Amal Farah insists that this has nothing to do with Islam, and the Telegraph is anxious to corroborate her claim. However, as this article notes, Muhammad commanded: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 9.84.57), and the alleged “numerous verses in the Koran” that “guarantee freedom of belief” have not prevented all the sects of Islam and all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, both Sunni and Shi’ite, from teaching that apostates should be killed.
Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most renowned and prominent Muslim cleric in the world, has stated: “The Muslim jurists are unanimous that apostates must be punished, yet they differ as to determining the kind of punishment to be inflicted upon them. The majority of them, including the four main schools of jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi`i, and Hanbali) as well as the other four schools of jurisprudence (the four Shiite schools of Az-Zaidiyyah, Al-Ithna-`ashriyyah, Al-Ja`fariyyah, and Az-Zaheriyyah) agree that apostates must be executed.” There is only disagreement over whether the law applies only to men, or to women also – some authorities hold that apostate women should not be killed, but only imprisoned in their houses until death.
“I renounced Islam, so my family think I should die,” by Harriet Alexander, the Telegraph, May 25, 2014:
If Amal Farah were not living in Britain, she believes she might well be dead.
For the 33-year-old financial manager had carried out an act so heinous, her family felt she deserved to die.
Her crime? She had renounced her Islamic faith – “and within my community, that’s a capital offence,” she said. “They believe you deserve to die.”
Mrs Farah, who was born in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, but now lives in Britain, has never told her story before.
She was too afraid; told that, even in the UK, it was safer for her to keep a low profile.
But when earlier this month the case of Meriam Ibrahim came to light – an eight-month pregnant Sudanese woman, sentenced to death for refusing to renounce her Christian faith – Mrs Farah felt she had to speak out.
“I had to do something,” she said. “I am so fortunate to be here, and I am in a position to be able to shout and scream and say this is wrong.”
Her voice quavering, fighting back tears, she said: “I read her story and thought: ‘That could so easily have been me.’”
Ms Ibrahim currently awaits her fate in a cell in Khartoum, shackled by the ankles, having refused an offer from a judge to renounce her Christianity. She also faces 100 lashes for “adultery” – the court does not recognise her marriage to a Christian man, Daniel Wani, who has American citizenship.
She told the court that her Muslim father abandoned the family when she was young, so as a child she had been brought up a Christian.
A petition to quash Ms Ibrahim’s sentence, organised by Amnesty International, has been signed by 640,000 people so far – but the rights group has been barred from Sudan since 2005.
For Mrs Farah, many of the parallels between her own life and Ms Ibrahim’s are striking.
Both women are pregnant with their second child. Both were born in the Greater Horn of Africa region. And both lost their fathers when they were young girls.
Ironically, Mrs Farah’s father was very secular. A high-ranking general in the Somali army, he served under Siad Barre, the military dictator, before going into exile in Ethiopia, where he campaigned for democracy. When Mrs Farah was aged just three, he was killed by a landmine.
“After that, little by little, my mother became more religious,” she said. “We were all Muslims, of course, but the older I got the more I was told to pray, to wear conservative clothes and so on. It wasn’t that I disliked Islam per se. But I disliked being told what to do, like being forced to wear the hijab. I dreamt of having control over my own life.”
A turning point came, she said, when her mother prepared her for circumcision, a practice now widely viewed as barbaric, and better known as female genital mutilation.
“I was really scared, and she was talking about how it was religious purification – an essential rite. I asked if there was anything I could do to change her mind, and she said no. I think that’s when I realised that I hated this feeling of powerlessness.”
When Mrs Farah was 18, the family fled Somalia – her mother, who had remarried, her stepfather, and her four half-siblings.
And it was when she began her degree in molecular biology at a British red-brick university that a new world opened up for her.
“It was a revelation,” she said. “I met atheists, staunch Christians, Jews, Hindus – they challenged me about my views, and I about theirs. It was an incredible sensation to be able to ask questions, and discuss ideas without fear, without looking over my shoulder. I had been in a cocoon – unquestioning, with everyone told they had to think the same way.
“It happened very organically for me. Initially I started exploring my own faith, reading all I could on the Koran – different translations, historical perspectives, listening to cassettes of various Saudi or Egyptian imams.
“At first my Mum thought it was wonderful. And I really did see the goodness in it; the sense of generosity, of speaking the truth, and not back biting. I don’t think it is a terrible religion at all.”
But she felt in her heart that it was not for her – and that, to be true to herself, she could no longer call herself a Muslim.
Yet finally she dared to broach the subject gently with her family – saying she was “having doubts about Islam” – her mother was “heartbroken”.
“My mother’s first words were: ’But you’re going to hell!’ They see that life is a test, and that my decision was but a challenge to my faith, and one which should be overcome.”
At first they tried to persuade her. Cousins telephoned her constantly, and an uncle was dispatched from Saudi Arabia to spend three days “answering her questions”.
In the eyes of the deeply-conservative Somali community in Leicester, of which her family was part, renouncing Islam was an act potentially punishable by death.
“It became more threatening. My mother felt incredibly guilty – she was also very, very angry.
“She blamed herself for the exposure to corrupt Western ways, and said: ‘I knew it was wrong to bring you here. It was like putting you in the sea and asking you not to taste salt.’”
Mrs Farah has not spoken to her relatives since 2005.
She is adamant that it is not a problem with Islam, but rather one of intolerant societies.
“If you look at the Old Testament, there are some shocking things there,” she said. “But Jewish society realises that it’s no longer acceptable to stone someone to death, or to cut out their eyes, or enslave them. And the vast majority of Muslims realise that too.
“It’s just the extremists in Pakistan or Saudi or Sudan who fail to see the message of humanity behind the words.”
The crime of apostasy – for which Ms Ibrahim has been sentenced to death – is defined as the renouncing of your religion.
Some divisions of Christianity – among them Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Baptists – believe apostasy is a sin. But it is mainly seen as an Islamic crime, based on a Hadith – saying – from Prophet Muhammad who said, “Whoever changes his religion kill him.” But many scholars point out that numerous verses in the Koran guarantee freedom of belief….
mortimer says
What? Murdering apostates has ‘NOTHING TO DO WITH ISLAM’? Who made that claim? David Cameron or some other clueless dhimmi?
Mr. Cameron stop sucking up to our fascist enemies.
inMAGICn says
I thought the first name was Neville, not David.
Jeff David Brown says
Mrs. Ibrahim is married to an American Citizen. Does this not make her an American Citizen?? Is this the way that American Citizens are to be treated abroad?? Is this not a matter for the State Department??
Jay Boo says
shackled by the ankles
That pretty much sums up Islam
Allah of Islam has no power
Allah is a pathetic week coward
“The Greatest???” Huh Huh Huh
Allah the greatest hoax of all
Muslims should bow when they pray
in shame
Salah says
Muslims live in fear, that’s the main reason why they are still…Muslims!
Gail Griffin says
I agree. Fear keeps them enslaved to Islam. Fear of losing their families, communities
Fear of death or being locked in a room until death. No wonder book h. does not want western education. It opens your brain.
PJG says
Meanwhile, the Sudanese woman in jail has given birth while shackled to the floor, and her husband is not allowed to visit her. The woman in the above story is indeed fortunate to be in the UK, though things could change, if Cameron has his wish and the British people integrate more with the Muslim immigrants no-one asked if they wanted.
It’s strange though, isn’t it, how so many Muslims find “tolerance” and “humanity” and so on in Islam. Do they not realise that the “humanity” is only for other Muslims?
Charli Mian says
If Muslims don´t want to be exposed to corrupt Western ways, would they all please, please go back to whatever Muslim sh*t hole they come from.
There will be no shortage of people willing to buy them one way tickets back to their uncorrupted Islamic paradises.
Steffen Larsen says
“……numerous verses in the Koran guarantee freedom of belief ..”
Sure, IF the believers are in the clear minority OR the non-believers submit to the rule of Islam, and only then. This is rarely mentioned.
Kepha says
No problem recognizing that Islam decrees death for apostasy; and I hold no candle for Islam. However, standing apart (which is the meaning of “apostasy” in Greek) from the received faith of a community is always a huge sin in the community in question. Even the Evolutionary Materialist faith can show its ire to those of its members who become “fundamentalists” (the tribe is a lot larger than the MSM lets on). Back in the 4th century B.C., Socrates was made to drink hemlock for his apostasy from the Athenian pantheon. This is the other side of the truth that a community needs its common beliefs to help build it and bind it together.
DhimmiNot says
Kepha
You make an interesting point. Can you expand on this concept of a received faith, or a community belief that should not be questioned, at the risk of being ostracized. I see this in numerous areas: business, emergent church dogma, “green energy policy”, “don’t go against the grain”, group dynamics. When is the minority opinion correct? Even if the minority IS valid, the majority can impose its collective will. Few will question this at the risk of personal suicide. Are these questions part of some academic field of study?
bill says
This is not the 4th century BC or even the 7th AD, it is the 21st century,
it is fatuous to give examples of what happened in the distant past, which is what the Islamists are doing in fact, mankind has progressed and developed
more humanity and freedom of thought..
Socrates in fact was not convicted for apostasy but for lack of respect for gods or ‘impiety’ also for ‘corrupting youth’. This was because of his philosophical methods of analysis and critical thinking. These cahrges were most likely politically based as theose in power thought his ideas revolutionary, which of course they were. He in fact s could have paid a fine but was so highly principled that he chose death, even though he had an opporunity to escape from his prison. This is why he is regarded so highly in philosophy. The socalled ‘thinkers’ of Islam actually suffer from tunnel vision
as they are unable to think of anything outside of the Quran and its futile interpretations, as their only authority is the so called word of ‘god’. Which they believe trumps everything else.
Kepha says
@Dhimminot and Bill:
Thank you for your replies.
I think Bill’s pointing out that Socrates was made to drink hemlock because he denied his society’s gods and, in so doing, “corrupted youth”, underscores my point, as does his impatient use of the term “fatuous” for my use of examples not from this century. Socrates stood apart from the gods of his community, and hence was indeed an “apostate”.
A very large part of “modern” opinion in any age demands that you “get with the program!”–which is another way, in this day and age, of saying, “It’s the 21st century, for Pete’s sake!” And, as for the program I am supposed to “get with”, it seems to be blessing homosexuality, believing in a radical cultural relativism, honoring transgender identity, sacralizing abortion, praising Islam, and the praising the Great Obama. Sorry, but this is a program which I can’t “get with”.
A true post-modern would tell Daniel and Meriam Ibrahim and Amal Farah that since there is no real truth in either pre-modern creed of Christianity or Islam, taking on Islamic coloration in a context where it will save one’s life is the right thing to do, rather than make trouble for all these people of good will in Washington and Brussels, or insult the feelings of a once-oppressed Third World people by openly apostasizing from Islam. Come to think of it, the same Zeitgeist with which we live today would also tell old Socates that he was one downright idiotic Athenian to sacrifice his life for principles of which one couldn’t be sure rather than praise him for his critical acumen.
I frankly admit that for me, ethical decisions, whether I am brave enough to make them or not, are a fairly simple matter. The Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth (John 1). Knowing God isn’t a matter of blind men touching an elephant, but of listening to a God who is there and who has spoken. Call me a fundamenalist if you will, but here I stand and can do no other, God help me. Amen. Islam says God has spoken. too? Well, it is clear that an Islam that cannot explain why my Old Testament is the same as the Jew’s Tanakh (except for the order of the books) or why duplicitous, cheating little I and the equally duplicitous and cheating little he of some other Christian sect read the same New Testament, even to the point where we let its text embarrass the traditions of some of those who preserved it for us and shows that it garbles the messages of the prophets whose traditions it claims to continue offers warrant for our seeing it as some kind of fraud. The same core belief allows me to tell our vaunted 21st century Zeitgeist that it is a crock of [**unmentionable**].
DhimmiNot says
One small point which is key…
You say: “Islam says God has spoken …”
I don’t think that the Qur’an says that. Actually, Islam says that ALLAH has spoken …
To me, the beginning of understanding the Rubik’s cube of Islam is to acknowledge that Allah is NOT EQUAL to the God of the Bible.
Larry S says
I hope Ms Farah might be induced to at least passively participate on this wb site. It would be interesting if any attitudes would change as a result.
Robert has made the point a number of times that violence in the Bible is descriptive while violence in the Koran is prescriptive. Possibly his lengthiest discussion of this is in his book Religion of Peace?. I think there is room for that point to be adressed at considerably greater length, and hope that he or someone with comparable knowledge might undertake that task.
Michael Copeland says
The Koran forms part of Islamic Law, with the death penalty for denying any verse in it (Manual of Islamic Law o8.7(7)).
The Bible informs Western legislatures, but is not part of the law.
The Manual of Islamic Law is a free download at http://www.shafiifiqh.com/maktabah/relianceoftraveller.pdf
Jeff David Brown says
One could do the same thing with any book. Take a book of fairy tails; tell a person to read it, and swear by it, or we’ll kill you!! If the person is afraid for their life, they’ll do what they’re told. Fear controls the Muslims. It’s not the Koran or Mohamed and certainly not God.
Gail Griffin says
True. I would believe in fairies in any case. But I don’t like people who would kill me for non believe
pdxnag says
Every dollar that gets spent foolishly on a so-called “moderate” Islamic thug could instead go toward someone like Amal Farah, who will more clearly object to thuggery.
onisac says
I feel very sad for those whom live in such a non-tolerant nation.
However, it has been going one for 1400 years. Yes, it didn’t start just last week.
It’s past time those being kept in danger from savages police themselves, or leave the danger zones.
Shirley the good people out number the bad people. When the United States tried to help, the majority of the people began hating the Americans for it.
So I doubt that the U.S. will come to the rescue again. If sharia is the reason for all of this savagery, then get rid of sharia.
FRANCIS THONG says
If Allah did says that you should die…so be it….
in the Koran Allah never said a WORD…….
All Words spoken in the Koran was written by the
Koran Writer using Mohammad as the spokeman
All the religions in the world Holy Books was written
by people not by God/Allah….
IN GOD WE TRUST….not people
Mirren10 says
“It happened very organically for me. Initially I started exploring my own faith, reading all I could on the Koran – different translations, historical perspectives, listening to cassettes of various Saudi or Egyptian imams.
“At first my Mum thought it was wonderful. And I really did see the goodness in it; the sense of generosity, of speaking the truth, and not back biting. I don’t think it is a terrible religion at all.”
If she has read the Koran, how can she possibly say it isn’t a terrible religion ?
Has she never heard of abrogation ? Did she miss the verse of the sword ?
She listened to ” cassettes of various Saudi or Egyptian imams.”
Which ones ? The ones that want the destruction of Israel, the ones that say all Jews must be annihilated, or the ones that say the West is in a plot to destroy islam ?
By her own admission, she was forced to wear the hijab, and had her clitoris sliced off, in the *name of islam*.
By her own admission, ”She had renounced her Islamic faith – “and within my community, that’s a capital offence,” she said. “They believe you deserve to die.” In the name of islam.
She knows what is happening to Meriam Ibrahim in the Sudan.
And she **still thinks islam is not a terrible religion**.
The woman is a fool.
voegelinian says
She suffers from Stockholm Syndrome, at best. She’s only useful to us as a spectacle of the fanatical brutality of Islam. Our #1 priority is our own societies, not mollycoddling schizophrenics who in their confused Stockholm Syndrome continue to enable the same monster that is not only persecuting her, but who is actively waging a violent war against us.
roder59 says
Having read this story on barbarism it strikes me how similar her story is to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s. Whereas Mrs Farah STILL hasn’t recognized the evil in Islam itself Ayaan is as sure as can be Islam is anti-human, anti-women and totalitarian.
Hot read: Infidel and Nomad by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
As long as Islam rules in MENA, Pakistan and Indonesia women’s lives are Hell.
Linda Rivera says
This woman supposedly left Islam, yet practices taqiyya! DECEIVING for Islam! As commanded by Islamic teaching she LIES for Islam! She is a HUGE PROPAGANDIST for the Genocidal Murder Cult of Islam!
Barbaric mass murderer and huge slave trader, founder of Islam, Mohammad declared: WAR IS DECEPTION.
This woman seeks to lull infidels into a false sense of security. Informing infidels that Islam is GOOD and that it is only a FEW muslim extremists we should worry about!
Amal Farah statements on Islam: I really did see the goodness in it; the sense of generosity, of speaking the truth, and not back biting. I don’t think it is a terrible religion at all.”
She is adamant that it is not a problem with Islam, but rather one of intolerant societies.
“If you look at the Old Testament, there are some shocking things there,” she said. “But Jewish society realises that it’s no longer acceptable to stone someone to death, or to cut out their eyes, or enslave them. And the vast majority of Muslims realise that too.
“It’s just the extremists in Pakistan or Saudi or Sudan who fail to see the message of humanity behind the words.”
voegelinian says
I agree. She’s either doing taqiyya or she is psychopathically disturbed with a profound schizophrenia. There is no third explanation for her defense of Islam and of Muhammad.
Lubn says
I support this lady, she is not alone I also left this ideology. I like the liberal secularism in the West, it is civilized and more peaceful. For the last 20yrs or so our way become out of line, people from my country become very religious and adopted Wahabism on the other hand people like me and others rebelled and drift away from that, we just want to assimilate and pursue our goals that is all.