training.

In 2002, Professor Falaakh visited Australia and New Zealand at the invitation of the Centre for Independent Studies. On December 11, 2002, he delivered the Acton lecture on Religion and Liberty at the Great Hall of the Parliament of New Zealand.

In his speech, Falaakh lists the five basic principles of Sharia. The first item in this list is "the protection of religious freedom, or the protection of religion and the way religion is observed". Falaakh says that this freedom must be preserved even where Sharia is "interpreted … more strictly".

The third item in the list is "hifzh al-aql, meaning mine-that is, freedom of thought, freedom of conscience." Here, Falaakh addresses the issue of apostasy directly, especially as applied in a pluralistic society. He continues:

What if, according to my own understanding, I exercise my freedom of thought and choose another religion, denouncing the one that I had professed before and embracing the new one? What about the regulation or provision that many Muslims believe in that those who renounce Islam will be punished by death?

The traditional, conventional understanding of apostasy in Islam says that once you enter into Islam there is no way that you can leave, otherwise you will put yourself to death. If that is really the case, why does the Sharia claim early on that there is to be protection of religion?

There was a time when some parts of the Muslim community back in the 7th century were reported to have had renounced Islam and they were chased and punished by death ... at the same time, they also waged war, turning against the community they had previously belonged to. So was that a very obvious case of apostasy or a case of rebelling against a political entity that you used to agree with-in other words, violating a political pact you created together with other people? So perhaps it was not really religious at all. It was simply a political affair.

Falaakh is not alone in the view that the original capital punishment for Sharia was more related to the crime of treason. Professor Abdullah Saeed of the University of Melbourne, a graduate of the International Islamic University of Madeenah Munawwarra, recently co-authored a book on the subject together with Hassan Saeed, Attorney General for the Maldives.

Entitled "Freedom of Religion, Apostasy & Islam", the authors argue that the early development of the law of apostasy was largely a religio-political tool. Further, there is a diversity of opinion among early Muslims on the punishment. There are substantial ambiguities about what constitutes apostasy, and the textual evidence doesn't always assist in resolving these.

The authors conclude that those arguing in favour of the death penalty neglect a vast amount of clear texts in the Koran which favour freedom of religion in constructing the law of apostasy.