Islam seems to become a problem for some Nigerians whenever a Muslim succeeds.
But when they need a trustworthy mechanic, trader, doctor, businessman or neighbour, suddenly religion doesn’t matter anymore.
Maybe the problem was never Islam.
Maybe the problem is the stereotype they were taught to believe.
A short clip like this needs context, because otherwise people will come away with a completely misleading picture of what Islam actually says.
Yes, there is an authentic hadith in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī in which the Prophet said: “Whoever changes his religion, kill him.” So Muslims should not deny or hide the hadith.
But notice something important: this is a discussion of riddah (apostasy) as a matter of Islamic law, not a command giving individual Muslims permission to murder anyone they personally believe has left Islam.
The classical Islamic legal tradition treated criminal punishments as matters for legitimate judicial authority, evidence and legal procedure, not something ordinary people enforce themselves. Another Bukhārī narration itself describes a man who had accepted Islam and then reverted, with the matter being brought before authorities.
There is also a wider Qur’anic discussion that cannot simply be erased from the conversation. Allah says:
“There is no compulsion in religion.” — Qur’an 2:256.
So there are several questions that must be separated:
What does the authentic hadith actually say?
What exactly constitutes riddah in Islamic jurisprudence?
What conditions must be established before a person is legally considered an apostate?
Who has the authority to establish and enforce a legal punishment?
What did the classical scholars understand the ruling to mean?
How have contemporary Muslim scholars interpreted the relationship between the apostasy hadith and Qur’anic verses concerning freedom of belief?
There is a legitimate scholarly discussion here. The classical tradition overwhelmingly treated apostasy as a legal offence with a worldly punishment, while contemporary Muslim scholarship contains different interpretations concerning whether the punishment applies to mere change of personal belief or to apostasy accompanied by rebellion/treason and other public harms.
So if you’re going to post a 30-second clip of a Sheikh saying “the Prophet said whoever leaves Islam should be killed,” at least give people the rest of the discussion.
Don’t misrepresent the hadith by denying it. But don’t misrepresent Islam by making it sound like every Muslim has been commanded to hunt down anyone who leaves the faith.
The difference between an authentic text, its juristic interpretation, its legal conditions, and what an ordinary individual is permitted to do is extremely important.