Apparently Florida authorities have never heard of Islam killing apostates before

There are several distinct targets when Islam is in charge, two of which are women who offend honor concepts and apostates (that is, those who leave Islam for another religion).  For both, the punishment is death.  We’ve heard a lot about honor killings recently, so I won’t rehash that here, but it might be worth while to point out the daily reality of apostate killings (and threats).  First, Wikipedia neatly sums up the controlling law:

In Islamic law (sharia), the consensus view is that a male apostate must be put to death unless he suffers from a mental disorder or converted under duress, for example, due to an imminent danger of being killed. A female apostate must be either executed, according to Shafi’i, Maliki, and Hanbali schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), or imprisoned until she reverts to Islam as advocated by the Sunni Hanafi school and by Shi’a scholars.

That law, could, of course, just be theoretical.  After all, despite Biblical admonitions, we in the West haven’t stoned witches or killed gays in the last few years.  Sadly, though, there’s nothing theoretical about a devout Islamist’s equally devout belief that one who offends the faith through conversion must be killed.  For example, Abdul Rahman, an Afghani convert to Christianity was saved from government-sponsored execution only when the matter became an international cause celebre and he was allowed to escape to Italy.  Iran is known to have used death squads against converts.  Ominously, the death threats don’t always come from the government, but from the community as well — something Mohammed Hegazy, an Egyptian Muslim who converted to Christianity has reason to know.  Worse, the fear that is normal in Muslim countries is also becoming ordinary background noise for Muslim lives in Western countries.

Given all this, it is, to say the least, peculiar that the Florida police have concluded that Rifqa Bary, a Muslim girl who ran away from her Ohio home after converting to Christianity, hasn’t made a credible argument that she is at risk of death from the Muslim community:

An investigation by Florida authorities has found that there were no credible threats to a teenager who ran away from her Ohio home because she says she feared for her life after converting to Christianity from Islam.

A summary of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation into Rifqa Bary’s (RIF’-kuh BEHR’-ee) allegations was unsealed Monday. The probe found no reports of threats against Bary in Florida or Ohio.

The 17-year-old girl is in foster care in Orlando, where a judge is deciding whether she should be returned to Ohio.

The girl ran away from her parents’ suburban Columbus home in July, saying she feared being killed for changing religions.

Pardon me for saying, but it seems to me that if your religion demands your death, and your religious practitioners all around the world take that demand seriously, you’re probably acting credibly when you say you fear for your life. Jay Nordlinger likes to tell the story of the Holocaust survivor who was asked what lesson he learned from the Holocaust. His answer? “If someone says they’re going to kill you, believe them.”