The Qur’anic Description of Apostasy

The Qur’an presents fundamental features of the concept of apostasy. In sum, apostasy and a lack of repentance or acceptance of Islam and God lead to punishment in the hereafter. The person who commits apostasy hurts only himself. Those who turn away from their faith repeatedly will not be able to attain God’s forgiveness no matter what they do.

Apostasy committed by someone who has done so under duress, and who therefore had no other choice, does not affect one’s actual faith.

The only way in which apostasy can affect one’s actual faith is for one to open his or her heart consciously and willingly to a denial of the truth. Weak faith, lack of certainty and failure to worship God with a pure heart are among the most important entry points for apostasy. Any works performed by the person who denies the truth will come to nothing, and this is the outcome he or she must expect.[1]  The term ‘apostasy’ conveys  the  sense of turning  away  from  Islam and  faith after  one’s having  accepted  them  in accordance with  what  God  has commanded.

The  terms  al-riddah  and  al-irtidad  in  the  Qur’anic understanding represent  a return  to something  one had left from something  one had reached.  However,  none  of the varied  Qur’anic contexts  referring  to apostasy  speaks of it as a withdrawal from Islam alone, or as a withdrawal  relating  to the spiritual  plane  alone.  Rather, the Qur’an uses the term inclusive of both the spiritual and the material, in combination with the verb radda, to avert or turn away.

Riddah in the Qur’an is an explicit retreat from and abandonment of Islam to unbelief.  While warning, these verses also urge everyone who has entered Islam to cling to it steadfastly because it is the true guidance: the most authoritative, solid basis for life and living.

Given this clarification of the concept  of apostasy,  or riddah,  in the Qur’an, we can see how the Qur’an has put this linguistic term to use to  convey  a variety  of meanings  by employing  it as a verbal  noun related  to the religion. The verbal noun al-riddah is used to refer to a retreat from Islam.

A person abandons his faith if he denies the truth after having surrendered himself to God through Islam. Riddah has been used over the centuries to refer unambiguously to a retreat from religion, and specifically, from the religion of Islam.

None  of the verses referred  to above  – which  include  everything  the Qur’an has to say concerning either riddah or irtidad – makes any mention of an earthly punishment for the sin or crime of apostasy;  nor do they  refer,  whether  explicitly  or  implicitly,  to  the  need  to  force  an apostate to return  to Islam or to kill him if he refuses to do so. As portrayed in the Qur’an, the term riddah reflects the psychological and mental state that brought the individual concerned to the point of apostasy.

Human freedom is one of the supreme values of Islamic law, and one of its most vital intents.  Indeed, one of the most noteworthy roles played by faith, and by the affirmation of God’s oneness in particular, is to free human beings from superstition, paganism, and the worship of created entities and to link them with God Almighty. Many Qur’anic verses were revealed in support, defense, and protection of this freedom. 

Indeed, the many Qur’anic verses devoted to religious freedom support one another in asserting this right and the obligation to protect and preserve it from any external intervention or interference.

Foremost among these verses is the one that declares “There shall be no coercion in matters of faith.”[2] When unbelievers in Makkah waged war on Muslims in 4 AH, and some Companions asked the Prophet’s permission to compel children who had embraced Judaism to enter Islam, thereby preventing them from living with the Jews, the Prophet refused to allow them to do so. In an issue more related to politics than religion, it was customary among the followers of some religions, and Christianity in particular, to force people to convert to their faith.[3]

Many Qur’anic verses make clear to the Prophet that compulsion and the imposition of beliefs on others are of no use.[4]

A distinction might be drawn between the Qur’anic attitude toward continuing in ‘original unbelief’, that is, the unbelief of someone who has never had faith, and its attitude toward the unbelief of someone who abandons faith for unbelief after having believed. Such a distinction acknowledges the freedom that the Qur’an accords to the person who is still in a state of original unbelief, while denying the same freedom to someone who abandons faith after having believed.

As for questions relating to repentance following apostasy and whether or not such repentance will be accepted, all these are matters of divine prerogative. As long as one’s apostasy has not been accompanied by anything else deemed a criminal act, it remains strictly between God and the individual, and is not the province of earthly rulers or anyone else.