Revisiting Law of Apostasy in Islamic Law

Abstract

There are various verses from Al-Quran that speak about freedom of beliefs. However, none of them instruct the believers to exercise mandatory death penalty on apostate. There are few Prophetic Traditions that have been used as the basis to form the mandatory death penalty by four major schools of jurisprudence. The need to revisit this issue is supported by a handful of modern Islamic scholars such as Sheikh Dr. Muhammad Sa’id Ramadhan al-Bouthi, Dr. Thoriq Suwaidan, Dr. Adnan Ibrahim among others. This paper does not intend to undermine the previous works of our past great scholars but this came as a form of enriching the intellectual discourse in the sphere of Islamic Law and Studies. 
 The authors affirm that there is no strong argument or evidence to support mandatory death penalty on apostate.