Apostasy in Islam By Taha Jabir Alalwani (London: IIIT, 2011. 157 pages.)

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 ...