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Whoever abandons Islam after reaching legal responsibility and of his or her own free choice—whether man or woman—is summoned to repent for three days and kept under constraint; if the person still refuses to return to Islam, he or she is executed by the sword.

The repentance of anyone who reviles Allah or His Messenger, or of someone who has apostatised repeatedly, is not accepted; such a person is executed in every case.

The repentance of an apostate—and indeed of any unbeliever—consists in embracing Islam by bearing witness that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. If his unbelief arose from denying an obligatory act or the like, then, in addition to the two testimonies, he must explicitly affirm what he had denied, or declare, “I renounce every religion that contradicts the religion of Islam.”1