On Islam's decree, "death for apostates", one needs to consult Andrew G. Bostom's definitive article in The American Thinker. (HT: Michelle Malkin) One must recognize that Islam's demanding death for apostates is not unique to Afghanistan. As Bostom aptly states,
Death for apostacy is part and parcel of Islamic scripture and tradition. When Afghanistan’s leading clerics endorse his death, they are on solid ground.
He cites chapter and verse of the Koran and learned Koranic commentaries through the ages, including the opinion of the Hadith and contemporary authorities.
Thus even if Mr. Rahman gets a “dispensation” by the Karzai Government —for “mental health”, or other reasons, unfortunately, he is and remains guilty as per Afghan religious leaders, and Shari’a. As such, once released from prison, should any pious Afghan Muslim kill him (heeding the calls of local Afghan clerics), according to the Hanafi school of jurisprudence, (which prevails in Afghanistan), specifically the important legal text The Hidaya by al-Marghiniani (d. 1197),
If any person kills an apostate….Nothing [i.e., no punishment]...is incurred by the slayer. . . .
For a decade, three courageous, prescient scholars—Ibn Warraq , David Littman, and Bat Ye’or —have warned about the grave dangers posed by Shari’a-based “human rights” constructs, such as the 1990 Cairo Declaration (i.e., the so-called Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, to which all member states [now 57] of the Organization of the Islamic Conference—including “secular” Turkey—are signatories). Indeed the intrepid Senegalese jurist Adama Dieng (a Muslim, who subsequently became a United Nations special rapporteur), then serving as secretary-general to the International Commission of Jurists, declared forthrightly in February 1992 that the Cairo Declaration, under the rubric of the Shari’a,
...gravely threatens the inter-cultural consensus on which the international human rights instruments are based; introduces, in the name of the defense of human rights, an intolerable discrimination against both non-Muslims and women; reveals a deliberately restrictive character in regard to certain fundamental rights and freedoms, to the point that certain essential provisions are below the legal standard in effect in a number of Muslim countries; [and] confirms the legitimacy of practices, such as corporal punishment, that attack the integrity and dignity of the human being.
Bostom quotes Samuel Zwemer's 1924 book, The Law of Apostasy in Islam, as still relevant today. Zwemer wrote that
" . . . the conscience and the faith of the most sincere and upright Moslems are bound up with the Koran and the Traditions. Civilization cannot eradicate deep-seated convictions. Rifles and ironclads, the cafe, the theatre, written constitutions, representative parliaments; none of these reach far below the surface. A truer freedom…than the one supplied by their own faith, must come before Moslems can enter into the larger liberty which we enjoy.
In other words, Muslims who remain loyal to traditional Islamic ethics and theology cannot be moved into a "freedom of religion" mode very easily. One wonders how many Islamic background converts to Christian faith will suffer martyrdom in the years ahead, and whether there will ever be any loosening of the dire penalties demanded by the Koran. It is reported by several sources that an astounding number of Muslims in various countries are experiencing "dreams and visions" of the risen Christ, thus precipitating a desire to learn more about this man whom Christians recognize as Lord and Savior of the world. At the same time, European Islamic enclaves continue to push for the enshrinement of local Sharia law. To my mind, the Islamofacist threat is the 21st century's equivalence of the Communist - Free World struggle of the previous century. Only in many ways it is more severe...