| abstract | - Apostasy in Islam (Arabic: ارتداد, irtidād or ridda) is commonly defined as the rejection in word or deed of their former religion (apostasy) by a person who was previously a follower of Islam. The four major Sunni Madh'hab (schools of Islamic jurisprudence) all agree that apostasy is a sin as long as the individual does not do so in ignorance or under duress. They also differentiate between harmful apostasy and harmless apostasy (also known as major and minor apostasy). According to Wael Hallaq nothing of the apostasy law are derived from the Qur'an, although the jurist al-Shafi'i interpreted the Qu'ranic verse 2:217 as providing the main evidence for apostasy being a capital crime in Islam. Some Islamic jurists, such as Hanafi jurist Sarakhsi, Maliki jurist Abu al-Walid al-Baji, and Hanbali jurist Ibn Taymiyyah, and some contemporary Islamic jurists, such as Shafi`i Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa and Shi'a Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, argued or issued fatwas that either the changing of religion is not punishable or is only punishable under restricted circumstances Some groups within Islam such as the Shi'a Ismaili reject death for apostasy altogether. Some prominent contemporary examples of death sentences threatened or issued for apostasy include Salman Rushdie, who was condemned to death in 1989 by Ayatollah Khomeini, (ruler of Iran at the time) for his book The Satanic Verses; and Abdul Rahman, an Afghan convert to Christianity who was arrested and jailed on the charge of rejecting Islam in 2006 but later released as mentally incompetent.
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