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British Muslim Group Accepts the Right to Convert from Islam

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Published: Friday 08 January 2010

British Muslim Group Accepts the Right to Convert from Islam

Country: United Kingdom

In 2008 a group of mainstream British Muslim scholars and religious leaders began to meet in Cambridge to discuss what it means to live faithfully as a Muslim in Britain today. The group debated many issues, and published a report, Contextualising Islam in Britain (Cambridge: Centre of Islamic Studies, 2009), in October last year. Its conclusion on apostasy reads:

Islam frowns on the act of apostasy, but prohibits discrimination against apostates. Much classical Islamic law on apostasy emerged in a historical context where apostasy represented a betrayal of the state. It is important to say quite simply that people have the freedom to enter the Islamic faith and the freedom to leave it. (Contextualising Islam in Britain, p75, emphasis added.)

In other words, in the early Muslim community (which was at war with its neighbours) apostasy amounted to treason. So those who left Islam were put to death for treachery to the Islamic “nation”, not for apostasy as such. As these conditions do not apply today, no-one should now be coerced into remaining a Muslim.

This affirmation, by a number of senior and respected leaders of the British Muslim community, is truly remarkable, especially because it implies that the sharia law of apostasy, which demands the death sentence for converts from Islam, is no longer valid. We give thanks to the Lord for such an encouraging development, and we pray that our campaign and petition will strengthen these and other Muslim voices calling for the re-interpretation and reform of the Islamic apostasy law.

We invite you to write to your local imam and ask him both to express his support for the report’s statement that people should be free to leave Islam, and to teach it to his congregation at the mosque.

We also encourage UK supporters to write to the Muslim Council of Britain, asking them to support the statement and to do all they can to press for the abolition of all penalties for apostasy from Islam. Write to: Mr Muhammad Abdul Bari, Secretary General, The Muslim Council of Britain, PO Box 57330, London E1 2WJ

For a summary of the entire report please see: British Muslims Call for a Modernised Islam