in the name of Allah the beneficent the
most merciful I'd like to welcome you
dear viewers to our series contemporary
issues May Allah's peace and blessings
be on each and every one of you
in this series or this segment of our
series we've been looking at criminal
justice the laws which Islam applies to
crimes committed in the society we
looked at
murder the punishment we looked at
adultery fornication the punishment we
also looked at theft and the punishment
and we looked at homosexuality
lesbianism Etc and the
punishments in this segment we're going
to be looking at apostasy
apostasy which is again an area which
commonly in the west people hold this up
and say hey what kind of religion is
this if you leave the religion they kill
you the law of
apostasy where a person who apostates
who leaves the religion is
executed again when we look at this this
issue we have to look at it within the
context of world
history the legal systems of both the
west and the East and the
conditions under which the law is
applied first and
foremost since from the Western
perspective religion has no place to
play in the legal
system a person is free to follow a
religion or not follow a religion it's
not there's no
you know law or whatever governing them
the idea of of executing somebody for
for leaving the religion now seems quite
absurd however we should keep in mind
that when capital punishment for murder
was abolished in England back in
1965 it was still retained for treason
and piracy with violence for treason and
piracy with violence
and it was also the legal punishment for
setting fire To Her Majesty's ships and
dockyards all the way up until
1971 if one set fire to the ships of the
queen you could be executed according to
law
so this principle exists this principle
of executing people you know over issues
of what may be called tree reason exists
in the west and exists in most
countries where treason is considered to
be Rebellion against the state state
secrets are given to some other country
at which that state is at War
Etc person is executed for it this is
material information you know worldly
information a person gives us
information treason so they're killed
you had a famous couple back in the
United States who were supposedly gave
up information to the Russians about the
atomic research and the man and his wife
were
executed now when we look in the Islamic
perspect from the Islamic perspective
what we find is that religion from
Islamic perspective is different from
religion from a western
perspective in Islam the religion is the
state it there not it's not separable
there's no separate State and religion
it's all
one the state is governed by the
religious
principles
so Rebellion against the state is
rebellion against the religion apostasy
or treason is against the religion than
the state they're all one and the same
so apostasy represents a rejection of
the law and the Order of the
society and as such it considers to be
it's considered like an act of treason
now a person who abandons the faith
personally and leaves the country the
Islamic state is not going to send
people out to hunt him down and kill him
or her because they abandoned the faith
but it is really dealing with a
situation within the state where people
are openly rejecting the principles of
the state and
undermining the social Islamic system of
the society as a whole yes there is no
compulsion in religion in Islam
compulsion in the sense of joining Islam
there's a verse in the Quran in the
third
chapter
uh of the Quran where Allah says sorry
it's not third chapter but the second
chapter there is no compulsion in
religion that is the person is not
compelled to become a Muslim but once a
person becomes a Muslim
then uh they're obliged to stick with it
that this should be a serious and and
definite uh decision which was made in
fact if we look at when the law of
apostasy was first implemented it was
implemented during a period in in Medina
when there was a phenomenon which
developed where some of the Jews of
Medina were converting to
Islam and then aposta in order to shake
the faith of those who are already
Muslims they they were doing this
playing with the religion so the law of
apostasy came in order to stop this
confusion which the Jews were trying to
create those who converted to Islam
trying to create in the minds of the
newly converted Muslims so it meant you
became a Muslim you had to be serious
you had to be real otherwise then you
would be executed so people were no
longer allowed to play with the religion
create that confusion right so that was
how it was initially instituted however
the principle remains you know till the
last day the people within the state are
obliged to stay within the religion if
they are Muslims if they accepted Islam
they have to remain Muslims if they want
to leave then they need to leave the
state
altogether and the we could say that the
the death penalty for apostasy really is
for those who cooperate with the eny
enemies at war with the Muslim
state are those who gather people
against Islam and to fight against the
states this is really the the the place
for its application the person who
personally doesn't pray or whatever in
his home whatever nobody's going to come
breaking into the home to see are you
praying are you not praying are you
fasting you're not fasting State doesn't
do this unless it become something open
so a person who personally on as an on
an individual level apostates and keeps
it to himself or herself then the state
does not go and hunt them down we don't
have Inquisition courts set up to track
and test people's faith and this type of
thing and even when a person is caught
or a person openly makes these
statements of apostasy Etc then they're
brought before court and asked to recant
their statements to take it back if they
recant and take it back then they're not
not
executed
so in in a as a final statement on this
in this regard we could say that Western
Civilization will executed citizens for
giving away State
Secrets something material Islamic law
will not execute people for that
purpose however they will execute them
for something which is far more serious
Rebellion against
God that is a far
greater
uh sin or crime than Rebellion against
the State against the
individual individuals human
beings so this is the way Islam looks at
the issue of apostasy and the
seriousness by which it takes it and
applies the law with regards to it and
it's not for the state you know somebody
in some country somewhere makes
statements of apostasy who may be Muslim
it's not for the state to now declare
this person
to be uh his blood
is permissible offer rewards to go hunt
this person down and kill them no the
Islamic state is not to function this
way if a person comes to them or is
caught within them who is an apostate
then they're tried they are courts of
law they have to be their situation has
to be looked into they have to be
questioned and they have the right to
defend
themselves now that basically deals with
the last of the
issues of criminal law criminal justice
from that now we're going to shift into
some of the dietary laws still dealing
with laws but no longer Crime and
Punishment we're now looking to
diet to some degree it still related to
Crime punishment because the first of
the dietary laws concerns alcohol and we
know in Islamic law there is a
punishment for it some 80 lashes you
know 40 or 80 lashes given to person
who's caught drunk caught
drinking now again of course Western
society which has taken you know
drinking to be a
norm in fact you know people will even
argue medically yes doctors say that you
take half a glass of wine with your meal
that it uh helps in your um
digestion some say it even lowers the
chances of heart attack this type of
thing
however it's fine people can say this
and medicines in the west tend to be
loaded up with alcohol because that was
Western tradition when people were sick
you give them alcohol get them into a
state of drunkenness they they forget
their trials and their problems their
physical ailments Etc this has been the
tradition of Western medicine whereas
Islamic tradition has not been that when
people were sick they were treated with
herbs and things like this they didn't
use alcohol this was not a standard
foundation for Western pharmace uh
Islamic pharmacology whereas Western
pharmace ology this this is how it
developed so alcohol has become a part
and parcel of Western life you know
children are Bor and drunk you know
drinking has reached such
proportions from the Islamic perspective
we say we weigh the harm and weigh the
benefits if we weigh the harm and the
benefits we can see that the harm far
outweighs the
benefit it has been shown
that the number of lives lost as a
result of drunk
driving violent and heinous
crimes when people are in states of
intoxication is a direct product of the
widespread access to alcohol in the
society if we realize this and we
compare it to the little benefits of
digestion and possibly reduction of
heart
attack this is
like an elephant and a mouse on scales
we cannot compare them the harm is far
greater in uh studies done in
America they pointed out that alcohol is
involved in some
40% of more of the more than 50,000
annual road traffic fatalities yearly
and possibly over 500,000 injuries to
persons and in more than more than $1
billion dollar worth of property
damage and based on published studies
royen summarized the percentage of
violent offenders who were drinking at
the time of the offense as follows
86% of homicide offenders 60% of sexual
offenders and up to 57% of men involved
in marital
violence so when we have statistics like
these how can we seek to make this
permissible it's estimated
that more than2 billion
dollar is is uh is
wasted as a result
of Health and Welfare Services being
forced to deal with alcoholics and their
families in the United States
alone crude projections of the annual
cost of alcoholism to the National
economy of the United States range
between 7 billion and 10 billion
do so when we see these kind of
Statistics then we can't talk about the
benefits in the second chapter of the
Quran verse 219 Allah said
there they ask you about intoxicant and
gambling say there is great harm in both
and benefit to people however the harm
in them is greater than the benefit so
it's recognize yes there's going to be
some benefit in all of these things but
the harm is far greater than and the
benefit and this is
why in the United States of America
between 1920 and
1933 alcohol was prohibited its
production and sale was banned United
States of America
recognized
however in the subsequent years
following
it the the these laws were repealed
repealed because of the fact that the
society the will to stop this thing
wasn't really there it is a drug it is a
serious drug and people
uh talk about you know cocaine and the
other drugs but this drug is you know
Society because it's so attached to it
it cannot deal with it as
a
major drug harmful drug to society which
should be prohibited totally what you
find is that ultimately its prohibition
will not be successful in a society