Murder in the Name of Allah — Page 65
Recantation under Islam you turned your back on the Qiblah you used to face when you claimed to follow the religion of Abraham? If you returned to the Qiblah in. Jerusalem we would follow you and declare you to be true. ' Their sole intention was to seduce him from his religion. So God said: 'We appointed the Qiblah, which you formerly observed, only to distinquish between he who will follow the Messenger and those who will not - to test and fetch them out. In truth, it was a hard test except for those whom. Allah guided. ". The Quran prescribes no punishment for these recanters. And history records the punishment of no one who recanted after the change of the. Qiblah. . Surah Al-Imran, which was revealed after the victory of Badr, 2AH/. AD/624, contains the following two verses which mention the recantation of some of the Jews of Medina:. O People of the Scripture: why do you confound the truth with falsehood and knowingly conceal the truth? (3:72). And a party of the People of the Scripture says: 'Believe in that which has been revealed to those who believe at sunrise and disbelieve at sunset. In order that they may return. ' (3:73). Ibn Ishaq has given the names of those who hatched this plot:. Abdullah b. Sayf and Adiy b. Zayd and Al-Harith b. Auf agreed to pretend to believe in the message of Muhammadsa and his Companions at one time, deny it another to confuse them. The object was to get them to follow their example and give up their religion. ". None of these three Jews was punished. 12. Another reference is in Al-Nisa. It says: 'Those who believe then disbelieve, then believe again, then disbelieve and then increase in their disbelief will never be forgiven by Allah, nor will He guide them to the way. '(4. 138) A recanter cannot enjoy the repeated luxury of believing and disbelieving if the punishment is death. A dead man has no further chance of again believing and disbelieving. . The sunnah, the divinely inspired behaviour of the Holy Prophetsa, is the second source of the sharia. And there is no penalty for conversion from Islam in the sunnah either. The names of those who were executed by the Prophets are preserved in the sirah and the hadith and the names of people who recanted and rejected Islam in his life are also preserved. A Bedouin Arab was converted to Islam by the. Prophets and soon after suffered a fever while in Medina. He asked the Prophets to release him from his pledge. He made this request three times and was refused three times. He left Medina unmolested. 65