Death Sentence for Apostasy Reveals "Nuances?"

Cause being sentenced to death for converting to Christianity is the sort of post-modern experience that really challenges one's dominant narrative, right?  We go from the whole "I'm alive" paradigm to "Ah, the lights just went out, and...oh, look, the Pearly Gates!"

Nuanced.  Feh--it's a bad piece.  Excerpts:

The possible hanging of Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani for converting from Islam to Christianity has exposed a division among Islamic jurists on whether Iran would be violating Islamic law by carrying out the execution...

According to some of these scholars, the Quran not only outlaws the death penalty for the charge of apostasy, but under Sharia law, conversion from Islam is not a punishable offense at all.

"Instead, it says on a number of occasions that God prefers and even demands that people believe in Him, but that He will handle rejection of such belief by punishing them in the afterworld," wrote Intisar Rabb, an assistant professor of law at Boston College and a faculty affiliate in research at Harvard Law School, in an e-mail to CNN.

But Rabb also acknowledges that there is a more nuanced view to Islamic law, too...

Note the academic jujitsu here--the blunt, simplistic interpretation is that Islamic law doesn't prescribe the death penalty for apostasy. It's only when you pull out the microscope to examine the nuances and subtleties that suddenly a death penalty appears. So someone has got to really dissect this thing in order for it to read "Delete, delete, delete..."

"The problem in the modern period is that contemporary states apply medieval rules in unreflective ways that do not often match the classical Islamic legal tradition to which they are trying to adhere," wrote Rabb.

So--hang on a minute. It's only those people who adhere to medieval law in unreflective ways who decipher an obligation to execute in sharia? But I thought only those highly nuanced thinkers who subtly dissect Islamic law in order to discern an obscure call for the death penalty ever demanded death for apostasy?

"One of them would be to say traditionally in Shiite Islam, people have interpreted the scripture for apostates to be put to death," Lombardi said.

Of course. Sunnis don't do that sort of thing. Ever.

"The reality is the 13 scholars on our sites could give you a variety of different responses," Bhatti said. Islamic law has a "rich legal tradition and it is important for us to not convey something definitive or to suggest there is one answer."

The overriding opinion of each scholar was simple - the complication of Islamic law makes it somewhat difficult to predict what Iran will do...

Ah.  The answer is simple--it's complicated.  Lovely.  If the law is that unpredictable, is it really capable of being just?

Lombardi recalled a story in Afghanistan, where a man's neighbors hauled him to court for leaving Islam.

"The judge takes a look and says this person is an apostate and therefore the crime should be putting them to death," Lombardi said. "But then the judge said, Islam is such great religion, you could have to be crazy to have to convert from Islam. And therefore, I think this person should get off on ground of insanity."

Moral of the story, according to Lombardi: "There are all sorts of grounds for pardoning someone..."

But you can only pardon someone if they are actually guilty of a crime, right? So even though this is a real part of the law, we can find all sorts of reasons for ignoring it, right?