Page 5 of 18: Religious freedom

One suppresses it. The other permits it.

Muhammad

Polytheists controlled the Black Stone housed in the Kabah shrine. This was both a spiritual center (in pagan logic) and a financial center (in real terms). Muhammad eventually conquered it in early AD 630. After declaring amnesty for Meccan pagans, he changes his tone. He imposes this ultimatum on them and all pagans.

Sura 9:5 says:

Then, when the months made unlawful for fighting expire, kill the mushriks [polytheists] wherever you find them, and seize them, and besiege them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, establish Salat [prayer five times a day] and pay the Zakat dues [charity tax], then let them go their way. (Maududi, The Meaning of the Qur’an, vol. 2, p. 175; insertions mine)

This verse says that unless pagans say their prayers the Muslim way and pay a forced "charity" tax, they will be killed.

Next, this hadith says that Muhammad is called to fight until people acknowledge that only Allah is the right deity and Muhammad is his messenger. The people must also give the messenger their money.

Allah's Apostle said: "I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform that, then they save their lives and property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done by Allah." 

Malik (d. 795) is a founder of an Islamic school of law and a reliable collector and editor of hadith. He records this tradition about Muhammad’s policy on those who leave Islam:

Yahya related to me . . . that the Messenger of Allah . . . said, "If someone changes his religion—then strike off his head!"

Jesus

He let people go their own way, if they refuse to follow him. He said, "If anyone comes after [follows] me" . . . (Matthew 17:24). The little word "if" implies freedom to accept the way of Jesus or to walk away from it. He never raised a holy army to force anyone to convert. In John 6, some disciples decided to walk away from him. He had spoken difficult words.

66 From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. 67 "You do not want to leave too, do you?" Jesus asked the Twelve. 68 Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God." (John 6:66-69)

It is important to note what Jesus did not do or say. He did not threaten them with physical death. He did not send a disciple or two to assassinate one of the deserters (a leader, perhaps), to teach the rest and the Twelve a lesson. "Follow and obey me, or else!" "Or else what?" "Or else I’ll kill you!" Those words and others like them Jesus never spoke.

This article explores why the West and other free countries around the globe must protect freedom of speech.

This short article contrasts Islam's coercion of conscience with Christianity's freedom of conscience.

Maududi in this booklet argues that Sura 9:11-12 refers to apostates and that they should be put to death (scroll down to "The Proof in the Quran for the Commandment to Execute Apostates").

This website has an overview of Islam on apostates. They should be given time to repent, but if they refuse, they must be killed. Women apostates may be killed according to some schools of law, or she may be imprisoned and whipped.