DEATH FROM AROUND THE GLOBE
Dateline: Nigeria

ISLAM IS NOT A RELIGION OF VIOLENCE, WELL MAYBE A LITTLE VIOLENCE

Death Penalty Sought in Nigeria
Thu Apr 25,11:16 AM ET

MADA, Nigeria (AP) - Muslim prosecutors sought the death penalty for two men accused of converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime for which an Islamic court judge gave the accused men three days to reconvert.

Lawali Yakubu and Ali Jafaru, villagers in their 30s, were accused in the Islamic, or Shariah, court in the northern town of Mada of recently abandoning the Islamic faith and joining the Great Commission Movement, an international Evangelical church with a strong following in Nigeria.

Auwal Jabaka, the court judge, said Wednesday that although the Muslim holy book, or Quran, calls for the execution of Muslims who accept another religion, it was unclear whether the state's two-year-old Shariah penal code also permitted such a punishment.

Jabaka adjourned the court for three days to allow the accused to "change their minds" and convert back to Islam.

"If the law empowers me to (execute the two for converting from Islam to Christianity), I will have no hesitation in doing that," the judge said.

In the past two years, thousands of Muslims and Christians have been killed in periodic bursts of inter-religious bloodletting.