Jonah, I’m glad you mentioned the Ahmadiyya Muslims, whose plight I’ve described from time to time (e.g., here). The Ahmadis are an unorthodox Islamic sect who, among other things, do not accept Mohammed as Allah’s final prophet and reject violent jihad. They are brutally persecuted by their fellow Muslims, including in Indonesia (the world’s most populace Muslim country, and — everything being relative — probably the world’s most moderate Muslim country). Just this past spring, 93 Ahmadis were killed in Pakistan when their fellow Muslims bombed some of their mosques.

It would be interesting to ask imam Feisal Rauf whether he really thinks Muslims commit atrocities against the Ahmadis, just as Sunnis and Shiites often slaughter each other, because of American foreign policy, which allegedly humiliates them and makes them “feel the need to conflagrate.”

Is there, instead, just a teeny-weenie chance that they do it because mainstream Islamic doctrine, endorsed by influential clerics like Yusuf Qaradawi (much admired by Rauf for his mastery of sharia), teaches that departures from core Islamic beliefs constitute apostasy, and that the punishment for apostasy is death?