4/14/06, Opinion-Editorial, printed in The Forum (Claremont McKenna College)

(Printed in The Forum (Claremont McKenna College), April 14, 2006, as an Opinion-Editorial)

“What Would Muhammad Do?
Or How Afghanistan Betrayed Islam by Punishing a Christian Convert”
By Ataul Malik Khan

Last month, Abdul Rahman – a father of two and resident of that once Taliban-infested now in shambles stretch of land known as Afghanistan – was convicted of apostasy by the Afghani government for converting from Islam to Christianity.  Afghani leaders stood by their rigid interpretation of Shar’ia (Islamic Law), claiming that the punishment for conversion in Islam was death. The United States stood by its standard rhetoric that prohibiting freedom of religion did not jive with the principles of democracy.

Somewhere in the shuffle both parties have lost the bigger picture: the reality that Afghanistan’s government is not following the tenets of Islam, and that the U.S. reminder of democracy favoring tolerance and freedom of religion is also a fundamental teaching of Islam and the Holy Quran.

Crusading against the West on a false premise of Islamic ideals, Afghanistan is clutching to a version of Shar’ia that seeks to serve a cold fundamentalist Islam and banish those who find freedom a more palatable dish. In the Holy Quran, however, it is stated that in matters of faith, “there is no compulsion in religion.” Indeed, Muhammad, the founder of Islam, never coaxed others into conversion or used the threat of violence to promote his word. Nor did he criminalize and dehumanize those who decided to leave Islam for another religion, like Christianity.

The backlash of Rahman’s banishment is obvious. Western ideals and fundamentalist Middle Eastern law have further polarized, as the West cries foul at the injust actions of the Afghani government, and Afghanistan retaliates aggressively, wearing the shield of a false Islam for protection. The government of Afghanistan does not realize that in using Islamic ideals to unjustly banish a Christian convert, it has painted an even nastier image of Islamic teachings for the West, further fueling the flames of hatred towards Islam extant throughout much of the United States.

This makes it harder for someone like myself, an American-born Muslim, to comfortably recite the Holy Quran and profess faith without facing the public’s bewilderment as they wonder why an educated man like myself can so easily fall for a perverse religious teaching. The fact is, though, that what I aim to profess is pure – innocent pages of text untouched by manipulation – whereas governments like Afghanistan have betrayed Islam and delayed the hope for a peaceful coexistence between two seemingly opposite worlds.

In the time of Muhammad, there was an exiled group of Muslim inhabitants, the Banu Nadir, whose children, the Ansar, lived in Medina, Arabia, and stayed with a Jewish group, ultimately choosing Judaism as their religion. When Muslims attempted to reclaim those who had converted, Muhammad quoted the aforementioned Quranic phrase, “there is no compulsion in religion,” and warned that it is not in the capacity of man to force another to change his belief. The Jewish converts were left unharmed.

This is a rather simple yet profound example of the actions of the founder of Islam, and when contrasted to the recent actions of the government of Afghanistan, it is painfully obvious that the views of the latter are wholly un-Islamic. Perhaps in the future Afghanistan should ask itself in matters of justice: what would Muhammad do?