As my regular readers know, I have spent some time writing about the question of apostasy in Islam. I have posed the question to some Muslims I know, both from abroad and in the US. As I have written before, Imam Muzammil Siddiqi of the Islamic Center of Orange County tries to play down the issue. He claims that Muslims are free to leave the religion as far as he is concerned. He does seem to have a problem with those who leave the faith and speak out publicly against Islam, which he considers traitorous though he did not explicitly claim that these persons should be killed in my exchanges with him. In the above link, I talked with him about the issue at Loyola Marymount University last year. I had a chance to follow up on the topic with him a few months later at Cerritos College in Norwalk, California.
Now comes another video featuring Yusuf al Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and a man considered one of the top experts on Islam in the world. I have posted some of his videos in which he calls the Holocaust "God's punishment for the Jews" and expresses his wish to die in battle fighting the 'Infidels". Just a few days ago, I mentioned his name as being quoted and suggested as a reference by a local imam, Jamaal Diwan of the Islamic Center of Irvine, who spoke at UC Irvine last week. Diwan gave the Friday Jumaah sermon during an open house hosted by the UCI Muslim Student Union. (To be clear, I did not hear Qaradawi's name mentioned at that event. Diwan has previously mentioned Qaradawi as a source on his (Diwan's) website, Shaykh's Corner.) In the below interview, Qaradawi discusses the penalty for apostasy.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/tB9UdXAP82o
I think we may safely assume that Qaradawi advocates death for apostates.
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