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political islam 347‘By God, I will [definitely] fight those who separate betweenprayer and zak§t. By God, if they refuse [to pay even] a bridle,which they used to pay to the Messenger of God (ß), I will fightthem for their refusal." 13 If the ÈadÊth reported by Ibn #Abb§shad been such an approved and well-known statement of theProphet (ß), as it is now claimed, Abå Bakr would have surelyused it in his reply to #Umar in order to justify his persecutionof apostate tribes because it would have had much moreauthority than his own ijtih§d on this.b) The ÈadÊth has never been applied and turned into commonpractice (‘kill him’), neither during the time of the Prophet (ß)nor during the reign of the rightly guided caliphs. Those clans,tribes, and individuals, which al-ZamakhsharÊ lists, were notkilled because of the fact that they abandoned religion butbecause of the political consequences their apostasy had for thesafety and welfare of MuÈammad’s community at the time.This will be explained in detail below.2. All accounts of the first cases of apostasy start in the year ten of theHijra, after MuÈammad’s farewell pilgrimage. This includes theexegetical works on 2:217 and 5:54, and the treatment of apostasyby scholars of ÈadÊth, sÊra, akhb§r, and tar§jim—all of them seem todate the first cases of apostasy to the last year of MuÈammad’s life.Does this mean that before 632 there were no cases of apostasy?Of course there were many! We are told that it was then labelledas ‘hypocrisy’ (nif§q), not apostasy. #$"isha said: ‘the Messenger ofAllah (ß) died, and the Arabs apostacized, but it was [still] knownas hypocrisy’. 14 Also, al-ZamakhsharÊ’s list of apostates ends witha group that apostacized during the reign of #Umar. Does thismean that after his death in 644 there were no more cases of apostasy?Of course there were, but in the fiqh manuals they becamecategorised under different headings, for example, ßiy§l (assault),naq· al-bay#a (breach of the oath of allegiance), al-khuråj #an al-jum#a(secession from the community), al-zandaqa (heresy, ‘free thought’),raf· al-ã§#a ålÊ ’l-amr (disobedience and rebellion against those inauthority, political dissent), and others.13AÈmad b. al-\usayn Al-BayhaqÊ, Sunan al-SaghÊr ( Al-Manßårah: D§r al-Waf§,1989), vol. 2, 78 (ÈadÊth no. 1279).14Fakhr al-DÊn MuÈammad al-R§zÊ, Maf§tÊÈ al-ghayb (n.p., n.d.), vol. 12, 18.