You know, the jurists in Islam belong to a period quite far removed from the time of Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. Now, for them it was very difficult to look at and compare every tradition, which is available to us now, today. Because the books of tradition were collected and preserved after the institution of jurisprudence had taken shape.
The jurists precede the time of those who collected traditions. So, they had very meagre resources available at their hands. Now people think as if all the books of Bukhari, the Sahih Sita, everything was ready and prepared for them to compare and make their conclusions. It was not so. Some traditions reached verbally Hazrat Awam Abu Nifa and some Hazrat Awam Shafi and some others. And they had very little material to make their conclusions. And particularly, where the views differed, it was very difficult for them to make a comparative study of Hadith. Because Hadith in that form was not ready, not available to them.
So, they drew some conclusions from history. And the history of the apostasy at the time of Hazrat Abu Bakr was the leading factor in misleading them. Because they could not analyze what was happening and what they thought was that whoever said that I am not Muslim, he was put to sword. It was not so. What actually happened was that there was a revolt against not only Islam but against the state of Islam. Against an established order.
Hazrat Abu Bakr Siddiq was not only a caliph, he was also the ruler of that state that had come into being and had fallen under the sway of Islam and had become also a Muslim state. So, any defiance of a state is punishable to the extent that defiance is made. So, the defiance made by those people was against the state of Islam, against the rule of Islam. And they had in fact attacked or were amassing armies to attack Medina before ever Hazrat Abu Bakr thought of fighting them. So, from that to this inference that the punishment of apostasy is death is totally an erroneous and wrong inference.
Later on, there were some other jurists who were so dishonest that whatever the king wanted them to say, they would say. And such jurists of minor type, but still there were, played havoc with the life and property and honour of the Muslims. What happened was that a king of a certain regime wanted to put to death his opponents. And he would call the jurists of his own choice and would say, look here, this is their belief. Do you consider this is Islamic or un-Islamic? They would say, obviously it’s un-Islamic because they would read the mind of the ruler. He said, so, what about the punishment of apostasy? Death, of course.
So, they were slaughtered mercilessly. Even they are known to have been dug out of their graves if they could not be slaughtered in their lifetime and hanged afterwards after they had died many, many years before and put to death for apostasy. So, this was the medieval dark period of Islam of which one can be only ashamed and can’t be proud of. The brightest period, the most shining and dazzling period was the time of Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. There the punishment for apostasy was not, as you have mentioned yourself, death or killing in any form.
