Grand Ayatollah Shirazi: Messenger of God, Commander of Faithful never attributed apostasy to anyone

The daily scholarly meeting of Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Sadiq al-Hosseini al-Shirazi was held on Sunday, the 22nd of Rabi al-Awwal. In this session, like the previous meetings, the Supreme Marja answered the questions of the attendees about various jurisprudence issues.

Grand Ayatollah Shirazi discussed the rulings of apostasy, and said: “The issue of apostasy is not a simple issue and one cannot easily attribute apostasy to anyone. Sometimes some cases that are thought to amount to apostasy are actually not apostasy. Rather, some believers are sensitive about certain beliefs, which prompts them to consider some cases to be apostasy, but careful consideration makes it clear that an instance of religious apostasy has not taken place.

His Eminence then pointed out to verse 137 of Surah al-Nisa: “Those who believed, then disbelieved, then believed again and disbelieved again,”. He said: During the time of the Messenger of God, even though some people believed and became unbelievers and then returned to faith again, the Messenger of God did not treat them as apostatic. Likewise, the Commander of the Faithful, peace be upon him, never treated those who fought him and drew their swords against him as apostatic, even those who insulted him. Even worse, they sometimes attributed infidelity to Amir al-Momineen, but the Honorable Imam did not treat them as infidels; rather he dealt with them as Muslims.

The Marja went on to say: A group of fuqaha, including the Late Marja, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad al-Shirazi, believed that if someone holds ideologically or theologically corrupted views, but does not spread them in society, we cannot apply the rulings of apostasy to them.