"apostasy" is correct and usable in written English and it is a noun.
It is defined as "the abandonment or renunciation of a religious faith." Example sentence: Her family was horrified when she declared her apostasy and left the faith.
In Pakistan, laws against blasphemy and apostasy mean that the state takes an active part in the persecution and sometimes judicial murder of the unorthodox.
Jews may be atheist (many are: apostasy is a venerable Jewish tradition) and still Jews.
One death sentence has already been passed, though not carried out, on Hassan Yusefi-Eshkevari, an outspoken activist who has become the first cleric to face the gallows for apostasy since the revolution.In this section War, famine and oil in Sudan Boiling oil The nation nobody knows Will he, won't he, run again?
Under many sharia systems, apostasy is still punishable by death.
In parts of Malaysia where an Islamist party exercises local power, leaving the Muslim faith is a criminal offence; this reflects an Islamic legal tradition which at its harshest mandates the death penalty for apostasy.
Worse, they claim the right to declare takfir, or apostasy among Muslims.
Even in the West, he added, some Muslims apparently felt they would incur opprobrium if they broke ranks with their co-religionists; and some seemed to fear that relaxing the ban on apostasy would open the flood-gates to all modern notions of personal and intellectual freedom.
That is a severe limit on religious freedom.An insidious chargeBut liberty is abused in an equally insidious way when accusers conflate apostasy with heresy by alleging that somebody claiming to be a Muslim has erred by advancing false interpretations.
According to the Pew Research Centre, a think-tank, as of 2012, 14 of 20 Middle Eastern countries criminalise blasphemy and 12 of 20 make apostasy leaving Islam an offence.Restrictions bite not only on what is said in the media or public forums.
It is a country where allegations of apostasy departing from Islam, or merely straying slightly from the received interpretation of the faith have often been deployed as a lethal weapon in political power struggles.
Some columnists even called for the Islamic penalty for apostasy death to be imposed on the book's author and publishers.
