Significantly, although the tribal allegiances in Medina were initially redefined on religious terms when Prophet Muhammad moved to Medina, he quickly commissioned the drafting of the Constitution of Medina , which forged a formal communal tie between everyone in the city irrespective of religious or tribal differences. The role of Prophet Muhammad cannot be reduced to a strictly religious one that merely delivers decrees, which can be decontextualised as if they were issued in a vacuum.
Islamic law includes religious and political domains of legislation, and one has to be cognizant of where a particular ruling would fit. This new communist government in Afghanistan at the time began extensive land and social reforms that were resented by the devout Muslim population. This led to a number of uprisings and internal fighting that eventually prompted the Soviets to invade the country in to try and set up their own satellite government in place.
The country has ever since been in non-stop turmoil. Still, even with this concern in mind, it should be pointed out that the support for this penalty is not about a change in belief as much as it is about a change in political allegiances. Whether these concerns are in the minds of the Saudi ruling family is yet to be established. Interestingly, their latest efforts to suppress political dissent come at a critical time for power transfer between the Al Saud family members while being surrounded by a turbulent political climate in the region.
In anticipation of possible upcoming internal problems as a new generation of Al Saud takes over succession to the throne, it seems that the family is not sparing any measures to circumvent all possible means to creating unrest in the kingdom as they secure their future as its continuing rulers. Open Access for Authors. Open Access and Research Funding. Open Access for Librarians. Open Access for Academic Societies.
About us. Stay updated. Corporate Social Responsiblity. Investor Relations. Review a Brill Book. This article sheds light on the Islamic legal ruling concerning apostasy riddah.
The article concludes that Islam never sentences anyone to death for eschewing Islam; it merely does so for riddah. Reference Works. Primary source collections. Open Access Content. Contact us. Sales contacts. Publishing contacts. Are you a humanist? Learn more about the rational, ethical worldview that is humanism. Discover a world of humanism: find your nearest group or national organization.
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Support our goals? Search for:. Organizations offering help The humanist and secular organisations displayed in the list below, all campaign for the right to apostasy in their respective countries, or support people in leaving a religion. Even the worst examples of patience and tolerance in the early Islamic period, the Kharijite extremists, seem to have been at least partially misunderstood by later scholars on the apostasy issue.
Their policy of killing any other Muslims whom they saw as having committed grave sins is usually explained by them having concluded that these people were apostates their supposed reasoning: if sinners really believed in God, would they commit sins? The army had to keep returning to reestablish discipline.
At no point was anyone killed for this. Of course, some people were executed for apostasy in the early Islamic period. Yet, in instances where details are provided, what stands out is their public nature. The apostasy occurs not in private but comes with a very public announcement by the person in question. A recent study of books in which Arab Christians detailed the heroic exploits of Christian saints under Muslim rule bolsters the impression that apostasy was punished only when it was perceived as a threat to public order.
The one story in which the apostate was not executed, a case in tenth-century Egypt, was a man who was told by the monks he joined that he had to repudiate Islam publicly. He did not, however, and he was never executed despite his own father writing to the caliph asking to have his son put to death.
In fact, the man lived out his life as a monk, establishing a monastery and even writing Christian criticisms of Islam that survive until today. How Muslim states dealt with apostasy throughout the pre-modern era shows a similar concern with apostasy only when it became a public matter.
Similar findings come in a recent study of sixty cases in which people were executed for apostasy or other types of heresy during the Mamluk period Those who were executed for declaring their apostasy were mainly Christians who had converted to Islam and then made a public show of renouncing it, as in the case of two Coptic Christians in and a whole group in In the latter case, they were given numerous chances to recant their apostasy before being punished.
The judge decided the man was insane. Only after he publicly insulted Islam three more times was the man executed. Reconsidering Apostasy in the Modern Period. The notion that the crime of apostasy in Islam was more a matter of protecting a state and social order than of policing individual beliefs was articulated in the late nineteenth century by Syed Ameer Ali d.
Fyzee d. It mentions no worldly punishment. The choice by Muslim jurists of where to place the topic of apostasy in books of law further reveals that what concerned them was the public nature of apostasy and how they saw it affecting the political order.
The second main piece of Hadith evidence for the apostasy ruling leaves a similar impression. But this is only because the report has no real contextual information at all. Only those who combine their leaving Islam with a public attempt to undermine the stability of the Muslim community can be punished for ridda. One who simply leaves Islam or embraces another religion privately is left alone. How does one know when this would be allowed, and how will differences in culture, political systems, and religious tradition affect this decision?
What is surprising is that from a broad, theoretical perspective, the pre-modern Islamic tradition and the modern human rights vision are structurally similar; they both view the preservation of public order and morality as a just basis for some restriction on religious liberty.
But because public order and morality in the West were historically contoured by Christianity, and because that influence continues to a certain extent to this day, this means that in many Western countries justifications for restricting religious liberties are often biased.
They draw on notions of public order and morality that are shaped by Western Christian mores. We can see this in the U. The U. Supreme Court case Davis v. Beason introduced the principle surprising today that someone could face legal consequences for their religious beliefs even if they never acted on them.
Much like the New York case referenced above, this meant that U. Of course, there is a big difference between restrictions on rights such as assembly or marriage, on the one hand, and sentencing someone to death for apostasy on the other. What the punishment should be and whether or not it should be applied was fundamentally a policy decision, and as such, it fell to the discretion of the ruler after weighing the best interests of all involved.
What are the best policies today, and what are the best interests of Muslims? For Muslims living in states whose laws provide protection for freedom of religion, this issue is simple. It is thanks to such legal protections that Muslims have come to reside in these countries and to enjoy the protection of their laws.
It would be totally unacceptable to violate the pact, implicit or explicit, made by our residence in these states by working to undermine the freedom of religion of other citizens. As for Muslim-majority countries, are there grounds for legislating some legal restriction on converting out of Islam or punishing someone who does so? But what about countries that have not made the Western move to separate religion and state?
Countries like Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, for example, declare themselves constitutionally Islamic states. And what about states that view religious belief, practice or expression as closely tied to concerns of public order, such as Russia? To further muddy the waters, what if we consider a case of apostasy that is not simply a person making a private religious choice but rather engaging in a very public declaration of why they had chosen to do so?
Here the issue becomes more complicated. If the apostate publicly argues for leaving Islam or denigrates it, then the question grows from the realm of freedom of religion to that of the freedom of speech as well. Taking the European Court of Human Rights as an indicator, there has been a greater margin of appreciation granted to states to restrict the freedom of speech than the freedom of religion. We should also remember that the separation of church and state, and the stripping of religion from core notions of order and security are not biological stages in human evolution that affect all societies equally.
Neither is it consistent. As recently as , the U. If the U.
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