I've recently given up being a vegetarian, after twenty four years. I've learnt a few things I didn't know about meat (for instance there doesn't seem to be any of it in dessert, rather unfairly in my view). But how have my fellow vegetarians reacted?

With a surprising lack of rancour. There's been the odd raised eyebrow, and they don't seem to think it's funny when I ask them if they'd like some mackerel with their coffee, but no-one's actually said anything. Who'd have thought apostasy was so easy?

Not Muslims, that's for sure. To quote Wikipedia (from here), "All five major schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree that a sane male apostate must be executed. A female apostate may be put to death, according to some schools, or imprisoned, according to others".

What this means is that if you are a Muslim who rejects Islam, the official teaching of the religion is that you should be put to death. The liberals think women should only be locked up for it, but this imprisonment is to last until you change your mind.

It is not the Koran that prescribes the death penalty but the Hadith, the quotes attributed to Mohamed and statements about him made by people who claim to have been eyewitnesses. The Koran, rather than asking for earthly punishment, simply dwells gloatingly and sadistically on the tortures awaiting the apostate after they die.

Here is a quote from Sahih Bukhari, a collector of hadith who lived in the ninth century.

Allah's Apostle [that's Mohamed] said, The blood of a Muslim, who confesses that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that I am His Apostle, cannot be shed except in three cases: In Qisas [retaliation] for murder, a married person who commits illegal sexual intercourse and the one who reverts from Islam (apostate) and leaves the Muslims.

Some modern Islamic scholars disagree with this, but it should be noted that they are generally regarded as deviant and unreliable by the mainstream, and by some as apostates themselves.

This kind of thing has consequences for us. You may have noticed the arrival of Muslim faith schools, you may have seen classes in Islamic instruction being attended by children who frankly really ought to be on their Playstation or something. They are being taught that if they abandon their faith, they deserve to be subject to the death penalty. They are being taught that apostasy, and for that matter adultery, are worse crimes than rape, assault and battery or malicious wounding, which do not receive the death penalty.

Notice too that it's not as if the children of Muslim parents are being given a choice whether they sign up to this program or not. If you're born into a Muslim family in Britain in 2007, according to the tenets of the faith you have no more right to choose your belief than you would have had if you'd been born in Cairo a millennium ago. You will be told what religion you belong to, taught to follow the teachings of the Koran (which for girls includes the rule that their husbands are allowed to beat them if they don't obey him - Sura 4 verse 34), and if you decide that you'd rather be a secular humanist instead you will live out your life under a death sentence.

That's the theory, anyway. In practice, fortunately, most people are better than their religions, and you might be lucky enough to have the kind of family that turns a blind eye. I wouldn't expect to be free to join in public debate, though. If you want to argue your case, you'd best get a secure and secret address to do it from.

I really don't think we've properly taken this on board. According to the last census there are about 1.6 million Muslims in the UK. Given the level of coercion that surrounds their lives it's difficult to give a figure for how many are secretly atheist, agnostic or committed to a different religion, but let's say it's only one per cent. That would mean 16,000 people being forced to pretend to be Muslims in this country today.

This is a national scandal. Something must be done. It must be made clear to all children of Muslim parents that they have rights, that they will be protected if they make choices about their beliefs that clash with those of their parents. Special support must be offered to gay teenagers from that background. Girls must be told that if their husband hits them, he will be arrested and they will be offered support. There must be refuges, and anyone threatening them must be made to desist.

Most crucially, people who believe in the death penalty for apostasy should not be allowed to run schools. Faith schools are wrong in principle, as a denial of the civil right of children not to be defined by the religion of their parents, but this is more than a theoretical problem. Surveys show that about half of young British Muslims believe in the death sentence for apostasy. This is a ticking time bomb. To borrow a phrase from Sam Harris, why is it taboo to notice this?

The clerics will complain of Islamophobia. Let them. Tell them that the day they denounce this evil doctrine, we will stop denouncing them.

Everyone, of course, has these rights, whatever background they are from. Read the book of Deuteronomy if you think there's only one disastrous religious tradition in the world. Chapter 13, verses 6 to 10 demand the stoning to death of any apostates who dare to argue their case. Augustine, the enforcer of the early Christian church, thought heretics should be tortured. There are always people from all religious traditions who choose not to coerce, and they should be supported and protected from their more demanding brethren.

Atheists also have a moral obligation not to enforce their beliefs on their children. Fortunately, this won't inconvenience us all that much. My parents were both atheists, but I don't recall ever being made to recite the works of Bertrand Russell, or having bits of my body removed to symbolise the absence of God.

And finally let's hear it for vegetarians, so much more tolerant than the metaphysicals. Unless you find my body in the gutter, smothered oh so ironically in tofu.