Laws punish conversion from Islam

Julia Duin:

A court case involving three Indonesian housewives who have been jailed for offering Sunday school lessons to Muslim children of prostitutes in west Java has global significance for anyone who wishes to convert.

Shariah, or Islamic law, demands the death penalty on those who do, based on a saying of Muhammad: "Whoever changes his Islamic religion, then kill him."

Enforcement of this rule varies widely. A few Islamic societies merely shun the convert; others remove all civil liberties from the apostates; their children are taken away, their marriages dissolved, their family inheritance lost and their right to burial in a Muslim graveyard removed.

In Iran, Hamid Pourmand, a lay leader in the Assemblies of God church and an Iranian army colonel, was imprisoned in February for having converted to Christianity 25 years ago. One son has since fled the country; his wife and younger son have been evicted from their home and both are destitute in Tehran while Mr. Pourmand serves out a three-year sentence.

Hindus in India have passed anti-conversion laws in response to conversions to Christianity and other religions by untouchables. The state of Gujarat threatens to fine and/or imprison anyone who intentionally or unintentionally converts another.

The parliament in Sri Lanka, which is 69 percent Buddhist, is considering an anti-conversion bill that carries a 5-to-7-year sentence for those whose actions, whether intentional or unintentional, influence a religious conversion.

When three Christian housewives living in a fundamentalist Islamic area about a three-hour drive west of Jakarta were accused of indoctrinating Muslim children, the community erupted in rage.

Their court case has been in process since June, simultaneous with the forced closings of 60 churches in central and west Java in the past year by radical Muslim groups. Thirty churches were closed in the past month.

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