The Truth about the Alleged Punishment for Apostasy in Islam — Page 45
45 not left any virtuous people among them. Then I contrived this plan, and I gathered all the jewellery from them and cast it in the fire, out of which the calf emerged. ' At that, according to the Bible, Prophet Moses as , issued this strange decree of 'justice' (God forbid!) that he called upon his own clan of Levi and told them that if they were faithful to him they should come on his side. Thus, despite the fact that they were the founders of that sinful act, Moses summoned them and ordered them to kill the other people. In this manner, three thousand people were murdered on that day. This is all there is to the " Uthm a nian argument"— in support of the notion of capital punishment for the apostates—which is being bandied about as the "Quranic argument"! The Holy Qur’an rejects this notion so explicitly that, after learning this, no one who has even an iota of the fear of God in him can infer the justification for awarding capital punishment to the apostates from this context. For according to the Holy Qur’an, the architect and prime mover of this incident, and its underlying act of transgression, was none other than S a mr i. But, even S a mr i , who was the leader, was not commanded to be put to death *. The punishment awarded to him was: * i. e. , according to the Holy Qur’an's narrative of the incident. [Author]