Punishment of Apostacy in Islam — Page 58
58 Thus it is clear that those tribes had rebelled openly against the authority of the Islamic state, they slaughtered the Muslims and were determined to wipe them out and to destroy the Islamic state and Islam itself. The advocates of the penalty of death for simple apostacy can derive no support from such instances. Their recourse to these instances shows that they can find nothing relevant in support of their thesis. There were two considerations that held back the greater part of the apostates from advancing upon Medina. One was that Hazrat Abu Bakr and his companions had, with great courage and bravery, repelled those who had attacked Medina and this discouraged the rest. Secondly, the departure of the force under the command of Usamah for the north created an impression among the disaffected Arab tribes that the Muslims were very strong in Medina inasmuch as, despite the revolt of the tribes, they had been able to dispatch a large army to the north. The author of Tarikhal Kamil has observed: The dispatch of the army under the command of Usamah was an event which proved of the greatest benefit for the Muslims, inasmuch as the apostate tribes imagined that if the Muslims had not been in a position of great strength, they would not have dispatched the army to the north in the situation with which they were faced. Under this impression, they held back from putting their evil designs into effect (Tarikhal Kamil, V 01. II, p. 139). This also shows that all the apostate tribes had designs against Medina but they held back under the impression that the dispatch of the army under Usamah was an indication of the strong position of the Muslims in Medina. A study of the