Apostasy in Islam

Apostasy in Islam is commonly defined as the abandonment of Islam by a Muslim, in thought, word, or through deed. It includes not only explicit renunciations of the Islamic faith by converting to another religion or abandoning religion altogether, but also blasphemy or heresy by those who consider themselves Muslims, through any action or utterance which implies unbelief, including those who deny a "fundamental tenet or creed" of Islam. An apostate from Islam is known as a murtadd.
While Islamic jurisprudence calls for the death penalty of those who refuse to repent of apostasy from Islam, what statements or acts qualify as apostasy, and whether and how they should be punished, are disputed among Muslim scholars, with liberal Islamic movements rejecting physical punishment for apostasy. The penalty of killing of apostates is in conflict with international human rights norms which provide for the freedom of religions, as demonstrated in human rights instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights provide for the freedom of religion.
Until the late 19th century, the majority of Sunni and Shia jurists held the view that for adult men, apostasy from Islam was a crime as well as a sin, punishable by the death penalty, but with a number of options for leniency, depending on the era, the legal standards and the school of law. In the late 19th century, the use of legal criminal penalties for apostasy fell into disuse, although civil penalties were still applied.
As of 2021, there were ten Muslim-majority countries where apostasy from Islam was punishable by death, but legal executions are rare.
Most punishment is extrajudicial/vigilante, and most executions are perpetrated by jihadist and takfiri insurgents. Another thirteen countries have penal or civil penalties for apostatessuch as imprisonment, the annulment of their marriages, the loss of their rights of inheritance and the loss of custody of their children.
In the contemporary Muslim world, public support for capital punishment varies from 78% in Afghanistan to less than 1% in Kazakhstan; among Islamic jurists, the majority of them continue to regard apostasy as a crime which should be punishable by death. Those who disagree argue that its punishment should be less than death and should occur in the afterlife, as human punishment is considered to be inconsistent with Quranic injunctions against compulsion in belief, or should apply only in cases of public disobedience and disorder. Despite potentially grave and life-threatening consequences, Muslims continue to leave the Islamic religion, either by becoming irreligious or converting to other religions, mostly to Christianity.

Etymology and terminology

Apostasy is called irtidād or ridda in Islamic literature. An apostate is called murtadd, which means "one who turns back" from Islam. The Oxford Islamic Studies Online defines murtadd as "not just any kāfir " but "a particularly heinous type". Ridda can also refer to "secession" in a political context. A person born to a Muslim father who later rejects Islam is called a murtadd fitri, and a person who converted to Islam and later rejects the religion is called a murtadd milli. Takfīr is the act of one Muslim excommunicating another, declaring them a kāfir, an apostate. The act which precipitates takfīr is termed mukaffir.

Scriptural references

Quran

The Quran references apostasy in the context of attitudes associated with impending punishment, divine anger, and the rejection of repentance for individuals who commit this act. Traditionally, these verses are thought to "appear to justify coercion and severe punishment" for apostates, including the traditional capital punishment. Other scholars, by contrast, have pointed to a lack of any Quranic passage requiring the implementation of force to return apostates to Islam, nor any specific corporal punishment to apply to apostates in this world – let alone commands to kill apostates – either explicitly or implicitly. Some verses have been cited as emphasizing mercy and a lack of compulsion with respect to religious belief.

Hadith

The classical shariah punishment for apostasy comes from Sahih Hadith rather than the Quran. Writing in the Encyclopedia of Islam, Heffening holds that contrary to the Quran, "in traditions , there is little echo of these punishments in the next world... and instead, we have in many traditions a new element, the death penalty."
Other hadith give differing statements about the fate of apostates; that they were spared execution by repenting, by dying of natural causes or by leaving their community.
The Muwatta of Imam Malik offers a case were Rashidun Caliph Umar admonishes a Muslim leader for not giving an apostate the opportunity to repent before being executed:
The argument has been made that the hadiths above – traditionally cited as proof that apostates from Islam should be punished by death – have been misunderstood. In fact, the victims were executed for changing their allegiances to the armies fighting the Muslims, not for their personal beliefs. As evidence, they point to two hadith, each from a different "authentic" Sunni hadith collection where Muhammad calls for the death of apostates or traitors. The wording of the hadith are almost identical, but in one, the hadith ends with the phrase "one who reverts from Islam and leaves the Muslims", and in the other it ends with "one who goes forth to fight Allah and His Apostle" :

Definition of apostasy in Islam

Scholars of Islam differ as to what constitutes apostasy in that religion and under what circumstances an apostate is subject to the death penalty.

Conditions of apostasy in classical Islam

listed three necessary conditions to pass capital punishment on a Muslim for apostasy in his Kitab al-Umm. these are:

"first, the apostate had to once have had faith ;
secondly, there had to follow unbelief, ;
"third, there had to be the omission or failure to repent after the apostate was asked to do so."

Three centuries later, Al-Ghazali wrote that one group, known as "secret apostates" or "permanent unbelievers", should not be given a chance to repent, eliminating Al-Shafi'i's third condition for them although his view was not accepted by his Shafi'i madhhab.

Characteristics

Describing what qualifies as apostasy or unbelief in Islam, religion scholar Christine Schirrmacher writes:

there is widespread consensus that apostasy undoubtedly exists where the truth of the Koran is denied, where blasphemy is committed against God, Islam, or Muhammad, and where breaking away from the Islamic faith in word or deed occurs. The lasting, willful non-observance of the five pillars of Islam, in particular the duty to pray, clearly count as apostasy for most theologians. Additional distinguishing features are a change of religion, confessing atheism, nullifying the Sharia as well as judging what is allowed to be forbidden and judging what is forbidden to be allowed. Fighting against Muslims and Islam also counts as unbelief or apostasy;

Kamran Hashemi classifies apostasy or unbelief in Islam into three different "phenomena":

Converting from Islam to another religion, also described as "explicit" apostasy..
Blaspheming against God, Islam, its laws or its prophet, which can be defined, in practice, as any objection to the authenticity of Islam, its laws or its prophet.
Heresy; or "implicit" apostasy, where the alleged apostate does not formally renounce Islam, but has verbally denied some principle of belief prescribed by Qur'an or a Hadith; deviated from approved Islamic tenets..
Issues in defining heresy

While identifying someone who publicly converted to another religion as an apostate was straightforward, determining whether a diversion from orthodox doctrine qualified as heresy, blasphemy, or something permitted by God could be less so. Traditionally, Islamic jurists did not formulate general rules for establishing unbelief, instead, compiled sometimes lengthy lists of statements and actions which in their view implied apostasy or were incompatible with Islamic "theological consensus". Al-Ghazali, for example, devoting "chapters to dealing with takfir and the reasons for which one can be accused of unbelief" in his work Faysal al-Tafriqa bayn al-Islam wa-l-Zandaqa.
Some heretical or blasphemous acts or beliefs listed in classical manuals of Islamic jurisprudence and other scholarly works that allegedly demonstrate apostasy include:

to deny the obligatory character of something considered obligatory by ijma ;
revile, question, wonder, doubt, mock, and/or deny the existence of God or Muhammad, or that Muhammad was sent by God;
belief that things in themselves or by their nature have a cause independent of the will of God;
to assert the createdness of the Quran and/or to translate the Quran in any language other than Arabic;
to ridicule Islamic scholars or address them in a derisive manner, to reject the validity of sharīʿah courts;
to pay respect to non-Muslims, to celebrate Nowruz the Iranian New Year;
to express uncertainty such as "'I do not know why God mentioned this or that in the Quran'...";
for the wife of an Islamic scholar to curse her husband;
to make a declaration of prophethood; i.e., for someone to declare that they are a prophet or messenger. In the early history of Islam, following Muhammad's death, this act was automatically deemed to be proof of apostasybecause Islam teaches Muhammad was the last prophet, there could be no more after him. This view is alleged to be the basis of the rejection of Ahmadi Muslims as apostates from Islam.

While there are numerous requirements for a Muslim to avoid being an apostate, it is also an act of apostasy, in Shāfiʿī te doctrine and other schools of Islamic jurisprudence, for a Muslim to accuse or describe another devout Muslim of being an unbeliever, based on the hadith where Muhammad is reported to have said: "If a man says to his brother, 'You are an infidel,' then one of them is right." Historian Bernard Lewis writes that in "religious polemic" of early Islamic times, it was common for one scholar to accuse another of apostasy, but attempts to bring an alleged apostate to justice were very rare.
The tension between desire to cleanse Islam of heresy and fear of inaccurate takfir is suggested in the writings of some of the leading Islamic scholars. Al-Ghazali "is often credited with having persuaded theologians", in his Fayal al-tafriqa, "that takfir is not a fruitful path and that utmost caution is to taken in applying it", but in other writing, he made sure to condemn as beyond the pale of Islam "philosophers and Ismaili esotericists". Ibn Hazm and Ibn Taymiyyah also "warned against unbridled takfir" while takfiring "specific categories" of theological opponents as "unbelievers". Gilles Kepel writes that "used wrongly or unrestrainedly, this sanction would quickly lead to discord and sedition in the ranks of the faithful. Muslims might resort to mutually excommunicating one another and thus propel the Ummah to complete disaster."
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, for example, takfired all those who opposed its policy of exterminating and enslaving members of the Yazidi religion. According to one source, Jamileh Kadivar, the majority of the "27,947 terrorist deaths" ISIL has been responsible for have been Muslims it regards "as kafir", as ISIL gives fighting alleged apostates a higher priority than fighting self-professed non-MuslimsJews, Christians, Hindus, etc. An open letter to ISIL by 126 Islamic scholars includes as one of its points of opposition to ISIL: "It is forbidden in Islam to declare people non-Muslim unless he openly declares disbelief".
There is general agreement among Muslims that the takfir and mass killings of alleged apostates perpetrated not only by ISIL but also by the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's jihadis were wrong, but there is less unanimity in other cases, such as what to do in a situation where self-professed Muslim – post-modernist academic Nasr Abu Zayd or the Ahmadiyya movement – disagree with their accusers on an important doctrinal point. In the case of the Ahmadiyya – who are accused by mainstream Sunni and Shia of denying the basic tenet of the Finality of Prophethood – the Islamic Republic of Pakistan has declared in Ordinance XX of the Second Amendment to its Constitution, that Ahmadis are non-Muslims and deprived them of religious rights. Several large riots and a bombing have killed hundreds of Ahmadis in that country. Whether this is unjust takfir or applying sharia to collective apostasy is disputed.