booke

political islam 357a society and beyond. Put differently, an apostasy from al-isl§m,which would have disastrous social and moral consequences,must be categorically prohibited by the legislator.C. Hence, the level of legislation:Apostasy occurs when legislation transgresses the upper andlower limits set by God in the Book. Islamic legislation means acivil, human legal system that operates within the limits ofAllah. The more civilised a society becomes the closer its lawsapproach a true legislation of limits, which represent the ÈanÊfiyyacharacter of al-isl§m. At the moment this is best realised in thosestates that possess a constitution and a parliamentary systembecause the more democratic a society is the more ÈanÊfic it iswith respect to its forms of legislation.Apostasy from al-Êm§nWe have learned that al-Êm§n combines the first shah§da (‘there is nogod but God’) with the second shah§da (‘MuÈammad is God’s messenger’).We identified the people who followed Noah, Abraham,Moses, Jacob, and Jesus as Muslim-Assenters, and the followers ofMuÈammad (ß) as Muslim-Believers. Some chapters of the Book areentirely dedicated to a discussion of issues relating to the Muslim-Believers, such as Sårat MuÈammad (47) and Sårat al-Anf§l (8). Itfollows from here that Judaism and Christianity are, like the ummaof Muslim-Believers, not religions but spiritual communities, as weare told by the Book (‘Never will the Jews or the Christians be satisfiedwith you unless you follow their [socioreligious community][millatahum] 26 …,’ Al-Baqara 2:120). A Muslim-Believer who leavesal-Êm§n, that is, apostacizes from following MuÈammad (ß) in order26Translation by AC, because most translators render millatahum as dÊnahum, i.e.,‘their religion’; AH and AhA say ‘their way’, MP: ‘their creed’, which still does notcapture MS’s meaning of milla as the socioreligious, institutionalised form of dÊn,religion. Ambros gives all three meanings: ‘creed, religion, religious community’(Ambros, Dictionary, 259), and the EQ confirms that milla denotes ‘religion’ or ‘sect’used for the Muslim communities as well as for communities of non-Muslims, includingthose prior to MuÈammad, see Encyclopaedia of the Qur"an, s.v. “Religious Pluralism.”401. The EI states that in the Ottoman period milla became the technical termfor ‘religious group’, denoting the internally autonomous religious groups within theOttoman Empire, such as the Jews, Armenians, Greek Orthodox, etc. This implieda semantic shift away from ‘religion’ in the sense of religio-moral belief, and it seemsthat MS uses the term in exclusively this religio-communal sense of ‘institutionalisedreligion’, see Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Milla”, vol. 7, 61.