Uqubat al-Irtidad an al-Din bayn al-Adilla al-Shariyya wa Shubuhat al-Munkirin
- Author died
- 1429 AH
- Editions
- Maktabat Wahba
Uqubat al-Irtidad an al-Din bayn al-Adilla al-Shariyya wa Shubuhat al-Munkirin (The Penalty for Apostasy from Religion: Between Legal Evidence and the Doubts of the Denialists) is a legal and polemical treatise by the Egyptian scholar and al-Azhar professor Abd al-Azim al-Mutani (d. 1429 AH / 2008 CE), written to defend the classical Islamic consensus on the capital punishment for apostasy (hadd al-riddah) against modern secularist critiques.
Background and Composition
The book was written during the public controversy in Egypt that followed the 1992 assassination of the secularist writer Faraj Fuda and the court testimonies delivered during the trial by Muhammad al-Ghazali and Dr. Muhammad Mazru'ah. In the aftermath of those events, secularist and communist commentators rejected the death penalty for apostasy, arguing that Islamic law does not sanction an earthly corporal punishment for renouncing the faith.
Al-Mat'ani followed these debates while abroad and began reviewing the arguments of the denialists upon his return to Cairo. Observing that al-Azhar had not issued a decisive statement and finding that an article published by the Grand Mufti Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi titled Kalima 'an al-Riddah wa-l-Murtaddin did not resolve the core dispute, al-Mat'ani composed this treatise in al-Zahir, Cairo, completing it on 1 Rabi' al-Awwal 1414 AH (18 August 1993 CE). The work was published in a single volume by Maktabat Wahba in Cairo that same year.
Content and Structure
Al-Mat'ani states that his objective was to defend the established legal penalty (hadd) of apostasy, which he classifies as an agreed-upon protection for the preservation of religion—one of the five essential necessities (al-daruriyyat al-khams) of Islamic law. He also observes that certain opponents of the apostasy penalty went further to deny three other prescribed penalties—banditry (hirabah), rebellion (baghy), and wine-drinking (shurb al-khamr)—solely on the flawed premise that they were missing from the modern compendium al-Fiqh 'ala al-Madhahib al-Arba'ah.
The author divides the work into two principal sections (shatran):
- Part One: Refutes the specific arguments and doubts (shubuhat) raised against the apostasy penalty. Al-Mat'ani addresses the claim that the Quran specifies only otherworldly punishment for apostasy, arguing that this reasoning disregards the independent legislative role of the prophetic Sunnah, the practice of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, and scholarly consensus (ijma'). He critiques the denialists' literalist citations of verses such as al-Baqarah (2:217), al-Ma'idah (5:54), Al 'Imran (3:72, 3:86, 3:90), and al-Nisa' (4:137), showing from classical exegesis (tafsir) and historical context that these passages do not negate worldly legal enforcement.
- Part Two ("Essential Clarifications" / Tawdihat La Budda Minha): Discusses theoretical and practical dimensions of the penalty, including:
- The distinction between apostasy (riddah) and heresy (zandaqah).
- The legal guidelines and conditions governing the execution of the apostasy penalty (dawabit tanfidh hadd al-riddah), including the requirement of demanding repentance (istitabah).
- Demonstrating that the apostasy penalty does not contradict freedom of conscience in Islam.
- The underlying legislative wisdom (hikmat al-tashri') behind capital punishment for apostates.
- A critique examining whose political and intellectual interests the denialists serve ('Amman Yudafi'un).
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