Islamic apologists in the West routinely claim that Islam has no death penalty for apostasy. Unfortunately, misunderstanders of Islam abound in large numbers, and for some reason they cannot shake the notion that Islam does mandate death for those who are considered to have left the faith. Why do they persist in this misunderstanding? Maybe it’s because Muhammad commanded: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 9.84.57). This is still the position of all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, both Sunni and Shi’ite. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most renowned and prominent Muslim cleric in the world, has stated: “The Muslim jurists are unanimous that apostates must be punished, yet they differ as to determining the kind of punishment to be inflicted upon them. The majority of them, including the four main schools of jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi`i, and Hanbali) as well as the other four schools of jurisprudence (the four Shiite schools of Az-Zaidiyyah, Al-Ithna-`ashriyyah, Al-Ja`fariyyah, and Az-Zaheriyyah) agree that apostates must be executed.” There is only disagreement over whether the law applies only to men, or to women also – some authorities hold that apostate women should not be killed, but only imprisoned in their houses until death.
An update on this story. “Sudan: Pregnant Christian Convicted of Apostasy, Adultery,” by Joseph DeCaro, Worthy News, May 13, 2014:
KHARTOUM, SUDAN (Worthy News)– As the U.S. Celebrated Mother’s Day, a Christian carrying her second child to term has been convicted of adultery and apostasy, penalties that are punishable in Sudan by 100 lashes and death, respectively, according to International Christian Concern.
Meriam Yahia Ibrahim, a pregnant practicing physician in Western Sudan, is married to Daniel Wani, a South Sudanese Christian. But as a Sudanese, Ibrahim is considered a Muslim by birth through her father’s Islamic faith, making her marriage to a Christian illegal. According to sharia, any Muslim woman who marries a non-Muslim man commits adultery; therefore, any children that arise from that marriage are illegitimate in the eyes of Islam.
Ibrahim was arrested in February by Sudanese authorities and arbitrarily detained in the Omdurman Federal Women’s Prison along with her 20-month-old son. Both are separated from Wani who — because of his wife’s “adultery” — is legally ineligible to assume custody of their children, both of whom will be remanded to the Sudanese State in case of Ibrahim’s execution, or prolonged imprisonment.
So, unless Ibrahim is pressured to convert back to the faith of her father, the full sentence against her will undoubtedly be carried out following the birth of her unborn child, which is expected in June.
“We grieve today at the sentencing to death of a mother, pregnant with her second child, for the expression of her faith and legal marriage to a practicing Christian,” said William Stark, ICC’s Regional Manager. “The handing down of such an extreme punishment under a law inspired by the al-Turabi radicalism of the early al-Bashir regime brings into question the direction Sudan intends to head following South Sudanese succession. Having embraced policies of Islamization and Arabization in the past, ICC fears Meriam could be the first of many more Christians to suffer under an increasingly radicalized Sudanese government intent on enforcing Shari’ah law throughout the land.”