The punishment for shirk and bid‘a

Question

Question: What is the Shari‘a ruling on those who knowingly commit shirk and bid‘a? Kindly give the answers with reference to the sayings of the Prophet ﷺ and the fiqh of Imam Abu Hanifa ﵀, with a chain of authority (sanad) and an explicit text (nass). Moreover, when someone forbids them, they reply: “It is certainly bad, it is forbidden, but it has been done since the time of our fathers and forefathers — how can it be abandoned?

Answer

Shirk is the greatest sin, and the Holy Qur’an threatens that it will not be forgiven. If there is an Islamic government and some Muslim commits shirk or kufr, as a result of which he becomes an apostate (murtadd), and he does not repent but, despite admonition, persists in his apostasy (irtidad), then the Islamic government will have him executed (qatl)

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

Preview. The full text opens with JavaScript enabled.