I mourn for a people born into a religion that they cannot be free from.

Somebody once said that 'man is born free but he is everywhere in chains'. Chained by the thoughts of men who lived and died hundreds of years ago, whose circumstances were not our circumstances, whose minds were not our own.

Unable and unwilling to move beyond the prescribed boundaries, no matter how much reason bids us, yet forbidding others to do so in the name of God for fear that it might offend God, as if God could be so offended.

And this despite God's own assertion that there is no compulsion in religion. Some of us, the people calling ourselves submitted to God, just cannot seem to take God's word for it when He, God, doesn't address 'former adherents' or 'present adherents' only but instead calls to people or mankind, which obviously includes all people. God could have been more specific had He intended to be so, but that was not His will obviously.

Why then would we insist that apostasy deserves death when God Himself doesn't recommend it?

Will God be hurt or made poorer or lesser when a man leaves the religion of his birth? No, far above the things man would ascribe to Him, God is not like that. His stature is not diminished by man's changing his mind about Him.

And how many times in his historical existence has man changed his mind over God? And we are not just talking about the majority of the people who resided in the Malay archipelago who were once animists, then Hindus and later became Muslims.

Apostasy is akin to leaving a relationship or a marriage. If people fall out of love with us or don't want to stay with us anymore, do we kill them? Or force them to stay? Or do we free them and let them go?

Fortunately, in this country, we still don't kill people for falling out of love with us. Neither should we kill people for giving up one set of mental constructs for another.

Nor should we belittle God's greatness by seeking to make Him appear uncomfortable when a man, who is a mere mortal, changes his religion.

As God is the ultimate reckoner, let us take Him at His word when He says there is no compulsion in religion, and that truth is distinct from error.