[Obebtetibre]

Bismillah Al-Rehman Al-Raheem

Dear Sister:

Yes.

I was born into a Muslim family, but I will tell you I would have been considered a former apostate of Islam, as I certainly confessed openly to my friends of my renunciation of anything divine and did reject the Divine in my early childhood before coming to Islam in my early adulthood.

I am saying with the full realization that I could have come under the threat of execution in a shariah-implemented Islamic state had I been tried and found guilty of the same under its laws. Still, I fully support the death penalty for apostates of Islam under shariah laws in an Islamic state. People can of course make a show of repenting and falsely profess faith in Islam while not so in their hearts and escape execution under shariah (if they so choose); or they can die.

And I am also fully aware that many non-Muslims and even secularized Muslims will find death penalty for apostasy barbaric. I am not interested in what the non-Muslim or the secularized Muslim thinks or wants changed about Allah’s laws, as their very model of logic is flawed and their social rhetoric for protection of apostates is based on illegitimate sources.

What I will tell you is that your delving into your area shows your concern for humanity but also shows your lack of understanding of other realities:

Non-Muslim states even practice the death penalty for crimes like murder and terrorism. But I do not find those crimes as reprehensible as rejecting Allah after an individual has been given the chance to understand and live Islam as a Muslim. And if crimes like murder or terrorism merit death penalty, then certainly I find that apostates merit the death penalty for they betray a) the pre-existence covenant taken with Allah when all souls concurred that He is our Lord and b) the Islamic state (which by its nature will require adherence to its laws—the divine and the secular).

Contrary to what many might think, the law ordering apostates to be put to death is a mercy to the apostates themselves, for Allah only wills punishment hastened for those on the earth whom Allah will think to show some leniency in the hereafter. In fact, to be an apostate on earth and not be punished for this high crime on the earth is the worst imaginable condition for the apostate—for they will suffer such punishment for the high crime in the hereafter that they would themselves rather that they been executed over and over again on this earth rather than to suffer the myriad punishments of the damned in hellfire.

The Prophet (SAW) said: “When Allah wishes good for His slave, He hastens to bring about his punishment in this world, and if He does not wish good for him, He withholds the punishment until he is dealt with for his sin on the Day of Resurrection” (Tirmidhi).

So, Sister, your question underscores your unawareness in my humble opinion. Do not endeavor to ask about how Allah has decreed such and such when the question is not of apostasy or at least should not be for a seeker such as yourself but whether the religion is the Truth. Otherwise, your questions will not end and the answers won’t satisfy you because you will follow the indoctrination of societal or other arbitrary human ideals when Islam has set the standards to which any sane human being should submit—the reality of the Seen and the Unseen World. You and I live in the Seen World; therefore, our knowledge is lacking and we do not understand the rules of the Unseen World. However, as Surah Fatiha says, “alhamdullilahi rabbil alameen,” “all praise (credit and thanks) is to the Lord of the Worlds.” The “worlds” refers to the Seen and the Unseen. The Unseen world comprises of the future, the what-ifs, hell, heaven, angels, and all the other knowledge to which our senses are not privy.

A man who had to board an airplane for an important deal curses fate when he misses the flight. He feels cheated and angry. But when the flight crashes on which he had been originally set to board with no survivors, he feels very lucky and blessed to have escaped his fate. Such is the case of human beings that we feel slighted when the Seen World gives us a “boot” in the behind—such as missing the flight—but is really a favor that lack of knowledge of future does not reveal—from the Unseen World—until we get news of this in the Seen World—the plane crashed with no survivors.

Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was sent by Allah as a mercy to the Worlds (Quran 21:107). The question is: Do you believe this? Those who do not will continue to have problems with divine laws.

If I have said anything that is good and true, it is from Allah, and anything other than that is my own mistake.