The Truth about the Alleged Punishment for Apostasy in Islam — Page 43
43 THE MEANING OF "SLAYING ONE’S OWN SOUL" The meaning of ‘slaying one’s own soul’—on the authority of Arabic lexicon is, clearly, as follows: Crush your ego * by means of supplicating and tearfully praying to God, and through self-imposition of penance. In other words you first wronged your souls by resorting to the sin of Shirk ** , now to expiate for this sin do another 'wong' to yourselves i. e. be cruel, for the sake of God, to yourselves—that is you must keep reminding yourselves of the great sin you have committed and subject yourselves to repeated repentance and go on supplicating God for forgiveness. ‘All a ma Shabb i r ‘Uthm a n i did not understand this obvious fact and, instead, he presented an idea that is not even remotely related to the Holy Qur’an. He did seem to have understood how it was not possible, at all, for people to have committed suicides in the wake of their repentance! Thus, he invented the solution to this difficulty by asserting that the people were commanded that those among them, who had not committed this sin, must kill all the others who had committed this sin. That is, those who remained steadfastly attached to their religion, they must murder * i. e. , Nafsi Amm a rah , or that part of the self that incites one to commit evil. [Publisher] ** The sin of associating partners to be worshipped with the one and only God. [Publisher]