By Rick Santorum
Three Muslim students approached me after I had finished a speech at Harvard University. I was there to talk about the threat of radical Islam across the globe, as part of the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s Program to Protect America’s Freedom.
The students, one man and two women, wore Western-style clothes and spoke English with little or no accent. They disputed my description of Islam as it’s practiced in the Middle East, maintaining that al-Qaeda’s version of Islam in no way reflects the Islam that is practiced around the world.
So I asked them a question: Should apostates – Muslims who convert to another religion – be subject to execution?
One of the women quickly said no. She insisted that she was free to leave Islam if she wanted to, and that she knew other people who had done so without a problem – in the United States.
I said I wasn’t talking about her and others’ freedom of religion in this country. What if they lived in a Muslim-majority country?
Silence. Eventually, the young man blurted out, “That’s different.”
Why? I asked. I recall him saying, “Because in Muslim countries, Islam and the government are one, and converting from Islam is the equivalent of treason against the government, punishable by death.” The two women agreed.
I suspect that most readers will find it shocking that three liberal, Western Muslims at Harvard expressed this view. But what’s shocking is that anyone finds this shocking.
Read it all via The Elephant in the Room: A war of ideas within Islam | Philadelphia Inquirer | 11/05/2009.
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