The United Nations Commission on Human Rights, considers the recanting of a person’s religion a human right legally protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:
The Committee observes that the freedom to ‘have or to adopt’ a religion or belief necessarily entails the freedom to choose a religion or belief, including the right to replace one’s current religion or belief with another or to adopt atheistic views […] Article 18.2[5] bars coercion that would impair the right to have or adopt a religion or belief, including the use of threat of physical force or penal sanctions to compel believers or non-believers to adhere to their religious beliefs and congregations, to recant their religion or belief or to convert.[6]
In some countries apostasy from the religion supported by the state is explicitly forbidden. This is largely the case in some states where Islam is the state religion; conversion to Islam is encouraged, conversion from Islam penalised.
- Iran – illegal (death penalty)[7][8][9]
- Egypt – illegal (3 years’ imprisonment)[9]
- Pakistan – illegal (death penalty[9] since 2007)
- United Arab Emirates – illegal (3 years’ imprisonment, flogging)[10]
- Somalia – illegal (death penalty)[11]
- Afghanistan – illegal (death penalty, although the U.S. and other coalition members have put pressure that has prevented recent executions)[12][13]
- Saudi Arabia – illegal (death penalty, although there have been no recently reported executions)[9][14]
- Sudan – illegal (death penalty, although there have only been recent reports of torture, and not of execution)[15][16]
- Qatar – illegal (death penalty)[17]
- Yemen – illegal (death penalty)[17]
- Malaysia – illegal in five of 13 states (fine, imprisonment, and flogging)[18][19]
- Mauritania – illegal (death penalty if still apostate after 3 days)[20]
- Morocco – illegal to proselytise conversion (15 years’ imprisonment)[21]
- Jordan – possibly illegal (fine, jail, child custody loss, marriage annulment) although officials claim otherwise, convictions are recorded for apostasy[22][23][24]
- Oman – legal in criminal code, but according to the family code, a father can lose custody of his child[25]
The only way to get out of a mirror-maze is to close your eyes and hold out your hands. To write this allegedly ultimate story is a form of artistic fill in the blank, or an artistic form of the same. [jb, 111]
For the first time in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself. [c ts 122-123]
All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven’s name, why is it so important to think the same things all together? [s n 8] I am beginning to believe that nothing can ever be proved. These are honest hypotheses which take the facts into account but I sense so definitely that they come from me, and that they are simply a way to unify my own knowledge. Slow, lazy, sulky, the facts adapt themselves to the rigor of the order I wish to give them. I have the feeling of doing a work of pure imagination. [s n 13]