Across the world, thousands of Muslims leave Islam each year to join the Catholic faith. Islam, which follows the teaching of the 7th-century merchant Muhammad, is the world’s second-largest faith and, according to some interpretations of its law, sharia, adherents must remain faithful to the religion or face execution, making the journey out potentially dangerous.
Indeed, some Muslim countries have laws under which the state will execute anyone who commits apostasy. This has led to parts of the world where it is almost impossible to practise the Christian faith. In 2025, when International Christian Concern posted a video about the underground Church in Somalia, a country that is almost entirely Muslim, the responses were telling. Violent comments flooded in, such as: “They should be burned. If a person leaves the religion of Islam, they have no place to be sent to the hereafter,” and “May Allah destroy the people who are underground.”
