Apostasy in Islam

Abstract

This lucid and concise book is an important and timely contribution in light
 of current intra-Muslim political rivalries that find their fueling justifications
 in the domain of “excommunication” and mutual accusations of disbelief
 and apostasy (takfīr). This situation has caused Alalwani, the author of this
 “treatise,” to delve into the controversies and subtleties of this sensitive and
 manipulation-laden issue. He attempts, both scripturally and logically, to clarify
 its various aspects and challenge the conventional and traditional approaches
 to it, which have been obscured by the historical weight of dogma
 and power politics (pp. 19-20, 129).
 Alalwani’s contends that there is no explicitly stated evidence, whether
 from the Qur’an or the Prophet’s Sunnah, that mandates the death penalty for
 merely changing one’s religion, as long as doing so is not accompanied or associated
 with another criminal act. He highlights that when stipulating that an
 apostate should be killed, the jurists were in fact dealing with “compound”
 crimes that involved, in addition to apostasy, other political, legal, and social
 dimensions (p. 1). He proceeds to make his point by providing evidence from
 the Qur’an and the Sunnah while casting doubt on the authenticity or consistency
 of much of what the fuqahā’ (jurists and scholars) narrated later on and
 attributed to the Prophet or his Companions. His chosen method combines
 philosophical, analytical, inductive, and historical approaches along with Islamic
 textual sciences and fields of knowledge (p. 3). He focuses on cases in
 which an individual changes his/her faith without engaging in hostile or criminal
 activities against the Muslim community, which otherwise would elevate
 the case to one of security threat or treason (p. 4).
 The study comprises six chapters. The first two deal with whether apostasy
 is a capital crime and with the Qur’anic depiction of what apostasy means.
 Alalwani points out that despite unleashing the “sword of consensus” regarding
 the death penalty for this event, in fact there is no such consensus, for no ...