Women: Apostasy in Islam

Susan Ithungu, a Christian from Uganda, is out of the hospital. She's beginning to walk again. Every day that passes, she's one day further from the scarring events of 2010...the year her father locked her up and tried to starve her into submission (read more details here).

You see, Susan was Muslim, in that she was the child of a Muslim. And in March of 2010 she did what no Muslim 14-year-old is allowed to do (in fact, what no Muslim of any age is allowed to do)...she turned from the impersonal, vindictive god of the Qur'an to follow Jesus Christ. “I heard the message of Christ’s great love. Of Him dying for us to get everlasting peace, and there and then I decided to believe in Christ," Susan (pictured below) said.

Mukobi, her father, threatened to slaughter her publicly, but Susan would not recant. He hated the fact that she had renamed herself 'Susan,' disassociating herself with her birth name, Aisha (the name of Muhammad's 6-year-old bride and favorite wife). So Mukobi locked up his daughter. For six months. Every day, she received just a little food and just a little water. Slow starvation. Her weight dipped below 45 pounds. Still, Susan would not give up Jesus and return to Muhammad. Finally, in September of 2010, she was rescued by child protection volunteer and taken to the hospital. 

What fascinates me about this story is that, in the eyes of Sunni jurisprudence, Mukobi's treatment of his daughter was merciful. Mukobi could have rightfully killed Susan for forsaking Allah, or at least had her flogged thirty-nine times every day. According to the Hanafi school of law, which has the most adherents among Sunni Muslims, the apostate woman is to be: 

"...[T]hrown in prison until she returns to Islam or dies, being whipped thirty-nine times every day...She must be imprisoned, because she, after being a Muslim, did not give Allah the rights due him; so she must be obliged to pay back these rights by being imprisoned."                                     - The Case of the Female Apostate

 

If an apostate is considered mentally ill, then their apostasy is not valid (it is impossible for them to leave Islam). Because the penalty for apostasy is so severe, sometimes families will try to 'shelter' their children by declaring them incompetent. In the case of Nurta, a Somali Christian convert from Islam, when beating failed to dim her faith in Christ, a doctor was called in to diagnose her as 'mentally ill' so her family could adminster mind-altering medication. When that failed, she was chained to a tree and in 2010 she was murdered in an apparent 'honor killing.'

(Note: this stuff isn't just happening in rural Muslim communities overseas. It's happening in Britain and the U.S. as well)

Beatings, imprisonment, death - these punishments for apostasy are endorsed by all four schools of Sunni law. So before we condemn Susan's father as a lone radical, we should go back to the sources and investigate what Islam teaches.

And we must pray for the hearts of the fathers to be turned to their children, and for Muslims around the world to forsake the emptiness of Islam and, like Susan, encounter the everlasting peace that is found only in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.