Forced Faith Is Not Faith

Forced Faith Is Not Faith

In a prison in Khartoum, a dusty city on the banks of the ancient Nile in the African nation of Sudan, Meriam Yehya Ibrahim waits.

She is not alone in her confinement. Her son is with her. He is 20 months old. Her daughter is there, too. She was born in that prison one week ago.

Together with their 27-year old mother, they wait. Wait for her deliverance, wait for her execution by hanging. There is no middle ground.

Ibrahim stands convicted of apostasy; she renounced Islam and became a Christian. According to Ibrahim — and the speaker of the Sudanese Parliament disputes this — she was raised a Christian after her father, a Muslim, abandoned the family when she was 6. Under Sudanese law, anyone whose father was a Muslim is automatically considered a Muslim. Converting from Islam is against the law and Muslim women are forbidden from marrying outside their faith.

Ibrahim’s “crimes” against that code were apparently reported by her own brother. She was tried and ordered to disavow her faith by May 15. But she refused to do so and for that, they gave her the death penalty. Before she dies, she is to be whipped 100 lashes, the court having also found her guilty of adultery. This, for having sexual relations with her husband, Daniel Wani, a Sudanese Christian who has U.S. citizenship.

Her death, thank God, is not imminent. Ibrahim’s lawyer is appealing her sentence. And the court has given her two years to nurse and wean her daughter before it is carried out. So Ibrahim waits. Outraged governments in more civilized places — including the United States — have urged Sudan not to do this evil thing. Petition drives have netted 650,000 signatures in the same cause. So, like Ibrahim herself, the world waits.

And watches.

And wonders:

Is there no end to the barbarism that men — and usually, it is men — will commit under the rubric of faith?

The Bible defines faith as “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”

Martin Luther King defined it as “taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

But it is too often the case that in practical terms, faith has less to do with hope and assurance and the courage to take steps in the dark than with justifying just this kind of theological bullying. How in the world does Sudan — or any nation or group — believe it can “require” faith? Can faith ever truly be faith if it is imposed by force of law or threat of violence? Is faith faith if it is not freely chosen? If someone swore at gunpoint that she loved you, would you believe her?

You’d be a fool if you did.

Unfortunately, many of those who claim to be faith’s most zealous defenders do not trust what they profess to believe, have no confidence that its appeal is strong enough that people will come to it and stay with it by the free movement of their hearts. They insult their own religions by suggesting people must be held to them — and shielded from other beliefs — by government and/or by violence. We see that in Sudan. We have seen it in Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, America. What they model is not faith but fear, not the still small voice that compels footsteps on unseen stairs, but the loud, shrill outcry of cowards whose belief is so fragile as to totter at the first gust of contradiction, so frail as to require the enforcement of laws.

Meriam Ibrahim could have been free — perhaps still could be free — with a few simple words: Jesus is not Lord. She wouldn’t even have to mean it. Just mouth the words and get out. Surely, you think, Jesus himself would understand if she did.

But she won’t. Instead she waits, ready to accept whatever comes. Let her captors note her courage and perhaps finally understand the tragic futility of what they do.

Laws don’t give faith. And laws cannot take it away.

Screenshot: YouTube

Advertising

Start your day with National Memo Newsletter

Know first.

The opinions that matter. Delivered to your inbox every morning

Judge In Trump Georgia Case Says Willis Can Continue Prosecution
Fani Willis , right, in Fulton County courtroom

March 15 (Reuters) - The Georgia judge overseeing Donald Trump's trial on charges of trying to overturn his election defeat in the U.S. state said that lead prosecutor Fani Willis can remain on the case, so long as she removes a deputy she had a personal relationship with.

Keep reading...Show less
Russian Witness Against Biden Received $600K From 'Trump Associates'

Alexander Smirnov, center, leaving courthouse in Las Vegas on February 20, 2024

Photo by Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal

I’ll bet you didn’t know that it is possible in this great big world of ours to live a comfortable life being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for doing basically nothing. Well, not nothing, exactly, but the money you get is unattached to normal stuff we are all familiar with like a job, complete with job-related duties and office hours and a W-2 and maybe even a job title. The money can thus be described by what it is not, which is aboveboard and visible. Instead, this kind of money often ends up in the kinds of accounts said to be “controlled” by you or others, which is to say, accounts which may not, and often do not, have your name on them.

Keep reading...Show less
{{ post.roar_specific_data.api_data.analytics }}