The good news is that he has been freed from a mental ward, but he is not out of the woods yet.
“Most of my friends condemn me and tell me I am bound for hell and that in an Islamic state, I would be killed.” How did they get such an idea of what an Islamic state would be like? Have they been reading the writings of greasy Islamophobes?
“Nigerian atheist freed from mental ward, held for blasphemy against Islam, gets death threats,” by Michelle Faul, Associated Press, July 3, 2014:
LAGOS, Nigeria — A Nigerian atheist released from the mental ward to which his Muslim family committed him by force said Thursday he is getting death threats for blaspheming against Islam.
Mubarak Bala, a 29-year-old chemical process engineer, said he is in hiding in predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria where Shariah law holds and some interpretations have blasphemy punishable by death.
What interpretation of Sharia does not have blasphemy punishable by death? There is no such. All the schools of Islamic jurisprudence teach the blasphemers should be killed.
“People are threatening me, I mean life-threatening threats,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. He said he was too frightened of drawing attention and wouldn’t allow an AP video journalist or photographer to come to his hiding place.
Bala said that since he renounced Islam and declared himself an atheist, he has not only lost the trust of his father and elder brother, but many friends.
“Most of my friends condemn me and tell me I am bound for hell and that in an Islamic state, I would be killed. Blasphemy is a serious thing here,” said Bala, who describes himself on his Twitter page as an ex-Muslim.
Northeast Nigeria is in the throes of an insurgency by extremists bent on turning all Nigeria into an Islamic state under Shariah law, though half of Nigeria’s 170 million people are Christian. The uprising has killed thousands and increased tensions between Muslims and Christians in a country where adherents of both faiths are passionately religious….
Bala’s father, Muhammad Bala, did not immediately respond to phone calls and text messages. In a blog, the father describes himself as a journalist and director general of Kano state’s Directorate of Societal Reorientation, one of the bodies that enforces Islamic Shariah law.
On Twitter, Bala has described his father as an Islamic leader who “can’t afford to have a non-Muslim family member, so he declared me insane.”