INTRODUCTION

I now turn to a specific case study involving the legal status of a particularly controversial human right: the right to change one's religion or belief. Kevin Boyle has observed in this connection that the “best known and most discussed aspect of freedom of religion is whether it can ever be legitimate to place restraints on the individual acting to abandon altogether a religion to which he or she was committed and to replace it with either another religion or with other beliefs, for example, secular beliefs.”

This right is under serious challenge today. For example, many Muslim countries restrict the right of Muslims to change their religion, deeming a change of religion by a Muslim “apostasy,” which is punishable by death according to interpretations of Islamic shari'a law. Various Indian states have enacted “anti-conversion” laws aimed at “protecting” the Hindu majority from activities undertaken by members of other religions to seek new converts.

The Special Rapporteur of the United Nations (U.N.) on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Mrs. Asma Jahangir, has observed that in a variety of countries the “punishment for conversion can consist of arrest and trial for ‘apostasy’, imprisonment, and sometimes the death penalty.” She states, moreover, that in “some countries, legislation prohibits conversion without prior notification of the authorities or defines ‘forcible’ conversion in broad terms.”