Apostasy in Islam

"Narrated Ikrima: Ali burnt some people and this news reached Ibn Abbas, who said, "Had I been in his place I would not have burnt them, as the Prophet said, Dont punish (anybody) with Allahs Punishment. No doubt, I would have killed them, for the Prophet said, If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him."

"An apostate is to be imprisoned for three days, within which time if he return to the faith, it is well: but if not, he must be slain.—It is recorded in the Jama Sagbeer that "an exposition of the faith is to be laid before an apostate, and if he refuse the faith, he must be slain:"—and with respect to what is above stated, that "he is to be imprisoned for three days," it only implies that if he require a delay, three days may be granted him, as such is the term generally admitted and allowed for the purpose of consideration."

"They long that ye should disbelieve even as they disbelieve, that ye may be upon a level (with them). So choose not friends from them till they forsake their homes in the way of Allah; if they turn back (to enmity) then take them and kill them wherever ye find them, and choose no friend nor helper from among them,"

"Sunan Ibn Majah 1:4:795 "Let men desist from failing to attend the congregation, otherwise I will burn their houses down"

"In all 6,236 verses of the Quran, there is not a single verse calling on Muslims to silence blasphemers by force. Not in 1989, when Khomeini called on believers to kill Salman Rushdie, not in 1992, when the Egyptian intellectual Farag Foda was shot in Egypt, and still not in 2011. The Quran is immutable, and all it does is tell believers to respond to blasphemy with dignity. But the doctrine of death for apostasy had taken on a life of its own in the previous two decades and had made its way back to Pakistan. The cultural war that Khomeini had started with his fatwa had seriously restrained the boundaries of expression. Worse: in the time that had elapsed since the assassination of Foda in Cairo in 1992, the reference points had moved. No one called it terrorism anymore; no one mourned the victims as martyrs of the nation, as Foda had been mourned. Few dared to protest against those who killed in the name of Islam, afraid they would meet the same fate. Everything had shifted to the right; the old extremes were the new center—or so it felt."

"Ubaydullah went on searching until Islam came; then he migrated with the Muslims to taking with his wife who was a Muslim. Umm Habiba, d. Abu Sufyan. When he arrived there he adopted Christianity, parted from Islam and died a Christian in Abyssinia. Muhammad b. Jafar b. al-Zubayr told me that when he had become a Christian Ubaydullah as he passed the prophets companions who were there used to say: We see clearly, but your eyes are only half open, i.e We see, but you are only trying to see and cannot see yet. He used the word sasa because when a puppy tries to open its eyes to see, it only half sees. The other word faqqaha means to open the eyes."