This article is based on the writings of Professors’ Hashim Kamali and Muhammad Al-Massari. While the majority of the fuqaha (jurists) interpreted the hadith مَنْ بَدَّلَ دِينَهُ فَاقْتُلُوهُ “Whoever changes his religion (deen), then kill him,”[1] to mean there is a hadd (prescribed punishment) for apostasy, a number of prominent ulama across the centuries and down to our own times have taken the view that apostasy is not a ḥudūd offence.[2]

Other hadith expand on the meaning of “changing his deen” and make it clear that the punishment of execution was for high treason and fighting the state, not just for the mere act of reverting from the religion.

Islam is not a religion in the traditional sense but is a way of life which underpins all societal and political life. Since the time of the first Islamic State in Medina, Islam has been embodied and intertwined with government. Therefore, apostasy from the religion would generally mean breaking the ties of citizenship and siding with the enemy against the state i.e. high treason which in most countries entails the death penalty.

What is the meaning of ‘changing his deen’?

The word ‘Deen’ in addition to religion, may be used to denote allegiance, affiliation and carrying citizenship. That is, either by way of utilising the name to signify all or a part of that for rhetorical purposes, which would also include referring to a part to signify the wider whole as in the hadith:

مَنْ بَدَّلَ دِينَهُ فَاقْتُلُوهُ

“Whoever changes his deen, then kill him.”[3]

What is being expressed here is not merely one of switching from the Deen, namely what is construed as being apostasy from Islam in the classic sense of the term, or for that matter, conversion from one Deen to another in general, as has been construed by the majority of the fuqaha (jurists). Rather, it is the severance of affiliation; leaving al-Jama’ah (the political community), and / or being accompanied by rebellion against the just lawfully constituted ruler.[4] This can be seen in the following hadith.

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:

لَا يَحِلُّ دَمُ امْرِئٍ مُسْلِمٍ يَشْهَدُ أَنْ لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ وَأَنِّي رَسُولُ اللَّهِ إِلَّا بِإِحْدَى ثَلَاثٍ الثَّيِّبُ الزَّانِي وَالنَّفْسُ بِالنَّفْسِ وَالتَّارِكُ لِدِينِهِ الْمُفَارِقُ لِلْجَمَاعَةِ

“It is unlawful to shed the blood of a Muslim who testifies that there is no God but Allah and I am the Messenger of Allah, except in one of three cases: the married person who commits adultery, legal retaliation for murder, and a person who abandons their deen and secedes from al-Jama’ah (the political community).”[5]

He ﷺ also said,

لاَ يَحِلُّ دَمُ امْرِئٍ مُسْلِمٍ إِلاَّ بِإِحْدَى ثَلاَثِ خِصَالٍ زَانٍ مُحْصَنٌ يُرْجَمُ أَوْ رَجُلٌ قَتَلَ رَجُلاً مُتَعَمِّدًا فَيُقْتَلُ أَوْ رَجُلٌ يَخْرُجُ مِنَ الإِسْلاَمِ يُحَارِبُ اللَّهَ عَزَّ وَجَلَّ وَرَسُولَهُ فَيُقْتَلُ أَوْ يُصْلَبُ أَوْ يُنْفَى مِنَ الأَرْضِ

“The blood of a Muslim is not lawful except in one of three cases: a married adulterer who is stoned to death; a man who intentionally kills another man who is killed; or a man who leaves Islam and wages war against Allah Almighty and His Messenger, who is killed, crucified, or banished from the land.”[6]

Juristic Opinion on Apostasy

Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī (d. ca. 96/ 717), the teacher of Imam Abū Ḥanīfah (a leading jurist and traditionist of the generation succeeding the Companions), and Sufyān al-Thawrī (d. 161/ 778), who is known as “the prince of the believers in hadith” (amīr al- muʾminīn fī’l- ḥadīth) and who authored two important compilations on hadith, both held that the apostate should be reinvited to Islam and should not be condemned to death. They maintained that the invitation should continue for as long as there is hope that the apostate might change his mind and repent. Al-Nakhaʿī elaborated that asking the apostate to repent is not limited to once or three times, nor to one or three days, but that he should be continually asked to return to Islam.

Abū Zahrah, who quotes al-Nakhaʿī, also agrees with him.

The Mālikī jurist Abū al-Walīd al-Bājī (d. 474/ 1081) and the Ḥanbalī jurist Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 728/ 1328) have held that apostasy is a sin that carries no prescribed punishment and that a sin of this kind may be punished by one year of imprisonment under the discretionary punishment of taʿzīr.

ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al- Shaʿrānī (d. 973/ 1565), author of the comparative fiqh work, Kitāb al- Mizān, has cited the views of al-Nakhaʿī and al-Thawrī and added that “the apostate is thus permanently to be invited to repent.”

Further endorsement of this comes from the renowned Ḥanafī jurist, al-Sarakhsī (d. 490/ 1096, also known as Shams al-Aʾimmah), the author of the thirty two-volume fiqh work al- Mabsūṭ, who held that apostasy does not qualify for temporal punishment and that there is no prescribed punishment (ḥadd) for it either. To quote al-Sarakhsī:

Renunciation of the faith and conversion to disbelief is admittedly the greatest of transgressions, yet it is a matter between man and his Creator, and its punishment is postponed to the Day of Judgment.

Three twentieth-century scholars and authors of works in contemporary fiqh, ʿAbd al- Ḥakīm Ḥasan al-ʿIlī, Ismāʿīl al- Badawī, and Abū Zahrah,have commented that by al- Nakhaʿī’s time Islam was secure from the hostility of disbelievers and apostates. This, they maintain, indicates that al-Nakhaʿī understood the hadith quoted in the preceding discussion, which made apostasy punishable by death, to be political in character and aimed at the inveterate enemies of Islam.

The late Shaykh of al- Azhar, Maḥmūd Shaltūt (d. 1383/ 1963), analysed the relevant evidence in the sources and drew the conclusion that apostasy carried no temporal punishment because in reference to apostasy the Qur’an only speaks of punishment in the Hereafter. To quote Shaltūt:

The hadith “one who changes his religion shall be killed” has evoked various responses from the ulama many of whom are in agreement that the ḥudūd cannot be established by solitary (aḥad) hadith, and that unbelief by itself does not call for the death punishment.

Shaltūt also concurred with the analysis that the key factor underlining the prohibition of apostasy was to curb “aggression and hostility against the believers and the prevention of fitnah (sedition, civil strife) against the religion and state.” Issues of public security and defence of the community against hostility and sedition were, in other words, behind the prohibition of apostasy.

Ṣubḥī Muḥmaṣṣānī (d. 1407/ 1986) of Lebanon and Salīm al-ʿAwā of Egypt, both highly respected scholars, have observed that the death punishment was meant to apply not to simple acts and pronouncements of apostasy from Islam but to cases when apostasy was linked to an act of political betrayal of the community and high treason. The Prophet never killed anyone solely for apostasy. This being the case, the death penalty was not meant to apply to a simple change of faith but to punish acts of treason that consisted of joining forces with the enemy and sedition.

The late Murtaza Mutahhari (d. 1399/ 1979) of Iran highlighted the incompatibility of coercion with the spirit of Islam as well as the basic redundancy of punitive measures in the propagation of its message. He wrote that it is impossible to force anyone to acquire the kind of faith that is required by Islam, just as “it is not possible to spank a child into solving an arithmetical problem. His mind and thought must be left free in order that he may solve it. The Islamic faith is something of this kind.”[7]

Notes

[1] Sahih al-Bukhari 3017, https://sunnah.com/bukhari:3017

[2] Mohammad Hashim Kamali, ‘Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law: A Fresh Interpretation,’ Oxford University Press, 2019, p.145

[3] Sahih al-Bukhari 3017, https://sunnah.com/bukhari:3017

[4] Muhammad ibn Abdullah al-Massari, Kitab al-Tawheed, Vol.1, p.42

[5] Muttafaqun Alayhi (authenticity agreed upon): Sahih al-Bukhari 6878, https://sunnah.com/bukhari:6878 ; Sahih Muslim 1676a, https://sunnah.com/muslim:1676a

[6] Sunan an-Nasa’i 4048, https://sunnah.com/nasai:4048

[7] Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Op.cit., p.145