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political islam 355Let us return to the problem of how to correctly define apostasy,and let us explore the following questions: What is apostasy? Whocan be called an apostate? Why does the Book mention the futility ofan apostate’s work in this life and the next without stipulating anactual legal punishment for the act of apostasy? Does this imply thatGod left it to the ruler, the judges, and the prevailing legal systemto determine the punishment for apostasy? Is the Prophet’s (ß) commandto kill an apostate in harmony with the divine intention asstated by the Book? Does apostasy mean that someone leaves a communityfor good? Can apostasy mean a revolt against a politicalruler, a government, or a state? Is political apostasy the same asreligious apostasy? And, finally, can any punishment for apostasy bejustified in the light of our demand for freedom of religion and freedomof speech?It is vital to answer these questions in order to sort out the messthat the traditional fuqah§" have left. It is more than evident that theywere unable to conceptually separate political dissent from religiousapostasy, as they constantly muddied the water with their religiousinterpretations and legal classifications of purely political events inthe history of Islam. They were never fully able to see the differencebetween an oath of allegiance to a political ruler or (political) systemand the religious witnessing of Allah, the Last Day, and the unity ofGod. In their work we see how they failed to assess the killing ofSa#Êd b. Jubayr by al-\ajj§j as a politically motivated murder (becauseal-\ajj§j regarded Ibn Jubayr’s disloyalty as a political affront thatmust be punished by death), 25 because they interpreted it as theruler’s legitimate punishment for heresy (and, thus, apostasy). Butpolitical apostasy/separatism, which may occur independently fromeither al-isl§m or al-Êman, should not be confused with religious apostasy,even though it has become fixed as such in the minds of mostArab-Muslims.25Al-\ajj§j b. Yåsuf, military commander under the caliph #Abd al-Malik b.Marw§n, defeated the troops of #Abd All§h Sa#Êd b. al-Zubayr during the siege ofMecca in 692 by which al-Zubayr’s sedition from the government in Damascus andhis reign as a counter-caliph ended, see al-•abarÊ, Ta"rÊkh al-rusul wa’l-mulåk, vol. 22‘The Marw§nid restoration’, translated and annotated by Everett K. Rowson(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989).