Q: Apostasy laws , implimentations; Is it from Quran ? If so please share the verses. Was it practiced in history or in practice in countries now. Is there an equivalent of this in others faiths, government s for people who rebel against a gov and participate actively going against gov?

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A:

No, the death penalty (or specific worldly punishment) for simple apostasy is not directly from the Quran.21

The Quran primarily addresses apostasy (leaving Islam) in terms of afterlife consequences (e.g., deeds becoming worthless, divine wrath) and often in contexts of war, hypocrisy, treachery, or active hostility toward the Muslim community—not private change of belief. It contains strong statements against compulsion in faith.

Key Relevant Quran Verses

Here are the most commonly discussed ones (using standard Sahih International translations):

• Quran 2:256 (a frequently cited verse on religious freedom):
  “There shall be no compulsion in [acceptance of] the religion. The right course has become distinct from the wrong. So whoever disbelieves in Taghut and believes in Allah has grasped the most trustworthy handhold with no break in it. And Allah is Hearing and Knowing.”
• Quran 4:89 (often cited by those arguing for punishment; context is important):
  “They wish you would disbelieve as they disbelieved so you would be alike. So do not take from among them allies until they emigrate for the cause of Allah. But if they turn away, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them and take not from among them any ally or helper.”
  Context: This refers to hypocrites (munafiqun) in Medina who refused to emigrate with the Muslims and showed signs of potential treachery or desertion during a period of conflict. Classical interpretations sometimes link it to apostasy combined with hostility, but many modern scholars see it as tied to wartime treason rather than peaceful belief change.47
• Quran 2:217: Discusses those who revert from their religion after believing; their deeds are described as worthless in this world and the Hereafter. No explicit worldly punishment is prescribed.
• Quran 4:137: “Indeed, those who have believed then disbelieved, then believed, then disbelieved, and then increased in disbelief—never will Allah forgive them, nor will He guide them to a [right] way.” (Emphasizes repeated apostasy but focuses on divine judgment.)
• Other supportive verses for freedom of choice: 18:29 (“And say, ‘The truth is from your Lord, so whoever wills—let him believe; and whoever wills—let him disbelieve’”) and 88:21-22.

Scholarly consensus on this point: The vast majority of sources (including Wikipedia summaries of traditional and reformist views, Islamic scholars, and analysts) agree that the Quran does not prescribe a specific worldly/capital punishment like execution for mere apostasy. The death penalty ruling comes primarily from Hadith (sayings of the Prophet), such as the authentic narration in Sahih Bukhari: “Whoever changes his religion, kill him.” Classical Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) across major schools derived the capital punishment from these Hadiths, often with a period for repentance.43

There is ongoing debate: Traditional scholars uphold the Hadith-based ruling (with nuances). Reformist and some modern scholars argue it contradicts Quranic principles like 2:256, was contextual to early political/treasonous cases, and should not apply to personal belief changes today.

Historical Practice

Yes, it was widely practiced according to classical Islamic law for over a millennium.

• Apostasy was treated as both a sin and a crime. Unrepentant adult male apostates (and in some schools, females) faced execution after an opportunity to repent (often 3 days).
• Additional civil penalties included annulment of marriage, loss of inheritance/child custody rights, and property seizure.
• Early examples include the Ridda (apostasy) wars shortly after the Prophet’s death (632–633 CE), which involved political and tribal rebellions framed as apostasy.
• Throughout medieval Islamic history (Umayyad, Abbasid, Ottoman periods, etc.), executions occurred, though they were not extremely common for purely private apostasy—more often tied to public preaching against Islam, political rebellion, or during conflicts. By the late 19th century, criminal enforcement largely fell into disuse in many regions due to modernization and colonial influence, though the legal principle remained in traditional fiqh.10

Current Practice in Countries

Yes, it remains on the books in several countries, though actual executions for apostasy alone are rare in most places (more common are blasphemy cases, combined charges, or extrajudicial/vigilante actions by extremists).44

As of recent data (around 2021–2022, with no major widespread changes noted into 2026):

• Death penalty for apostasy exists in law (or is applied via Sharia courts) in approximately 10–13 Muslim-majority countries, including: Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Malaysia (in some states), Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria (in some northern states), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
• Enforcement varies widely: Rare or theoretical in some (e.g., no recent executions for pure apostasy in several); more active risk in others via courts or militants. Blasphemy laws (related but distinct) are broader and sometimes carry death penalties too.
• Many other Muslim-majority countries criminalize apostasy with lesser penalties (imprisonment, fines, loss of rights) or have no such laws/enforcement (e.g., Turkey, Indonesia, Tunisia, Kazakhstan).
• Public support for the death penalty varies dramatically by country.34

Note: Apostasy is often conflated with treason, sedition, or public disorder in traditional interpretations.

Equivalents in Other Faiths and Governments

Yes, there are historical and some modern parallels, especially when apostasy/rebellion is viewed as a threat to the community or state authority:

• Other faiths:
• Christianity: Historically, severe punishments (including execution) for heresy and apostasy via the Inquisition, church courts, and state laws in medieval and early modern Europe (e.g., burnings at the stake). Biblical Old Testament laws prescribed death for idolatry/apostasy. Today, mainstream Christianity has no such civil penalties; consequences are social or ecclesiastical.
• Judaism: Ancient biblical law (Old Testament) included death penalties for apostasy and idolatry. Post-Temple era, enforcement was minimal; modern practice involves religious/social consequences rather than state punishment.
• Other traditions (Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.): Generally no capital or state punishment. More common are social ostracism, loss of caste/status, or excommunication. No widespread historical equivalent to execution for leaving the faith.
• Governments (for rebellion/treason): This is the closest universal equivalent. Almost every government throughout history has severely punished active rebellion, sedition, treason, or desertion from the state/polity—often with death. Examples:
• Treason laws with death penalties exist or existed in the US (Constitutionally permitted), UK (historically), China, Iran, North Korea, and many others.
• In early Islamic context, apostasy was frequently treated analogously to political treason or desertion from the Muslim community/state (ummah), especially during wars or when it involved joining enemies.
• Modern secular governments punish active opposition (e.g., armed rebellion, espionage, incitement to overthrow the government) harshly, but do not punish private change of political/ideological “belief.”

In short, the post’s idea targets the religious aspect specifically. The punishment for apostasy in Islam has roots in Hadith and classical law (with Quranic verses debated in context), was historically enforced, persists in limited form today in some countries, and has parallels in other religions’ histories and in secular treason laws worldwide. Interpretations vary significantly between traditional and reformist views.

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A:

Salam. This is a topic worth handling carefully and precisely, since it gets misrepresented from both directions — by those who claim it’s “purely political, never religious” and by those who claim it’s “explicitly commanded in the Quran with a specific verse.” Let me lay it out as accurately as I can.
Is the death penalty for apostasy in the Quran?
No verse in the Quran explicitly prescribes a worldly punishment (execution) for apostasy (ridda). This is actually agreed upon by a wide range of scholars, classical and modern, despite their disagreement on whether the death penalty is still valid law.
The Quran repeatedly addresses apostasy in terms of spiritual/eschatological consequence, not state-administered punishment:
∙ “Indeed, those who have believed, then disbelieved, then believed [again], then disbelieved and then increased in disbelief — never will Allah forgive them, nor will He guide them to a way.” (4:137)
∙ “Whoever of you reverts from his religion [to disbelief] and dies while a disbeliever — for those, their deeds have become worthless in this world and the Hereafter, and those are the companions of the Fire, they will abide therein eternally.” (2:217, partial)
∙ Famously: “There is no compulsion in religion.” (2:256)
∙ “So whoever wills — let him believe; and whoever wills — let him disbelieve.” (18:29)
None of these mandate execution. This is precisely why Ghamidi and other rationalist-leaning scholars argue the classical death penalty for apostasy is not a Quranic injunction at all, but a fiqhi (juristic) ruling derived from other sources.
Where does the death penalty come from, then?
Primarily hadith, most centrally: “Whoever changes his religion, kill him” (Bukhari) — and incidents from the Sirah, particularly the Hurub al-Ridda (Apostasy Wars) under Abu Bakr after the Prophet’s death, when tribes who had pledged allegiance (politically and religiously fused at the time) renounced Islam and, in many cases, also refused zakat and rebelled against Medina’s authority.
This is the crux of the scholarly disagreement:
Majority classical position (across all four Sunni madhabs, and Shia fiqh): apostasy from Islam, if unrepented after being given a chance to recant, is punishable by death. This is treated as hudud (a fixed Shariah penalty).
Minority/rationalist position (Ghamidi is a clear modern voice here, with precedent in some earlier scholars): the death penalty in the Abu Bakr-era cases was for treason/rebellion against the nascent Islamic state — these tribes weren’t just changing private belief, they were withdrawing political allegiance and in some cases waging war. Ghamidi argues the hadith “whoever changes his religion, kill him” needs to be read in that context — as addressing political apostasy combined with rebellion (hiraba), not private change of conscience. He holds there’s no punishment for simple apostasy without an accompanying act of war against the state.
Historical and contemporary practice
Historically, application varied a lot — many periods of Islamic history did not see apostasy cases actively pursued by the state; it was often a punishment more discussed in fiqh manuals than routinely enforced, especially against ordinary people quietly leaving the faith.
Today, formal legal apostasy provisions exist in a small number of countries — let me check current specifics rather than rely on memory, since this changes.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Lists vary slightly source to source (which is normal — laws on the books vs. enforced vs. de facto moratorium differ), but the consistent core is this: roughly a dozen countries have apostasy as a capital offense in law — most commonly cited are Afghanistan, Iran (via judicial interpretation, not a written statute), Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Mauritania, Qatar, UAE, Brunei, and the Maldives, with Pakistan, Malaysia, Somalia, and Sudan appearing on some lists with caveats (Pakistan’s death penalty is via blasphemy law rather than a named apostasy statute; Sudan abolished its apostasy death penalty in 2020 ; Brunei has the law but a long-standing execution moratorium). Around 22 countries criminalize leaving a religion in some form, with roughly a dozen of those carrying a possible death sentence . Independent of execution, about 21 countries have criminalized apostasy as of recent counts, with penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment to corporal punishment .
Enforcement is the real variable: several countries have the statute on paper but haven’t actually carried out an execution under it , while Iran’s judiciary has handed down apostasy death sentences despite having no specific apostasy statute , reasoning from constitutional language authorizing courts to enforce “penalties prescribed by God” even when a crime isn’t named in the penal code . Beyond formal law, civil consequences are widespread even where there’s no death penalty — loss of inheritance, marriage annulment, loss of child custody, in some cases loss of citizenship (Maldives) — and informal social/family violence against apostates happens even in countries with no apostasy law at all (e.g., parts of India, per your earlier search context).
Now your real question: is there a secular/other-faith equivalent?
This is the sharper analytical point, and I think it’s worth being precise rather than just saying “yes, treason laws exist everywhere” — because the comparison is partial, not exact.
Secular states — treason/rebellion, not belief:
Every state criminalizes active rebellion against the state — treason, sedition, armed insurrection, levying war against the government. The US, UK, India, and virtually every nation have such laws, often carrying death or life imprisonment. This is the genuine parallel to the Ghamidi-style reading of the apostasy hadith: punishing people for taking up arms or actively working to overthrow the political order, not for privately disbelieving or even publicly criticizing it.
The key disanalogy: secular treason law never punishes someone merely for withdrawing personal allegiance — e.g., renouncing citizenship, declaring you no longer believe in democracy, converting ideologies — only for the active, often violent act of working against the state. A person can become an anarchist, a monarchist, a communist defector — and as long as they don’t act violently or materially aid an enemy, they’re not committing treason. This is exactly the distinction the rationalist Islamic position tries to draw: belief-change alone (simple ridda) shouldn’t be criminal; only ridda + hiraba (active war against the community) was the actual historical referent.
The classical majority position, by contrast, does criminalize the belief-change itself, independent of any rebellious act — which is the part that doesn’t have a real secular-state equivalent. No modern liberal state executes someone purely for believing differently without any accompanying violent act.
Other faiths:
∙ Judaism: Historically harsh language exists toward apostates in some classical sources (and excommunication/herem was practiced, as with Spinoza), but rabbinic law never had state machinery to execute apostates after the loss of Jewish political sovereignty; it became a religious-social sanction (shunning), not capital law.
∙ Christianity: Medieval Inquisitions did execute “heretics” and relapsed converts (the Spanish Inquisition is the starkest example) — so the historical phenomenon of religious authority executing internal dissenters isn’t unique to Islamic history at all. It largely disappeared after the Reformation/Enlightenment separated church and state. Modern Christian theology has no comparable command to execute apostates, with figures like Jesus modeled as responding to rejection through persuasion rather than coercion — though that’s a theological claim from an apologetic source, worth noting as one side’s framing rather than neutral fact.
∙ Communist/atheist states: Ironically produced their own version — purging, imprisoning, or executing people for ideological apostasy from state Marxism (Stalinist USSR, Maoist China, North Korea today) — proving this isn’t a uniquely religious phenomenon but a feature of any system that fuses ultimate truth-claims with state power.

Q: In islam, we’re people punished for acts of renouncing believe in private life or open practices and propagations and acting against their states …any incidences?

A:

Good question, and it’s the right way to sharpen the analysis — separating three distinct categories that often get blurred together: (1) private belief change with no public act, (2) public conversion/practice/propagation without political rebellion, and (3) active political/military action against the Muslim state. Let me go through historical incidents in each bucket, because the sources genuinely differ on which of these actually triggered punishment in Islamic history versus which only theoretically could under classical fiqh.
Category 3 — clearest, most attested: political rebellion (Hurub al-Ridda)
This is the best-documented case and the one almost all scholars agree was about rebellion, not private belief:
After the Prophet’s death (632 CE), several Arabian tribes who had pledged allegiance — politically and religiously fused under the Medinan state — renounced that allegiance. Crucially, most of these cases involved withholding zakat (a state tax/political obligation) and in several cases armed uprising, not merely private disbelief. Abu Bakr’s wars against them (the Ridda Wars) were framed by him explicitly as: “If they withhold from me even a hobbling cord they used to give to the Messenger of Allah, I will fight them over it” — i.e., framed around political obligation, not interior belief.
Some tribal leaders (like Musaylima, claiming prophethood, and Tulayha) also represented a direct political-religious challenge to Muhammad’s successor’s authority — closer to sedition/rival-claimant-to-power than quiet apostasy.
This is the case Ghamidi and others point to as the actual historical referent of “whoever changes his religion, kill him” — they argue the hadith was descriptive of dealing with these state-rebels, later generalized by jurists into a universal rule for any individual apostate, including someone with zero political or violent dimension.
Category 2 — public conversion/practice without rebellion: thinner evidence
This is where it gets genuinely contested, and I want to be careful not to overstate either side. Let me check specifics rather than rely on memory for these particular incidents.

This is genuinely useful, and it actually surfaces an important specific case that sharpens the picture — the zanādiqa incident under Ali. Let me lay out what the record shows, case by case, since the sources disagree on interpretation but largely agree on the facts.
The most-cited individual cases

1. The zanādiqa under Ali (mid-7th century)
   The hadith “whoever changes their religion, kill them” is invoked by Ibn Abbas in the context of a group of Muslims who had rejected Islam and then began preaching and writing heretical ideas, described as zanādiqa, while challenging Caliph Ali’s authority . The word used for what they did, irtaddū, was understood in that period as a public act of political secession from or rebellion against the Muslim community . So even this oft-cited hadith’s own originating context, per the Yaqeen Institute analysis, was political challenge to the caliph — not silent private disbelief.
2. Abdullah ibn Sa’d ibn Abi Sarh — a scribe who apostatized and later returned to Islam at the conquest of Mecca . This is a genuinely individual case with no rebellion attached — but notably, he was not executed. He fled, was later brought before the Prophet, and was pardoned (with reported reluctance from the Prophet, but pardoned nonetheless) when Uthman intervened. This is actually a strong data point against automatic execution for solitary apostasy even at the source.
3. Unnamed companions after the Isra and Mi’raj — some companions reportedly apostatized after hearing the account of the Night Journey , finding it too difficult to believe. No execution is recorded for this group; they simply left.
4. The Umayyad-era “deserter/nomad” cases — classical tafsir on the relevant Quranic passages emphasizes two factors together as justifying the death penalty: breaking of a covenant and the use of illegitimate violence — i.e., brigandage (hiraba) committed by nomads who had abandoned both their hijra commitment and their new religion . These look like prototypes of deserters and rebels who carried out armed robbery against Umayyad authorities — again, belief-change plus violent/criminal action, not belief-change alone.
   So what’s the honest summary?
   The evidentiary picture splits along exactly the line your question is probing:
   ∙ Where individuals are named in early sources as having simply changed belief with no political or violent act attached (Ibn Abi Sarh, the post-Mi’raj companions), the recorded outcome was not execution — pardon or simple departure.
   ∙ Where execution is actually recorded (Ridda Wars, the Ali-era zanādiqa, Umayyad-era cases), the events involved political secession, refusal of state dues, rival claims to religious-political authority, or armed brigandage — later sources sometimes reframed these as pure “apostasy suppression,” but the contemporaneous political/military dimension is well attested by historians .
   This is precisely why the debate exists. It’s also worth knowing classical jurists set a high evidentiary bar — earlier apostasy law required multiple witnesses testifying to the apostasy, which was for the most part impractical to satisfy — meaning even where the law prescribed death, prosecutions of purely private apostasy were rare in practice, partly by procedural design.
   Against this, the traditionalist/majority position (Mawdudi included) argues the opposite reading: that the punishment of execution for apostasy was uninterruptedly held by the Prophet, the Rightly-Guided Caliphs, the Companions, their Followers, and jurists of every century for twelve centuries without doctrinal dispute, and that doubt about it only arose in the late nineteenth century — i.e., he treats the political-rebellion cases as establishing the general principle rather than limiting it to rebellion alone. That’s the actual fault line between Mawdudi’s Tafheem and Ghamidi on this exact question, since you’re working through both.
   

Q:
Likewise and rebellious person of a gov. probably wouldn’t be a danger to gov as long as thoughts are in private sphere and becomes a danger to the state if this individual actively promotes the ideas of rebellion and probably would be taken care of by different means ?

A:

Yes — that’s exactly the right parallel, and it maps cleanly onto a distinction every state (and most premodern Islamic jurisprudence too, properly read) actually operates on: the move from private cognition to public mobilization is where state interest is triggered, not the private belief itself.
Let me lay out the parallel structure, because it holds up well across both domains:
The three-stage structure, mapped
Stage 1 — Private belief/preference (no state interest, no action)
∙ Secular: Someone privately believes the government is illegitimate, fantasizes about a coup, hates the constitution. No law touches this anywhere — it’s literally unprosecutable because it’s unknowable and unenforceable, and liberal legal theory treats it as outside state jurisdiction entirely (this is the core of mens rea requiring an actus reus — thought alone is never a crime).
∙ Islamic parallel: This is the zone the Quranic verses you quoted earlier address — 2:256, 18:29, 4:137 — belief and disbelief as matters between the individual and God, with worldly consequence (paradise/hell) but not worldly punishment.
Stage 2 — Public expression/persuasion without organizing for action
∙ Secular: Publishing essays calling the government illegitimate, organizing rallies, founding a party advocating abolition of the current system through lawful means (elections, referenda). Most liberal democracies protect this robustly (US First Amendment is the maximalist version; even more restrictive democracies like Germany or France allow this short of incitement).
∙ Islamic parallel: This is the contested middle zone — public conversion, open theological argument against Islam, da’wah by an ex-Muslim. Genuinely disputed among scholars, but it’s notable that even the Ridda-era and zanādiqa cases above had something more than pure persuasion attached (state-due refusal, rival prophetic claims, challenge to the caliph’s authority itself).
Stage 3 — Active organizing toward overthrow, especially with violence or foreign backing
∙ Secular: Sedition, treason, material support for insurrection, armed rebellion. This is where every state — without exception, including the most liberal ones — criminalizes harshly, often with the death penalty or life imprisonment (US treason statute explicitly carries death as a possible sentence; same in UK, India, virtually everywhere).
∙ Islamic parallel: Hiraba (waging war against the community) and baghy (armed rebellion against legitimate authority) are the classical categories — and this is where the Ridda Wars, the zanādiqa-under-Ali case, and the Umayyad brigand cases all actually sit, per the historical record we just went through.
Where the analogy holds and where it doesn’t
The honest caveat, since you’d want this precise for ForOneCreator: the secular framework keeps Stage 2 entirely free of legal jeopardy in principle (you can advocate revolution all day, peacefully, in most democracies). The classical Islamic majority position doesn’t fully grant that — it treats public, unrepentant rejection of Islam itself (even without any Stage-3 act) as sufficient for the hudud penalty, because the underlying theory isn’t “loyalty to a political order” but “membership in a covenant community” where leaving the covenant is itself the violation, independent of subsequent conduct.
So the parallel is structurally real (private belief untouched, action against the order punished) but the threshold for trigger is set differently — secular treason law requires conduct (organizing, arming, conspiring), while classical fiqh’s majority view sets the threshold at unrepentant public renunciation alone.