Islam is a one-way street. Non-Muslims can convert to Islam, but Muslims are not allowed to convert from Islam. All schools of Islamic law specify the death sentence for an adult male Muslim who chooses to leave his faith. Although this is rarely carried out, the law imposes many other penalties on apostates, and provokes powerful hostility towards them amongst Muslims.President Barack Obama`s late father and grandfather were Muslims, but the president himself is a professing Christian. According to Islamic sharia law, the child of a Muslim parent is to be regarded as a Muslim, regardless of the other parent`s faith. By embracing Christianity Obama has made himself an “apostate” in the eyes of Islam, that is, he is someone who has abandoned Islam, and as such under sharia he deserves the death penalty.
Islam, the second largest religion in the world with around 1.4 billion adherents, stands alone among world religions in officially prescribing a range of severe punishments for any of its adherents who choose to leave their faith, punishments that include the death sentence, writes Sookhdeo, International Director of Barnabas Fund, and Director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity.
