Accepting the Repentance of the Natural Apostate from the Perspective of the Quran and Sunnah, Considering the Sentence of Apostasy as Ta‘zir

Apostasy, meaning disbelief after faith, is one of the most controversial jurisprudential and legal issues and is divided into national and natural, each of which has a different ruling. There are different views about natural apostates in jurisprudential sources. Findings of the present research, using main and specialized sources based on descriptive-analytical method, show that all punishments are Ta‘zirs (offenses at the discretion of the judge), except those that according to authentic texts are Hodud (offenses fixed by the Quran or Hadith), such as adultery, sodomy, drinking alcohol, etc. The main issue in this research is accepting the repentance of the natural apostate in absolute terms, and the three sentences of execution, separation from wife and iddah of death (the waiting period after the death of husband), and the inheritance of heirs are overturned by the repentance of the natural apostate. In the meantime, we can refer to the views of Shahid Thani in Masalek and Lomah, Ghazi Ibn Barraj and Ibn Jonayd. One of the innovations of this research is the principle of Ta‘ziri nature of punishments and the lack of fixed punishments for all Ta‘zirs.