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Good morning.

Recently, so many all around the world were appalled to learn that Meriam Ibrahim, a Sudanese Christian, was given the death penalty for apostasy.  She had refused to renounce her Christian faith.  Meriam was sentenced under Sudan’s interpretation of the Sharia.  Many Muslims have been asking:  How can a legal system, that is supposed to be based on the Qur’an, sentence a person for holding a different belief when the same Qur’an explicitly states that there should be no compulsion in religion?  (Qur’an 2:256)

The Qur’an also states that:
‘Whosoever wills, let him (or her) believe, and whosoever wills, let him disbelieve.’ (Qur’an 18:29). ‘

It was the early Muslim rationalist debates on ‘human freedom’ (from as early as the 8th century) which initiated what is now referred to as ‘Islamic theology.’

Similarly, the concept of coexistence is not alien to Islam.  The period often described by historians as ‘the Golden age of Islam’ was characterised by peaceful coexistence between Muslims and people of different faiths and beliefs.   In Iraq and under Muslim rule, between the 8th and 10th century, Muslims, Christians, Jews and others worked closely together in the translation of most of the secular Greek texts on mathematics, philosophy, medicine, and physics into Arabic.  They then went on to write (in Arabic) what are still considered today to be the most important early commentaries on Greek philosophy.  When the Arabic-Islamic philosophical texts were later translated into Latin in the Middle Ages, they resulted in a major transformation of philosophical disciplines in the Western world.

So our prayer today is:
Lord, grant us the courage to speak out against those who violate the rights of others.  Amen.
 

  See Chapter 3, The Exigencies of Inter-Faith Discourse: Aristotle’s Topics and Muslim-Christian Dialogue in Dimitri Gutas’ Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbasid Society (2nd – 4th/8th-10th centuries), London and New York: Routledge, 1998.