Ruling on Cutting Off One's Family Because They Abandoned Prayer

Question

May Allah bless you and magnify your reward. Also: what is the ruling of the Sharia, in your view, Shaykh Muhammad, on leaving my family and boycotting them because of their sins and their abandonment of prayer and other obligations? We hope for a beneficial answer.

Answer (English translation)

The Shaykh:

There is no doubt that one's family and relatives have a right upon a person — even if they are disbelievers, per the saying of Allah the Exalted: [We have enjoined upon man kindness to his parents; his mother carried him in weakness upon weakness, and his weaning is in two years. Be grateful to Me and to your parents; to Me is the destination. But if they strive to make you associate with Me that of which you have no knowledge, do not obey them, but accompany them in this world kindly] (Surah Luqman 31:14-15).

However, these family members who do not pray are considered apostates from Islam, because whoever does not pray is a disbeliever — as indicated by the Book of Allah, the Sunnah of His Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), and the statements of the Companions (may Allah be pleased with them); indeed some scholars have reported consensus on this. If they abandon the prayer, they have apostatized from the religion of Islam, and it is not permissible for a person to mix with them — except for the purpose of giving sincere advice: making clear to them that he is advising them, and clarifying to them the disgrace and shame of this apostasy in the Hereafter, in the hope that they repent. If they persist, then they have no right over him, and they must be shunned and boycotted. But I ask Allah the Exalted to return these people and others afflicted by this great trial to Islam, so that they fulfill the prayers and other duties Allah has obligated upon them.

Question: this listener Majdi Abd al-Ghani from Cairo asks Shaykh Salih about a question that has in fact recurred many times.

The Shaykh:

It should be known that the apostate from Islam is more severe than an original disbeliever, because an original disbeliever is left upon the religion he follows even if it is false, whereas the apostate is not left upon his state: he is ordered to return to Islam and to perform what he abandoned in disbelief, and if he does not, he must be executed. For this reason, if we had three people — a Jew, a Christian, and an apostate from Islam — and each slaughtered an animal, the slaughter of the Jew is lawful and the slaughter of the Christian is lawful, but the slaughter of the apostate is forbidden. From this we learn that he is more severe than the original disbeliever — even if we supposed this apostate embraced Christianity or Judaism, he would still not be left in that state.