Apostasy in Islam - Variety of Viewpoints

Variety of Viewpoints

In medieval times, several Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence held that apostasy by a male Muslim is punishable by death, differing on whether to execute the apostate immediately or grant the apostate an initial opportunity to repent and thus avoid penalty. They also differentiated between harmful and harmless apostasy (also known as major and minor apostasy) in accepting repentance. However, other scholars also held different views, such as that of Ibrahim al-Nakha'i (d. 715) and Sufyan al-Thawri and their followers, who rejected the death penalty and prescribed indefinite imprisonment until repentance. The hanafi jurist Sarakhsi also called for different punishments between the non-seditious religious apostasy and that of seditious and political nature, or high treason.

Medieval Islamic scholars also differed on the punishment of a female apostate: death, enslavement, or imprisonment until repentance. Abu Hanifa and his followers refused the death penalty for female apostates, supporting imprisonment until they re-embrace Islam. Hanafi scholars maintain that a female apostate should not be killed because it was forbidden to kill women by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and because women are unlikely to take up arms and endanger the community.

In modern times, some Islamic scholars, including Wael Hallaq, state that apostasy laws are not derived from the Qur'an. Several modern scholars oppose any penalty for apostasy, including Gamal Al-Banna, Taha Jabir Alalwani, Ahmad Kutty of the Islamic Institute of Toronto and Shabir Ally. Quran Alone Muslims do not support the apostasy penalty, citing verses from Qur'an which advocate free will.

Others believe that the death penalty can only be applied when apostasy is coupled with attempts to "harm" the Muslim community, rejecting the death penalty in other cases. These include, Ahmad Shafaat, Jamal Badawi, Yusuf Estes, Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, and Maliki jurist Abu al-Walid al-Baji.

Indian preacher Zakir Naik stated that if a former Muslim speaks against Islam then that is considered as treason and punishable by death in a country ruled by Islamic law. He also stated that he does not know of any country which is ruled by 100% Islamic law. However, in a 2011 address to the Oxford Union he stated that death is not the "standard punishment" for apostasy. The former view is held by other contemporary Islamic scholars such as Bilal Philips, and Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the latter reduces the punishment to imprisonment till repentance in the case of an apostate who did not proclaim apostasy, whereas the judgement which is still widely adopted advocates death for every ex-Muslim, for instance, Muhammad Al-Munajid the owner, writer and administrator for the popular islam-qa.com site advocates that judgement stating that leaving them alive "may encourage others to forsake the truth".

Contemporary reform Muslims such as Quran Alone intellectuals Ahmed Subhy Mansour, Edip Yuksel, and Mohammed Shahrour have suffered from accusations of apostasy and demands to execute them, issued by Islamic clerics such as Mahmoud Ashur, Mustafa Al-Shak'a, Mohammed Ra'fat Othman and Yusif Al-Badri.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community completely rejects any form of punishment for apostasy whatsoever, citing hadith, Quran, and the opinions of classical Islamic jurists to justify its views. Its National Spokesperson in the US (Harris Zafar) published a thorough explanation of apostasy in The Huffington Post, which clearly identifies the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community's perspective of apostasy and why it is not punishable by death (or any other punishment). Of note, is the reference to the writings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad - the founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community - who wrote the following as a rebuttal to those Muslims who claim that punishment for apostasy or any violence to spread faith is allowed: "Religion is worth the name only so long as it is in consonance with reason. If it fails to satisfy that requisite, if it has to make up for its discomfiture in argument by handling the sword, it needs no other argument for its falsification. The sword it wields cuts its own throat before reaching others."

Prominent recent examples of writers and activists killed because of apostasy claims include Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, Faraj Foda, Rashad Khalifa, Ghorban Tourani, Necati Aydin, Uğur Yüksel, and the Egyptian Nobel prize winner Najib Mahfouz was injured in an attempted assassination, disabling him until his death in 2006.

The case of Abdul Rahman, an Afghan who converted from Islam to Christianity, sparked debate on the issue. While he initially faced the death penalty, he was eventually released as he was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial.