Apostasy in Islam
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...
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| Formato: | article |
| Lenguaje: | EN |
| Publicado: |
International Institute of Islamic Thought
2013
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| Acceso en línea: | https://doaj.org/article/b2eb90eaee7a49b0890cdbfd605e9771 |
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| Sumario: | 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 ...
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