Sometimes we need a reminder of the cost of being a Catholic. In Malaysia, a woman who converted from Islam to Catholicism is facing death threats and a trial. Lina Joy became a Catholic and now wants to marry another Catholic, but instead she’s been charged with apostasy under Islamic Shari’a law.
Malaysia has been governed for more than a half century by a tradition of civil law passed on by former British colonial rulers. A separate shariah, or Islamic, legal system has co-existed with civil law specifically to govern the religious lives of Muslim citizens, who are mostly ethnic Malays. About 40% of the population is ethnic Chinese, Indians and other minorities of other faiths.
But conservative Islam’s rise as a political force in the 1980s and 1990s has propelled pro-Western Malaysia—and its legal system—on a steady swing to the religious right. The government has ceded some powers once held by the civil-justice system to the shariah courts.
Ignoring the “religious right” crack for the moment, let’s pray for Lina and keep in mind that this shows us the character of Islam as a religion. Michelle Malkin quotes an Islamic scholar on why allowing conversions is so bad that it merits death threats.
“If Islam were to grant permission for Muslims to change religion at will, it would imply it has no dignity, no self-esteem,” said Wan Azhar Wan Ahmad, senior fellow at Malaysia’s Institute of Islamic Understanding. “And people may then question its completeness, truthfulness and perfection.”
We’re questioning it now already. This is why it’s important to make the distinction when people say that the word “Islam” means “peace,” what it really means—in the context and language—is “submission.” For Muslims, submission of one side to the other is the only kind of peace.
Technorati Tags:Catholic, conversion, Islam, religious freedom, religious persecution
We live in a country where people are free to practice whatever religion they want, to whatever degree they want, but this is not the norm in the rest of the world.
Hi, Miss Kelly! (oh how I love that name!)
Actually…we don’t. I agree with you that it’s not like the Muslim and Hindu countries but I’d qualify it with a “yet.”
Christian martyrdom is, as you say, most definitely not a thing of the past. I think, though, that it’s coming to a country near us.
It begins with so called “hate crimes.”
And so we inject the American spin to obscure what is plain and needs to be guarded against.
Islam is NOT a peaceful religion. Islam seeks converts at the point of a gun, converts by the sword. It is all about subjugation and slavery which is the point of Islam. Doubt it? Keep your eyes open.
This is not new. It’s just something Americans can bring themselves to believe. Yet.
Correction:
This is not new. It’s just something Americans CAN’T bring themselves to believe. Yet.