Morocco’s High Religious Committee decreed earlier this year that individuals who leave Islam should not face the death penalty for apostasy.
This astounding ruling from a body charged with issuing fatwas (an authoritative religious or juridical ruling), reverses the classical shari’a legislation that has stood since medieval times.
Change of heart
It is all the more significant, given that the same High Religious Committee issued a book just five years ago containing fatwas which affirmed the classical shari’a position that a Muslim who changes his or her religion should be punished by death.
In their 2017 document, The Way of the Scholars, the High Religious Committee argued that Muhammad and his early followers killed apostates only for political reasons (because they were traitors to the nascent Islamic community), not for religious reasons: ‘The most accurate understanding, and the most consistent with the Islamic legislation and the practical way of the Prophet, peace be upon him, is that the killing of the apostate is meant for the traitor of the group, the one disclosing secrets ... the equivalent of treason in international law.’
Punished not killed
The High Religious Committee supported this stance with examples of the words and actions of Muhammad and other early Muslim leaders, showing that apostates were only punished when they posed a security threat. They also pointed out the Qur’an speaks only of apostasy being punished in the afterlife, not in this life.
The same points have been made over the centuries by many Muslims who believed that Muhammad never intended a death sentence for apostasy as such, only for treason.
But these scholars lost the argument and the death sentence was incorporated into shari’a as it was gradually developed. All five surviving schools of shari’a practised today (four Sunni and one Shia) have a death sentence for adult males who leave Islam. Since about 1258, no change has been allowed in shari’a, and anyone calling for an amendment to the apostasy law risks the death sentence themselves for daring to seek to change shari’a.
The Maliki Sunni school of shari’a, practised in Morocco, has a death sentence not only for men but also for women apostates. Three days are to be given for repentance before the execution is carried out. The apostasy need not be spoken aloud in order to incur this punishment. Child apostates are to be killed on reaching maturity.
