The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law. It’s based on the Qur’an: “They wish you would disbelieve as they disbelieved so you would be alike. So do not take from among them allies until they emigrate for the cause of Allah. But if they turn away, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them and take not from among them any ally or helper.” (Qur’an 4:89)
A hadith depicts Muhammad saying: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 9.84.57). The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law according to all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence.
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.”
Qaradawi also once famously said: “If they had gotten rid of the apostasy punishment, Islam wouldn’t exist today.”
“Egypt: friends fear family may have killed ex-teacher of Islam after he became Christian,” World Watch Monitor, October 11, 2019 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
Friends of a 40 year-old Egyptian who converted from Islam to Christianity believe that his premature death on 4th October is linked to numerous threats he received from his family that they would kill him for his change of faith.
Before Amr Hussein Mohamed El-Sayeh died, apparently by electrocution at his home, he told several friends that his uncle had, in July, reported him twice to the Alexandria police security directorate for his ‘apostasy’. He also told his friends that when he tried to talk to his wife about his new-found faith, she told their family, prompting them to constantly taunt and insult him. One friend told World Watch Monitor “Amr told me recently that his family threatened to kill him”.
Suspicious circumstances surround El-Sayeh’s death. A source at the local hospital in Moharam Bek who personally saw his body says that, despite the presence of police close by it all the time, (s)he was able to see that there were blue bruises around the neck and on the face, which appeared to be incompatible with the hospital’s cause of death report: electrocution.
In addition, the source reports that the body was not given the ritual washing before burial – customary for every Middle Eastern funeral, Muslim or Christian. This, friends say, is due to the fact that, only weeks before his death, El-Sayeh had tattooed his wrist with a cross (as many Egyptian Christians do); so although his ID card still showed him as a Muslim, the body washers were told that he should be treated as an ‘apostate’.
Finally, the family did not hold a funeral for him; instead El-Sayeh was buried in a charity cemetery for the poor.
El-Sayeh had left his job teaching Islamic studies to primary school age children at Alexandria’s Al Azhar Institute in March 2019. He had graduated from the Faculty of Islamic Studies at the world-famous Al-Azhar university before becoming a teacher.
However, he told his friend that, amongst other things, he had watched Christian satellite TV. The friend told World Watch Monitor “Watching these programmes made him want to know more about the truth of Islam and to read more of the Bible and to compare it, and pray. And God touched his heart and guided him on his way. He had a desire to know more about Christ and Christianity. He read more Christian books”.
On 13 April, El-Sayeh was secretly baptized into the Christian faith. He decided to take the name ‘George’. The friend told WWM “He then began to talk to his wife about Christ and the work of Christ in his life to convince her to follow Jesus like him”.
But instead she told his wider family. “Then his family began to resist him and insult him, they wondered that Amr was an al-Azhar student and a graduate of the Faculty of Islamic Studies, and yet he converted to Christianity” the friend went on.
In September, even after his uncle had reported him to the authorities, ‘George’ “made a cross tattoo on his right wrist, which triggered his family against him”….
mortimer says
The official line of all branches of Islam in the matter of apostates is that they should be offered a chance to repent after which they shall be executed by the Islamic state. With the exception of Saudi Arabia, no Muslim state will do that today, but they will harass the apostate, incarcerate the apostate, make the apostate unemployable and generally make it impossible to live in the Muslim country. Should some mob-created ‘accident’ occur to an apostate, the Muslim police officers will be unable to find witnesses.
Muslims all know this is the Sunna of Mohammed, but few Muslims will personally carry out vigilante attacks on apostates.
The Shafi’i Sharia manual ‘Umdat al-Salik says that “an expiation is due to Allah Most High from anyone who kills someone unlawful to kill…” (o5.1). However, “there is no expiation for killing someone who has left Islam” (o5.4). In other words, someone who kills is liable to punishment, but he isn’t liable to punishment if he kills an apostate. And nothing at all is said about state authority.
In 1992, Islamist militants gunned down Egyptian secularist Farag Foda. Before his death, he had been declared an apostate and enemy of Islam. During the trial of the murderers, Al Azhar scholar Muhammad al-Ghazali testified that when the state fails to punish apostates, ‘somebody else has to do it’. The assassin got a light sentence and when released said he was still proud of what he had done.
mortimer says
It is quite significant when someone who has studied Islam at the university level leaves Islam to join another faith. Usually, such people have a clearly articulated reason for leaving Islam. The most common reasons for leaving are 1) moral objections and 2) problems in the text. The amoral and opportunistic character of Mohammed and the crimes against humanity decreed in the Koran make many turn from Islam. An equal number of former Muslims have left due to the many absurdities in the Islamic source texts. It is fashionable for Muslims today to say they do not accept most of the hadiths as authentic, even when they are labelled ‘sahih’ (authentic). There is, in fact, a slow-speed apostasy spreading in the Muslim world and thus the lust for executing apostates has abated … there are apostates in every Muslim family today.
Today, Muslims generally don’t harass someone who is an apostate, unless the apostate is verbal and obvious about it. Quiet, non-verbal apostates will be ignored by most Muslims. Everyone in Islam is living at a high level of denial all the time. Some are able to maintain the cognitive dissonance and others are not.
Angemon says
Will the police give it more than a cursory look? I suspect not…
gravenimage says
I’m sure you are right, Angemon.
R Russell says
Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.
Psalm 116
FireFox says
Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most renowned and prominent Muslim cleric in the world, …also once famously said: “If they had gotten rid of the apostasy punishment, Islam wouldn’t exist today.”
When I heard him speak this, he was boasting as if it was a magnificent blessing, and accomplishment of Islam rather than the evil and oppressive fear inducing terror tactic that it is. And it works wonderfully within the cult of Islam to keep all obedient and quiet.
Arrogant supremacism – an ingrained brainwashed condition that hardens every moslem heart and closes every moslem mind; a lie that is upheld and perpetrated among moslems in great part for the fear that the punishment of apostasy brings: ostracizing by family, friends, and the community, and far too often death by those same ostracizing hands.
The more I learn about this evil cult of oppression, terror, and death, the more I shake my head at the idiocy of the left who blindly welcome this evil into our midst.
ronyvo says
Fire: “The more I learn about this evil cult of oppression, terror, and death, the more I shake my head at the idiocy of the left who blindly welcome this evil into our midst.”
Hunger for power and money has no limits.
I thought that after 9/11, at least, the Americans would take a huge notice of the kind of people who follow this Satanic system. But, to my unbelievable state of mind, I am utterly surprised at the ignorance, the lack of patriotism and simply the craziness going on in our country. YES, I am very angry at those so called AMERICANS who are selling ‘their;’ country to the Devil. The major blow to my head is the ‘election’ of the fanatic criminal Muslim Obama not once but TOW TIMES. What a disgrace.
FireFox says
It’s too bad Obama wasn’t Black, ‘cuz if he truly was, he’d have at least done something great for the Black community in the USA, instead of doing everything for Islam in his 8 years in power. Trump has done more for the Black community. Obama supported Islam’s intrusion into the White House and into our governments. Islam has been an invading enemy unceasingly for 1400 years. Hard to understand the midset leftists must have to allow your country, culture, and freedom to be lost to this barbaric cult. I think this Islamic invasion is the distraction from the globalist takeover. Both need to be fought. They are both evil.
Mary C. says
And Egypt is supposed to be one of the more “liberal” and “modern” Islamic countries. SMH
Tattooed Man77 says
Koran 63:1 SAHIH INTERNATIONAL
When the hypocrites come to you, [O Muhammad], they say, “We testify that you are the Messenger of Allah .” And Allah knows that you are His Messenger, and Allah testifies that the hypocrites are liars.
Koran 63:2
They have taken their oaths as a cover, so they averted [people] from the way of Allah . Indeed, it was evil that they were doing.