Freedom of faith is one of the basic human rights that was well established in human culture long before the (United Nations) 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. All prophets of Allah since Adam to Mohamed (peace be upon them all) called on people to worship one Allah with good words and wisdom. None of those prophets was ordered by Allah to spread monotheism by use of force. “Invite (all) to the Way of the Lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching; and argue with them in ways that are best and most gracious: for thy Lord knoweth best, who have strayed from His Path, and who receive guidance.” (Suret Al-Nahl, verse 125). Even when Allah enjoined Muslims to fight the pagans, this came after long years of atrocities perpetrated by the infidels of Quraish against the new Muslims, forcing them to emigrate from their homeland to a new city, leaving behind all their property for the sake of their faith. When the infidels continued to plot against the new Muslim state, there was no escape from fighting them and ending their domination over the holy city of Mecca to ensure the strength and growth of monotheism and to preserve the purity of Al-Kaaba, the oldest masjid (mosque) created for the worship of Allah. All the same, Allah continued to ensure freedom of faith and prevented Muslims from fighting any non-Muslims, who had not attacked them nor formed any threat to their existence. On the contrary, Allah confirms several times in his Holy Book the principle of freedom of faith. From the many verses of the Qur'an that stand firm against the coercion to embrace Islam is that of 256 of Suret Al-Baqara that reads, “Let there be no compulsion in religion.” There is also verse 99 of Suret Yunus that reads, “If it had been thy Lord's Will, they would all have believed ��" All who are on earth! Wilt thou then compel mankind, against their will, to believe!” Therefore, Allah does not then wish to compel any person to believe against their will, simply because one would enjoy real peace of mind and heart when belonging to the religion that they honestly believe in. Most importantly, Allah the Almighty would not beget any benefit if all humankind kneeled to Him and became believers nor suffer any loss if all humankind were infidels and not bowing to His Will. Nonetheless, it is no-one's right to compel anyone to adopt a religion that they do not really feel they belong to. In fact, we should consider that person a hypocrite who continues to name himself or herself a Muslim, Jew or Christian while actually not feeling any kind of harmony with the respective religion. It is downright shameful therefore to see a conservative religious society, such as that of Egypt, not showing full respect to the freedom of faith and rising up against any person daring to announce conversion from one religion to another. What is more dangerous is to see this insurrection threatens the social peace of the country whose population is composed of Muslims and Christians. Whenever a Christian man or woman embraces Islam, we see some Christian people led by clerics rise to their feet and stage protests calling for the return of that person to the Christian fold. They always find ways to claim that the person was in some way forced to embrace Islam and should be handed over to the Church to be convinced to give up his conversion! Those rebels forget the fact that when Islam reached Egypt in the first century of the Hijra, the majority of the Egyptians were Christians. So, after the passage of some 14 centuries; the Muslims form the majority, which means that Copts embracing Islam has been a continued historical process that would never be stopped by any measures taken by the Church. Such a commotion, as made by Copts in the Beni Sueif village of Samasta in Upper Egypt at the conversion of a young Christian man to Islam, seems unreasonable. It would only lead to sectarian sedition in a society that already suffers some rifts between its Christian and Muslim elements. On hearing the news of Sami Aziz's conversion to Islam, hundreds of Copts, led by some priests, headed to the police station asking the officers to hand over the young man whom they believed the police were sheltering. On answering in the negative, the policemen were attacked by the protesters. Later on, they discovered that Sami had fled the entire village to escape punishment at the hands of his old friends and co-religionists. Could one imagine the fate of that young man whether he is found by his relatives and men of the Church or not? To be found by them, he would either be forced to renounce his conversion, even if this means being a hypocrite not able to enjoy peace of mind and soul, or to face harsh punishment or even death if he refused to abandon his new religion. Meanwhile, if they fail to find him, this means he will continue living as a fugitive, suffering isolation from his relatives and old friends for the rest of his life. One should wonder here how Christianity is harmed by having some of its followers turn to another religion? And what is better for the Christian community: to know the actual faith and belief of a person they communicate with and have one of their daughters married to, or to live with a hypocrite, whose ID identifies him as a Christian while his heart and mind belongs to another faith? Christians and people of any other faith might be offended if a convert to another religion turned to lash out at their faith after embracing the other religion. But no Christian ever converted to Islam in order to insult Christianity because Islam itself respects and believes in all the divine religions and the prophets of Allah. It even shows special respect to Jesus and his mother Virgin Mary, the only woman whose name was mentioned in the Holy Qur'an at the head of an entire chapter. What is being said about Christian converts could also be said about the Muslim ones whom the Muslim society named as apostates for converting from Islam (which believes in all the religions of Allah) to another religion that doesn't admit Islam as a divine religion. Being named as an apostate actually implies a licence to murder that person. Although old and new Muslim scholars have differed on the death punishment for an apostate, some senior sheikhs, including the former Mufti of Egypt Nasr Farid Wassel, believe that the apostate should be killed. In a previous interview with The Egyptian Gazette, the noted clergyman said that, “When a person embraces Islam of his own free will, he joins the Muslim community, who works for the best interest of mankind. If one breaks this bond for pursuit of personal interests, he would disrupt the whole community and endanger it. Therefore, he deserves death, a punishment which is not meant to force him to return to Islam, but to stave off sedition in society.” However, he reckoned that such a step should be preceded by long stages of talk with apostates so that before their execution, they should be admonished to reconsider their attitude. The ex-mufti also said that the ruler could also pardon the apostates, if they had caused no harm to society nor made any offence against Muslims and Islam by their conversion. In effect, the problem of converts emerged in society some months ago when some Christian men went to court requesting their new religion be mentioned in their ID cards, which the authorities have long refused and then resorted to leaving the space blank, as an indication that the men were ex-Muslims. The cause behind this stance is that most, if not all, of those citizens were Christian men who converted to Islam with the sole aim of seeking divorce from their Christian wives, which is totally banned by the Coptic Orthodox church in Egypt. After a while, they seek to return to their original religion, leaving behind a problem of identity with the State authorities. Apparently, those converts do not cause any offence to Islam, even though they might harm Muslim society, if they married Muslim women, before returning to Christianity, thus leaving behind some social and family complications. Therefore, no-one calls for their punishment. Instead, some quarter show sympathy towards them for the trouble they took to escape the Church's obstinacy in banning divorce for the Coptic couples. No. one should force a man or a woman, who is created by Allah as a free creature, to lead a life he or she could not continue living whether with a spouse they hate or a religion they can no longer endure. To be truthful believers means to understand and accept freedom of faith and not forcing people to lead a certain life.
