Writing in the Daily Telegraph Charles Moore has this to say: “When the row about the Danish cartoons of Mohammed broke, no one was quicker out of the traps than our Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. He roundly condemned what he saw as the irresponsibility of their publication. It was not clear why Mr Straw felt the need to speak up. Britain has no responsibility for independent, democratic Denmark, nor for the European countries in which the cartoons were republished… We do, however, bear considerable responsibility for Afghanistan…So the news that a Muslim is threatened with death by an Afghan court simply because he converted to Christianity should surely alarm Mr Straw. So far – and the case has been in the press for more than a week – we have heard nothing audible from him. President Bush has said he is “deeply troubled” by the case. Condoleezza Rice and many European governments have put strong pressure on the Afghan authorities to release the man, Abdul Rahman, citing Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which includes, in its definition of freedom of conscience, the right to change one’s faith. But Britain’s mighty response has been left to one of Mr Straw’s juniors at the Foreign Office, Kim Howells. Mr Howells has sought “urgent clarification” from Kabul. It may provide Mr Howells with some of the clarification that he needs to point out that Mr Rahman’s case was predictable. Islamic law (sharia) is enshrined in the new Afghan constitution. All the four schools of law in the majority Sunni Islam agree that the penalty for “apostasy” – abandoning one’s Muslim faith – must be death.”

Even if we acknowledge – as we must – that the position of British troops in Afghanistan puts Jack Straw in a difficult position, it’s difficult not to think that the British government’s near-silence is part of a much wider pattern.

And how many other Abdul Rahmans are out there? As Moore writes, “there have been cases comparable to Mr Rahman’s in, among others, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan… and even in many Muslim countries where sharia is not the law of the land, such as Pakistan or Egypt, punishments against apostates are often meted out unofficially, unpunished. Some are killed; many are imprisoned, attacked, and robbed of property and family.”

Quite rightly, Moore goes on to note, “there are, nowadays, many Muslims who do not agree with this ferocious intolerance. The Council for American-Islamic Relations has issued a statement saying that the Koran does not demand such punishments. Some in our own Muslim Council of Britain agree. A clutch of moderate Muslims who had a private meeting with the Prince of Wales about this last year told him that they regretted the penalty. They also said, however, that they were not going to speak out against it in public.”

It seems that those moderate Muslims are not alone in their silence.