Religious Apartheid
In apartheid South Africa it was against the law for a black or 'coloured' person to mix with, marry or have sex with a white person.
Similarly in the United States many individual states had laws against interracial marriage until the US Supreme Court declared such laws to be unconstitutional in 1967.
Now the values of the West have changed in the recent years because people have been free to campaign and protest against unjust laws by confronting discrimination.
But this is not so easily done in fundamentalist Muslim countries where the rule of law and the word of God are one and the same thing - which leads to the abhorrent situation where a Sudanese woman can be punished and even put to death for marrying a non-Muslim.
I will be keeping my eyes peeled to see what political Islam has to say about this story.
Sudanese woman who married a non-Muslim sentenced to death
Amnesty International joins condemnation of death penalty for Sudanese doctor found guilty of 'apostasy' for marrying Christian
Associated Press in Khartoum - The Guardian
President Omar al-Bashir, an Islamist who seized power in a 1989 coup. The imposition of sharia law was one cause of Sudan's civil war. Photo: Abd Raouf/AP
A Sudanese doctor who married a Christian man and who was convicted earlier this week on charges of apostasy was sentenced to death on Thursday, judicial officials said.
According to the Sudanese officials, 26-year-old Meriam Ibrahim, whose father was Muslim, was convicted on Sunday and given four days to repent and escape death. She was sentenced after that grace period expired, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The sentencing drew condemnation from western embassies in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, and international rights groups, includingAmnesty International.
The court in Khartoum also ordered Ibrahim be given 100 lashes for committing zina – an Arabic word for illegitimate sex – for having sexual relations with a non-Muslim man.
The couple married in 2011 and have a child, born 18 months ago. Sudanese law does not recognise Ibrahim's marriage to a non-Muslim.
Ibrahim can appeal against her death sentence as well as the 100 lashes.
As in many Muslim nations, Muslim women in Sudan are prohibited from marrying non-Muslims, though Muslim men can marry outside their faith. By law, children must follow their father's religion.
Amnesty International said Ibrahim's conviction and death sentence were "truly abhorrent".
"The fact that a woman has been sentenced to death for her religious choice, and to flogging for being married to a man of an allegedly different religion is appalling and abhorrent," the London-based rights group said. "Adultery and apostasy are acts which should not be considered crimes at all."
The group also called for Ibrahim's immediate and unconditional release.
Sudan introduced Islamic sharia laws in the early 1980s, a move that contributed to the resumption of an insurgency in the mostly animist and Christian south of Sudan. An earlier round of civil war lasted 17 years and ended in 1972. The south seceded in 2011 to become the world's newest nation, South Sudan.
Sudan's current ruler, Omar al-Bashir, is an Islamist who seized power in a 1989 coup.
