Whatever happened to 'no compulsion in religion'?

Abdul Rahman is a 41-year-old Afghan father who has lived overseas for about 15 years. He returned to Afghanistan for a custody battle with his wife who lives in Afghanistan. A relative with a personal vendetta claimed the father has converted to Christianity and dobs him into the authorities.

It's amazing what people are prepared to do to pursue personal vendettas. Even if it is true that the father had converted to Christianity, what does this have to do with the price of Persian rugs in the Kabul bazaar?

The children have apparently lived in an Afghan Muslim environment all their lives. How they survived Russian intervention followed by civil war followed by Taliban rule followed US-led bombings followed the present chaos is anyone's guess.

What are the merits of Rahman's custody battle? Who knows. Certainly under the family law of most Western countries, he would have little chance of gaining custody. Under Australia's Family Law Act, a court would be most reluctant to change the status quo of the children's living arrangements without good reason.

And under Australia's mandatory detention laws, the fact that the children are escaping a regime which kills them for belonging to the wrong tribe and or sect isn't enough to stop them from being thrown into a detention centre in the middle of the desert. At least that was the case until recently.

Indeed, one Kashmiri convert to Christianity was kept in Australian detention longer than any Muslim detainee and suffered severe trauma as a result. Peter Qasim's conversion and fears for his safety didn't stop the Howard Government from keeping this hapless fellow behind bars.

To hudood or not to hudood?

Even more hypocritical and scandalous than the Australian Government's alleged commitment to freedom for Christian converts is the Afghan judiciary's commitment to Sharia.

According to trial judge Ansarullah Mawlafizada, "The Prophet Mohammed has said several times that those who convert from Islam should be killed if they refuse to come back".

It seems the learned judge has not read the verse of the Koran immediately following the Ayat al-Kursi ("Verse of the Throne"). In verse 256 of Surah al-Baqarah, the One who created Sayyidina Muhammad and honoured him with the Seal of Prophethood declares: "Let there be no compulsion in religion".

There isn't a huge amount of consensus among classical and modern Sharia scholars on what acts constitute apostasy or what its punishment should be. Indeed, even scholars who agree that an apostate should be put to death place stringent conditions on this punishment.

According to Shaykh Nuh Keller's translation of Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Masri's classic work of Shafi law entitled Umdat as-Salik ("Reliance of the Traveller"), a condition for implementing the death penalty is that the caliph or his representative must ask the apostate to repent and return to Islam (see paragraph 8.7 of the Revised Edition).

Further, only the caliph or his representative can carry out the punishment. Unless I am mistaken, I do not believe Hamid Karzai is regarded as the Caliph of Afghanistan. Chapter III of the Afghan Constitution sets out the powers and duties of the president, described there as the head of state. Chapter IV sets out provisions relating to the government. Nowhere do the words "caliph" or "caliphate" appear.