ROME, March 21, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The Italian government summoned on Tuesday, March 21, the Afghan ambassador to Rome to express its concern over reports that a man in Afghanistan faces the death penalty because he has converted to Christianity.

"If this news is confirmed, Italy will move at the highest level ... to prevent something which is incompatible with the defense of human rights and fundamental freedoms," said a Foreign Ministry statement cited by Reuters.

Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini said Italy would raise the issue with European Union leaders in an effort to save the man.

Abdur Rahman, 41, was arrested last month after his relatives reported his conversion to Christianity to the police.

The man, who converted 16 years ago as an aid worker helping refugees in Pakistan, is now on trial and could face the death penalty if refusing to revert to Islam.

Germany earlier condemned the persecution of Rahman as "intolerable" and appealed to Afghan President Hamid Karzai to save him from the death penalty, citing his right to religious freedom.

The United States is watching the trial closely as a test of democracy and religious freedom for the Kabul government, one of its key allies.

"Our view certainly ... is that tolerance, freedom of worship, is an important element of any democracy," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Monday.

Afghanistan's constitution states: "No law can be contrary to the sacred religion of Islam."

Prominent Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi said that Islam does not execute the apostate who does not proclaim his apostasy or call for it. Rather, it leaves the punishment for the Hereafter if he dies in the state of apostasy.

He cited the noble verse: "And if any of you turn back from their faith and die in unbelief, their works will bear no fruit in this life and in the Hereafter; they will be the inmates of the Fire and will abide therein." (Al-Baqarah 2: 217)

Well-known Egyptian thinker Jamal Al-Banna states that apostasy is not a crime at the first place. The Islamic Shari`ah was originally based on the freedom of belief which is the only freedom upon which the Shari`ah was founded, and the other forms of freedom were based on the Shari`ah and they took their legitimacy from the freedom of belief.

On the other hand, Mohammad Salim Al-`Awwa, member of the International Association of Muslim Scholars, stated that the Ever-Glorious Qur'an did not specify a worldly punishment for apostasy. The Qur'anic verses talking about apostasy only warned of a punishment for the apostate in the Hereafter, echoing Qaradawi's stance.

"Although we admit that apostasy is a crime, I doubt that the punishment mentioned by some classical jurists in the books of jurisprudence for apostasy is the capital punishment. I further doubt to include this form of punishment as a legal punishment prescribed by the Shari`ah. I am of the opinion that the punishment for apostasy is a discretionary one that is wholly left to concerned authorities to apply in the Muslim State," said Awwa.

Well-known Azharite scholar Sheikh `Abdul-Majeed Subh had said that the punishment for apostasy is dependent on the public interest of the Muslim nation and the assessment of scholars to each case.