Abstract

The scholars of Ahl as-Sunnah, who are united in the view that sin will not nullify faith and other good deeds, dissented from opinion on the status of the deeds of the person who converted to Islam after his apostasy, in the first Muslim period. In general, Ḥanafī/Māturīdīs argued that those deeds would be in vain with direct apostasy, while Shāfiʽī/Ash'arīs also stipulated death for this purpose, and claimed that a person's previous deeds would not be lost with apostasy alone. Comprehensive interpretations on this issue have found a place for itself mostly in tafsir rather than disciplines such as kalam, fiqh and usûl. Here, while Ḥanafī/Māturīdīs grounds on verse 5/5 of the Surah al-Ma’idah, which only mentions that deeds will be in vain through apostasy; Shāfiʽī/Ash'arīs is based on verse 2/217 of Surah al-Baqarah, which connects this futility to death as apostasy. The parties made different inferences against each other over the relevant verses and gave various answers. The most fundamental point of disagreement among these was the question of whether the first verse, which is muṭlaq in terms of usūl, should be attributed to the second verse, which is in the position of muqayyad. While Ḥanafī/Māturīdīs objected to this process with the thought that the conditions for attributing muṭlaq to the muqayyad were not met in the relevant verses, Shāfiʽī/Ash'arīs, which took a more flexible stance on this issue, approved this attributing process within the framework of the conditions and accordingly reached their relevant views. When the parties evaluated the relevant verses, they made their explanations mostly in the explanation of the 2/217 verse of the Surah Baqarah, which is prior to the arrangement and is in the position of a muqayyad. Since Shāfiʽī/Ash'arī scholars are already based on the relevant verse, it is quite understandable that the place where they examine the subject is the interpretation of this divine word. Ḥanafī/Māturīdīs, on the other hand, examined the issue here in order to respond to the meaning attributed to the verse by Shāfiʽī/Ash'arīs. Shafi'i/Ash'aris based their judgments on one of the two verses, Surah Baqara, 2/217, as a requirement of attributing mutlaq to the muqayyad, and in fact, accepted a single verse as a criterion. On the other hand, Ḥanafī/Māturīdīs, made separate judgments from both of them, claiming that the conditions for attributing muṭlaq to the muqayyad, were not fulfilled in the two related verses. In this context, they concluded from the first verse that death as apostasy necessitates eternal disappointment, and from the second verse, apostasy absolutely wastes deeds. Here, the most typical result of the separation between the two sects emerges as to whether a person will repeat the pilgrimage, for example, he performed while he was a Muslim when he returns to Islam after apostasy. While the Shāfiʽī/Ash'arīs, who thought that deeds will be wasted only by death due to apostasy, did not consider it necessary to go on pilgrimage again, while Ḥanafī/Māturīdīs, who thought that deeds will be lost directly with apostasy even if death does not occur, held the person responsible for pilgrimage. In this study, it will be tried to explain the basic intellectual framework of the view advocated by the parties and the background of what kind of criticism they brought to their opponents.