Is there freedom of religion in Islamic lands?

Question 60070.

Whether there is religious freedom in Islamic lands is a question that invites two bad answers. One says no, never, anywhere, which is inaccurate. The other says the situation is much like anywhere else, which is worse than inaccurate because it makes light of real suffering.

I want to give you the picture as it actually is, country by country in outline, and then think about what Scripture asks of us in response. That second part matters more than the first.

A spectrum, not a single answer

Muslim-majority countries differ enormously. Indonesia, the largest by population, recognises several religions and has functioning churches, though with local pressure and periodic violence. Turkey, Jordan, Morocco and the Gulf states each have their own arrangements, some permitting expatriate worship while restricting outreach to citizens.

At the restrictive end, Saudi Arabia has historically permitted no public non-Muslim worship at all. Afghanistan under its current rulers, and Somalia, and northern Nigeria under sharia codes, are places where religious freedom for a Christian is a theoretical concept.

So the honest answer begins by refusing to treat over fifty countries as one thing.

The legal position and the practical one

Most Muslim-majority states are signatories to international human rights instruments that guarantee freedom of religion, and many constitutions say so in their own words. On paper, religious freedom often exists.

The gap opens between the constitution and the statute book. Blasphemy laws, apostasy provisions, restrictions on building or repairing churches, bans on printing or importing Scripture, and prohibitions on proselytising all narrow the freedom the constitution announces.

Then there is the third layer, which is family and community. A man may be legally free to change his religion and still be beaten, disowned, divorced from his children, dismissed from work, or killed. In several countries the state does not need an apostasy law because society enforces one.

The asymmetry at the heart of it

The consistent pattern is that conversion travels in one direction. A Christian may convert to Islam anywhere with no penalty at all, and the conversion is frequently celebrated. A Muslim who converts to Christianity faces consequences ranging from social ostracism to execution.

That asymmetry is what people mean when they say religious freedom is absent, and it is a fair use of the phrase. Freedom that only runs one way is not freedom, it is a ratchet.

The classical sharia treatment of the dhimmi, the protected non-Muslim, is worth understanding here. It permitted the practice of an existing faith under conditions, including a tax and various social restrictions, but it did not permit persuasion in the other direction.

What this costs real people

Numbers can numb, so let me be concrete. A convert I heard of in a north African country lost his job the week his employer found out, was divorced by his wife under family law, and now meets with two other believers in a car park because no building will have them.

Multiply that by the tens of thousands. Bible-teaching congregations meeting in shifts. Baptisms conducted at night in the sea. Believers who have never once sung a hymn at full volume.

And yet the church in these places is growing. That is not a slogan, it is what missiologists have been reporting for two decades. More Muslims have come to faith in Jesus in the last generation than in the previous thirteen centuries put together.

Being fair to Muslims we know

I want to be careful here because a sentence about Saudi law can turn into a suspicion of the family down the road, and that would be sinful.

Most Muslims in Britain are not persecutors and many of them left countries where they were persecuted. Plenty of Muslim scholars argue for religious freedom from within their own tradition, and Muslim minorities in the West have often been the strongest advocates for the freedoms that protect us all.

So criticise laws and systems, not the man who runs the corner shop. Those are different targets and confusing them destroys our witness.

What Scripture says about religious freedom

Baptists have a particular history here. Our forebears argued for liberty of conscience when it was dangerous to do so, and Thomas Helwys went to prison for telling King James that the king had no authority over the souls of his subjects.

The theological ground is straightforward. Faith that is coerced is not faith. God seeks worshippers who worship in spirit and truth, and a compelled confession is neither.

Which means Christians should defend religious freedom for everyone, including Muslims, including people whose beliefs we think are false. If we only want liberty for ourselves we have not understood our own doctrine. See also Baptists, religious liberty and idolatry.

How the church should respond

Pray specifically. Not a general sentence about the persecuted church, but named countries and named situations. Organisations that monitor persecution publish reliable information and it is easy to build a prayer list from it.

Advocate where you can. Write to your member of parliament when a case arises. Governments do respond to sustained pressure on individual prisoners, and there are believers walking free today because ordinary people wrote letters.

And give. Bibles in Arabic, Farsi and Somali, satellite broadcasting, and legal support for defendants all cost money, and the churches in these places cannot fund it themselves.

What persecution does not mean

One caution. Losing an argument on social media is not persecution. Being thought old-fashioned at work is not persecution. When we in the West use that language about our own inconveniences, we insult believers who are actually paying for their faith.

The New Testament expects opposition and treats it as normal rather than as an emergency. Peter tells scattered believers not to be surprised at the fiery trial, as though something strange were happening.

That perspective is a gift. It stops us panicking about the loss of cultural privilege and lets us concentrate on the places where religious freedom is genuinely absent.

Where religious freedom has improved and where it has not

It would be dishonest to present the picture as uniformly dark or as static. Things move, in both directions.

Some Gulf states have permitted church buildings in recent years, and there are now functioning congregations in places where there were none a generation ago, mostly serving expatriate workers rather than citizens.

In other places the direction has been sharply worse. Afghanistan since 2021 has become one of the hardest countries on earth to be a Christian. Parts of the Sahel have deteriorated badly as armed groups have taken territory.

So any statement about religious freedom in Islamic lands needs a date attached to it. What was true in 2005 is not necessarily true now, and Christians who repeat decades-old information do our credibility no favours. See also whether Islam is compatible with Christianity.

What the New Testament expects of the persecuted

Scripture does not tell suffering believers to seize their rights. It tells them something harder and better.

Peter writes to scattered Christians under pressure and tells them to keep their conduct honourable, to honour the emperor, to bless those who revile them, and to be ready to give an answer with gentleness and respect.

Paul, who used his Roman citizenship when it served the gospel and declined to use it when it did not, gives us a model of holding legal protections lightly. He appealed to Caesar, and he also sang hymns in a Philippian jail at midnight.

None of that means we should be indifferent to religious freedom as a public good. It means the church has never depended on it, and the record of the last century is that the gospel has often spread fastest where it was least protected. the word of God increased and multiplied, and it has kept doing so.

A word about our own liberty

Before we finish, a glance homeward. Britain has enjoyed religious freedom for a long time and we have grown careless with it.

The liberty we take for granted was bought by people who were fined, imprisoned and worse, and a good many of them were Baptists and other dissenters. It is not the natural condition of the world, it is an inheritance.

Paul told Timothy to pray for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. Praying for our own rulers to preserve that liberty is not politics, it is obedience.

So, now what?

Pick one country this week. Read about the situation of the church there, find out whether there is a believer in prison, and pray for them by name. That is more use than a general anxiety about Islam.

If you know Muslims personally, be the Christian who treats them well. Many converts say the thing that first cracked their certainty was kindness from someone they had been taught to distrust.

And ask yourself the uncomfortable question. If following Jesus in this country cost you your job, your family and your safety, would you still be following on Monday? Those brothers and sisters have answered that question already.

Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.

Hebrews 13:3, ESV