New Age Islam

Islamic Ideology

01 Oct 2011, NewAgeIslam.Com

Death Sentence: This Brutality is not Islam

By Mehdi Hasan

The death sentence given to Youcef Nadarkhani in Iran is an affront to universal moral values and a disservice to Muslims. Meanwhile the silence from the world's Muslims – especially the UK's usually voluble Muslim organisations and self-appointed "community leaders" – has been shameful. The irony is that I have yet to come across an ordinary Muslim who agrees that a fellow believer who loses, changes or abandons his or her faith should be hanged. Yet frustratingly few Muslims are willing to speak out against such medieval barbarism. We mumble excuses, avert our eyes. Muslims have to ask ourselves: Is the God we worship so weak and needy that he requires us to force our fellow humans to worship him? Is our religion so frail and insecure that it cannot tolerate any rejection whatsoever? And why are we silent as an innocent Christian is sentenced to death in the name of Islam? To hang a man for refusing to believe in Islam is theologically and morally unjustifiable; it is not just unIslamic but anti-Islamic. -- Mehdi Hasan

http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamIslamicIdeology_1.aspx?ArticleID=5603