6. The apostate from Islam is to be executed, for his apostasy lays bare the corruption of his inner nature: his heart is empty of goodness and unreceptive to it. This ruling applies to men and women alike, for his disbelief is even graver than the disbelief of one who never accepted the faith in the first place.

7. Some scholars have taken this ḥadīth as evidence that a person who abandons the prayer is not put to death merely for neglecting it, because that offence is not one of the three specified.

Ibn al-Qayyim, however, writes in Kitāb al-Ṣalāh: “The ḥadīth of Ibn Masʿūd—‘The blood of a Muslim is not lawful except in one of three cases’—actually supports our view that the one who abandons the prayer is to be executed, for the Prophet counted among them ‘the one who leaves his religion,’ and the prayer is the greatest pillar of the religion. If we judge him to be a disbeliever, then he has indeed forsaken the religion altogether; and even if we do not deem him a disbeliever, he has still abandoned the very backbone of the faith.”

Second ḥadīth

ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd  reported that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “The first matter to be judged between people on the Day of Resurrection will concern bloodshed.”

Overall meaning

On the Day of Resurrection Allah, exalted is He, will call His creatures to account and then judge between them with perfect justice. When settling grievances He will begin with the most serious, and because bloodshed—the taking of human life—is the gravest of all injustices, it will be the first case to be adjudicated on that momentous Day.

Lessons derived from the ḥadīth

1. The immense sanctity of human life. Judgment commences with cases of bloodshed precisely because they outweigh every other type of wrongdoing among people. Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd said: “This ḥadīth magnifies the matter of bloodshed, for judgment begins with the most important matters. That is fitting, for sins are weighed either by the magnitude of the right violated or by the loss of the benefits attached to its preservation, and destroying the human frame is among the greatest of harms. After disbelief in Allah, nothing is more severe than that.”

2. Affirmation of the Day of Resurrection, the Reckoning, and the divine Judgment in which every soul will be recompensed.

3. This ḥadīth does not conflict with the narration recorded by the compilers of the Sunan from Abū Hurayrah, from the Prophet ﷺ.