On the issue of punishment for apostasy in islamic law 

Sultan T. Khapchaev, Candidate of juridical sciences, associate professor of the sub-department of state and civil law disciplines, Krasnodar University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation (Stavropol branch) (43 Kulakova avenue, Stavropol, Russia),  hapchaev82@yandex.ru

Background. The question of apostasy, or rather, the possibility of applying legal punishment for leaving Islam, is perhaps one of the most “inconvenient” for modern Muslim scholars, since it forces them to reproduce the concept developed in the early Middle Ages, but at this moment irrevocably outdated, implying the need to execute an apostate. Such blind adherence to the precedents of the past, only due to the fact that at the time this concept supported by most jurists, in the modern era undermines the very concept of free will and the absence of coercion in Islam. In this regard, it seems relevant to us to conduct a study on the issue of bringing an apostate to justice. The purpose of the research is to argue the judgment that, from the point of view of the basic principles of Islamic law, the use of coercion in matters of religious self-determination is unacceptable. Materials and methods. The implementation of research tasks was achieved on the basis of an analysis of the Quran and Sunnah provisions, as well as the works of prominent Islamic jurists and thinkers of the past and present. The methodological potential includes the philosophical, logical, hermeneutical method, as well as the methods of comparative legal and historical-legal analysis, which together made it possible to compare the idea of an act of apostasy formed in the classical period of Islamic jurisprudence with the changed living conditions of modern Muslims. Results. The judgment is argued that the provisions of the Muslim legal doctrine on the punishment of apostates were dictated by the geopolitical reality of that time, when this act had not so much an ideological as a political component and was almost always associated with high treason, espionage and other forms of hostility towards Muslims. Conclusions. An objective analysis of the classical sources of Islamic law gives reason to conclude that they do not contain logical and normative grounds for bringing a person to legal responsibility for the simple fact of changing beliefs that is not associated with other forms of harm to the interests of society, the state or specific Muslims.

Quran, sunnah, Islamic law, Sharia, crime, apostasy, hadd

Khapchaev S.T. On the issue of punishment for apostasy in islamic law. Izvestiya vysshikh uchebnykh zavedeniy. Povolzhskiy region. Obshchestvennye nauki =
University proceedings. Volga region. Social sciences. 2023;(2):61–75. (In Russ.). doi: 10.21685/2072-3016-2023-2-6