“In Islam, we don’t force people to convert but upon conversion Islamic principles do not allow them to leave....” - Mohd Azmi Abdul Hamid, president of Teras.
(Malaysiakini.com: http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/51136)
What a frightening view of Islam – visions of a life sentence in a penal colony! Was this how Allah swt envisaged His religion to be when he gave Islam to the Prophet Muhamad a.s to spread to mankind? Is this belief that “you can check in anytime you like but can never leave” (an altered verse from Hotel California by the Eagles) derived from a Hadith or decreed in the Quran? If it’s from a Hadith, what value is it really when Hadiths were compiled by human beings and thus soaked in biases and prejudices, misinterpretations of the Imams who compiled or wrote them at that time?
The writing and compiling of Hadiths were entirely human processes. There was no divine guidance in the process – not in the way that Allah swt guided the Prophet Muhamad a.s in spreading His religion. The Hadiths were not even delivered to these Imams by Jibrail or any of Allah’s angels. Hadiths in entirety were purely human, mortal constructs.
In religious classes we’ve been told that thousands of Hadiths were thrown out, and that was a human process; human beings chose what Hadiths were acceptable and what were not, or in their minds, of dubious origins.
Anyway, I plead ignorance to all this, but on a visceral level, I’d rather recognize the reversion of converts or the apostacy of Muslims than have them hide their conversion, die as kafirs in the eyes of Allah swt (for only He knows) and be buried in the company of the Ummah in a Muslim cemetery.
