Ruling on one who is coerced into disbelief but remains steadfast until he is killed
122 – Under the same heading falls the person who is forced to renounce his faith yet endures until he is killed, refusing to utter any word of disbelief. Such a man is like the combatant whom the enemy fights until he is slain because he will not surrender. By contrast, the one who voices words of disbelief with his tongue while his heart stays firm in faith resembles the captive who has yielded to the enemy.1
123 – If, from the outset, he was the one who commanded and forbade (i.e., the authority who took the initiative), his status is that of the fighter who initiates the struggle.
124 – Whenever the first course—remaining silent and facing death—upholds faith more decisively and humiliates disbelief more thoroughly, it is the superior path.
125 – Indeed, it can become obligatory when abandoning that stance would cause faith to vanish from people’s hearts and disbelief to prevail over them; that is the very trial (fitnah), and fitnah is worse than killing.
126 – Thus, if sparing one’s life would lead to a degree of disbelief that being killed would not, and if being killed would secure a degree of faith that sparing one’s life would not, then choosing death may at times be obligatory and at other times meritorious.
127 – In many cases the threat is merely a tactic of intimidation, and one must persevere through it.
128 – Allah the Exalted says: “They ask you about fighting in the sacred month. Say: ‘Fighting in it is a grave matter; yet to hinder people from the path of Allah, to deny Him, to bar access to the Sacred Mosque, and to expel its people from it are graver in the sight of Allah. And persecution is worse than killing. They will not cease fighting you until they turn you away from your religion—if they can. And whoever among you turns back from his religion…’” (Quran 2:217)