Academic Lies About Muslims Killing Apostates

The Abdul Rahman case in Afghanistan has given rise to a spate of articles in the Western press, assuring Westerners that Muslims do not actually kill or want to kill apostates. While these may be reassuring to non-Muslims, many of them have been downright misleading about the real status of the death penalty for apostasy in the Islamic world. One of the most egregious of these came this week from M. Cherif Bassiouni, a professor of Law at DePaul University and President of the International Human Rights Law Institute. He has served at the UN in various capacities, including as Chairman of the Security Council's Commission to Investigate War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia; Vice-Chairman of the General Assembly's Ad Hoc Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court; and as Independent Expert on the Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan.

Yet all these credentials don't amount to accuracy. In "Leaving Islam is not a capital crime" in the Chicago Tribune, Bassiouni purveys a series of half-truths and distortions about apostasy in Islam that are -- at best -- misleading. He begins by asserting: "A Muslim's conversion to Christianity is not a crime punishable by death under Islamic law, contrary to the claims in the case of Abdul Rahman in Afghanistan."

Robert Spencer

An interesting analysis of one aspect of Georgie-boy's "religion of peace."