Punishment of Apostacy in Islam — Page 72
72 the Khawaraj on account of any doctrinal difference, but because they created disorder in the land and killed Muslim men and women and they killed the governor appointed by him and his female slave and also Hazrat Ali’s emissary. When he called upon them to surrender those who had been responsible for these atrocities, they replied that they were all responsible for the killings as they considered it lawful to kill Hazrat Ali and all those who supported him. Hazrat Ali and Zindeeqs Our opponents also cite a case that Hazrat Ali had directed the burning alive of some of the Zindeeqs who called him god, but their authority for this statement is utterly unreliable and the horror attributed by them to Hazrat Ali cannot possibly be accepted as a fact. It is well known that the Holy Prophet, peace be on him, had forbidden anyone being tormented by fire. It is, therefore, impossible to give credence to the allegation that Hazrat Ali resorted to this horror in contravention of the express direction of the Holy Prophet. The narrator of this alleged occurrence has been condemned by everyone as utterly unreliable and given to imposture, so much so that when he died no one said funeral prayers over his dead body. The people who called Ali god were the followers of one Abdullah bin Sabah who had been a Jew. He was the one who was at the back of the group who subsequently murdered Hazrat Usman, the fourth Khalifa. Hazrat Ali had exiled him to Madaen, but he and his followers continued their nefarious activities. Thus, there is not a single instance that the immediate