A female apostate must be either executed, according to Shafi’i, Maliki, and Hanbali schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), or imprisoned until she reverts to Islam as advocated by the Sunni Hanafi school and by Shi’a scholars. Hanafi Sunni school of jurisprudence allows waiting till execution, before children and property are seized; other schools do not consider this wait as mandatory. Therefore, in all madhhabs of Islam, (a) the property of the apostate is seized and distributed to his or her Muslim relatives; (b) his or her marriage annulled (faskh); (c) any children removed and considered ward of the Islamic state. Hanafi scholars maintain that a female apostate should not be killed because it was forbidden to kill women under Sharia. Various early Muslim scholars did not agree with the death penalty, among them Ibrahim al-Nakha’i (d. Hudud (or Hadd) crime, that is one of six “crimes against God” a Muslim can commit, which deserves the fixed punishment of death as that is a “claim of God”.

In the contemporary Islamic Republic of Iran, at least one conservative jurist, Ayatollah Mohsen Araki, has attempted to reconcile following the traditional doctrine while addressing the principle of freedom of religion enshrined in the Islamic Republic’s constitution. Claiborne refers to himself as a “holy troublemaker,” and over the past decade he has become something of a celebrity in Christian circles, for challenging believers to scrutinize the difference between the Bible’s teachings and those espoused in conservative American culture. Contrast this with American crows, which have 36-inch (0.9-meter) wingspans. Can you name the South American rain forest home to 390 billion trees? We vow today to lift your name high amongst one another and everywhere we go. Jonathan A.C. Brown explains that “According to all the theories of language elaborated by Muslim legal scholars, the Qur’anic proclamation that ‘There is no compulsion in religion. The right path has been distinguished from error’ is as absolute and universal a statement as one finds. The truth had been made clear, and now, ‘Whoever wants, let him believe, and whoever wants, let him disbelieve,’ the holy book continues (2:256, 18:29). “, and hence the Qur’an granted religious freedom.

Khaled Abou El Fadl explains that the verses (88:21-22) emphasizes that even the Prophet does not have the right to think of himself as a warden who has the power to coerce people. Even though the Kabbalah’s origins are deeply rooted in ancient times, as early as ancient Babylon, its wisdom has remained almost hidden from humanity ever since it had made an appearance more than four millenniums ago. Out of fear of the temple’s closure due to an open trial during Passover, Caiaphas orders an immediate trial during the late hours of night in privacy, which are violations of Jewish law, against the order of other priests. In Islamic law (sharia), the view among the majority of medieval jurists was that a male apostate must be put to death unless he suffers from a mental disorder or converted under duress, for example, due to an imminent danger of being killed.

However others have successfully argued that the majority view, in both the past and the present, wasn’t a severe punishment for mere apostasy. He concludes that moderates do not believe that there is any punishment that attaches to apostasy. He further states that moderates consider the verse (2:256) to be enunciating a general, overriding principle that cannot be contradicted by isolated traditions attributed to the Prophet. There was a general feeling among the questioners that these events contradicted the judge’s views. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, a minority sect found in South and Southeast Asia, rejects any form of punishment for apostasy whatsoever in this world, citing hadith, Quran, and the opinions of classical Islamic jurists to justify its views. However, Ahmadiyya Muslims are widely considered as non-Muslim apostates and persecuted by mainstream Islam, because of their beliefs. Peters and Vries note that some interpreted this verse has been that it “forbids compulsion to things that are wrong but not compulsion to accept the truth”.