The Necessity of Expressing Islam after Puberty and the Insufficiency of Subordinate Islam in Realization of Apostasy

Apostasy is one of the challenges of monotheistic religions, and religion, while emphasizing the acceptance of Islam and faith, forbids disbelief and apostasy. A number of punishments have been considered for apostates in jurisprudential texts. Apostasy is not just a matter of words; its realization requires the existence of conditions of religious obligation, such as reason and will. However, maturity as one of the general conditions of religious obligation in the occurrence of apostasy is the place of disagreement among jurists. Among those who consider maturity as a condition for the realization of apostasy, some have limited themselves to religious maturity and they have not considered intellectual maturity and the expression of Islam after puberty. This issue is so important that its result affects directly the lives of newly matured juveniles and it can put an end to doubts and disagreements about not observing of the rights of this group in Islam. The result of the research shows that maturity is a necessary but not enough condition in the realization of apostasy, and the purpose of Islam in this matter is true Islam; the subordinate Islam alone is not enough. The present research has been done in a descriptive-analytical method with reference to library sources.