Although prosecution for conversion is rare, fifteen Muslim-majority countries have criminal laws against "apostasy" from Islam.  These countries make conversion from Islam a capital crime:

Afghanistan, the Comoros, Iran, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen and, most likely, Iraq.

Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, the Maldives, Oman and Qatar impose lesser penalties.

Nina Shea, Director of the Freedom House Center for Religious Freedom, last week spoke about this to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus.  She points the finger at the United States for allowing constitutions to be enacted in Aghanistan and Iraq that do not adequately protect freedom of religion.  Although President Bush has consistently espoused religious liberty as a principle of US foreign policy, the State Department and other parts of the government have not ensured its implementation.

During the political reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, American policy has labored under false multiculturalism, unfamiliarity with sharia law, and a misguided "respect for the democratic process" that could result in the negation of democracy itself; American officials, time and again, have shied away from promoting religious freedom.

Laws against “apostasy” from Islam and laws against blasphemy have been invoked in Afghanistan and Iraq to arrest or harass Christians and others who dissent from Islamic teaching.  Thus, says Ms Shea, the constitutions of Iraq and Afghanistan contain “the same fatal flaw for religious freedom and freedom of speech”.

Realising that the Afghanistan constitution was deficient in protection of individual rights, American advisors pushed for recognition of freedom of religion in Iraq’s constitution.  However, the Iraqi constitution also contains a clause forbidding any law contrary to sharia, which could be used to nullify religious rights.

As Felice Gaer, vice chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom puts it, there is an “unresolved tension in certain Muslim countries between the application of Islamic law and protection of human rights”.

Pakistan Daily Times link via Western Resistance.