The case of Abdul Rahman has cast a sudden sharp light on the quaint Islamic practice of murdering those who leave the faith—and this, inevitably, has also led to a blizzard of misleading politically correct articles in mainstream media. Robert Spencer sets the record straight: Academic Lies About 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.”

 This is a sweeping characterization that goes much farther than most statements that have been made by Islamic moderates in the last week or so. While others have asserted that apostasy should not be a capital crime in Islamic law, they have at least acknowledged that many Islamic authorities believe that it should. Bassiouni, on the other hand, states flatly — in defiance of the clear teaching of every school of Islamic jurisprudence — that apostasy is not a capital crime under Islamic law.
 
It is hard even to take seriously an analysis that begins with such an obvious falsehood.

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