I refer to the report Penang groups: It's not stupid to protest in which Teras president Mohd Azmi Abdul Hamid is quoted as saying: "In Islam, we don't force people to convert but upon conversion Islamic principles do not allow them to leave ..."

What a frightening view of Islam, a vision of a life sentence in a penal colony! Was this how Allah swt envisaged His religion to be when he gave Islam to the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) to spread to mankind?

Is this belief that 'You can check in anytime you like but can never leave' derived from a hadith or decreed in the Quran? If it is from a hadith, of what value is it when the hadiths were compiled by human beings? There was no divine guidance in the process, not in the way that Allah swt guided the Prophet in spreading His religion. The hadiths were not even delivered to the imams by Jibrail or any of Allah's angels. The hadiths in entirety were purely human, mortal constructs.

In religious classes we've been told that thousands of hadiths were thrown out and that it was a human process. Human beings chose what hadiths were acceptable and what were not. Or in their minds, of dubious origins.

Anyway, I'd rather recognise the reversion of converts or the apostasy of Muslims than have them hide their conversion, die as 'kafirs' in the eyes of Allah swt (for only He knows) and then be buried in the company of the ummah in a Muslim cemetery.