Middle-class “Deendaar Muslim" marriages protocol with "nO-dOwRy-dEmAnDs"

Middle-class “Deendaar Muslim" marriages protocol with "nO-dOwRy-dEmAnDs":

Girl should be beautiful like a model. Height, weight, colour, features, etc... Even if the boy is the opposite!

She should be doctor or engineer. But should be a good cook too. And of-course, she should be "religious" but willing to compromise the Deen when required by in-laws or society, serve all the house members with a smile, etc! Plus she should not demand her sharaee rights too.

And since she didnt bring direct dowry, she should be willing to listen to the regular reminders and indirect taunts from the mother-in-law about it. 

Her father should be rich. Should have own house and other property in "good areas of city". Should give costly gifts from before time of engagement till death.

Give good parties before and after wedding.

High class wedding feast in a posh marriage hall is a must. Because no dowry demand you see.


All her siblings should be well educated and "well settled".

The boy's father may be having "sunnah beard and dress" and the boy also "religious" and has a beard too and are namazi. They are "against" all Dowry and biddat. They are regular in ijtemas. Listen to Dars etc. But the boy's mother or sister or aunt or grand-mother or some one in the family have some "Armaan" (desires) regarding the wedding. So they have to be "accommodated" and boy or his father cant say anything to stop any pre-wedding or post-wedding rusumaat of their ladies (without using the usual terminology to avoid being called as biddat) which will mean more expenses to the girl's father. You see this is just for the happiness of the family elders! So dont bring shariah in this issue please. Anyway we are all Deendaar people and belong to this or that jamaat or organisation too and we want to spread the Deen!

And some people also have condition that they wont hire a maid for doing house work since it’s against their “principles”! So, the doctor/engineer daughter in law should do that work too apart from her job!

So, these are different forms of indirect “halaal” dowry... Some people marry professional girls so that she can earn and give all her salary (another form of dowry) to her in-laws or husband.

Agreed that there is problem on the girl’s side too. But in Indian society, the boy's side is more responsible for this mess. They dont see the oppression they are doing directly and indirectly. This leads to a feminist type of reaction from girls when they see how their mothers and sisters and cousins and friends are suffering. The result will be a destruction of Islamic family system. The most annoying aspect of this is that people who are otherwise "good" and Deendar" do all this and still consider themselves good "Muslims". We urgently Need to create awareness about this aspect of Deen. Otherwise, such Partially "deendar" people will bring bad name to Deen itself more than the ‘non-practicing’ people. It’s a big question mark on the real social impact of all our Deeni organisations and Daiees. 

Social reality of our society is very ugly. Just some superficial Deeni symbols cannot hide it for long. It's our thinking and our desires that are rotten and unIslamic and based on jahiliyyah and kafir cultures. That’s why the entire marriage system is imbalanced, oppressive and exploitative. 

We need a complete change and radical reform in this aspect. A strong and uncompromising will to follow sunnat and shariat to the core in all aspects related to marriage, right from the beginning of selection of spouse to every aspect of our marital relations. We need our young men and women to be rebels who are willing to change themselves and the norms of the society with out caring what others in the family or society say.

Two types of Ikhtilaf (difference of opinion):

Two types of Ikhtilaf (differences of opinion):

We have to differentiate between valid differences of scholarly opinion between the recognised Madhahib which come up due to multiple possibilities in interpretations of texts & multiplicity of hadiths on the one hand and invalid misinterpretations and distortions of the Deen by either denying the clear ayat and ahadith or interpreting them in such a way that is either not possible linguistically or that goes against all principles of interpretation.

 If an individual scholar clearly denies agreed upon matters of belief or rejects Sahih Hadiths or distorts the traditional fiqh, then other scholars have a duty to warn about it since thats a serious matter and people may get misguided due to such a scholar. 

This is not sectarianism. This is preservation of the Deen and a duty of the Scholars which is crucial. Allāh’s Messenger (ﷺ) stated: “This knowledge will be carried by the trustworthy of every generation. They will expel from it the distortions of those who go to extremes, the lies of the falsifiers, and the interpretations of the ignorant.” (Authentically Reported by Ibn Qutaybah in ‘Uyūn Al-Akhbār 2/119, Al-Bayhaqī in As-Sunan Al-Kubrā 10/209, Al-Ājurrī in Ash-Sharī’ah no. 1-2, At-Tabrīzī in Mishkāt Al-Masābīh no. 248, Ibn Abdul-Barr in At-Tamhīd 1/59)

The responsibility of the common people is to stick to the general body of Ulama of their school of thought whether Shafi, Hanafi, Maliki or Hanbali and not follow those who go against the general scholarly consensus. The problem is people get impressed by good oratory skills and then defend their favourite speaker / Daiee even when they have problematic positions.

That's because, many people cannot identify problematic opinions of some famous writers or speakers. That's why such individuals have a large following of awaam. Informing about their pitfalls is a duty of those who know about the issue. It's an amanah. 

Just like when an individual doctor has a problematic treatment protocol which goes against the mainstream medical knowledge, then it's the duty of other doctors to warn the people against him. So, just because there's a controversy involving one doctor, patients cannot stop going to all doctors! Those who warn against him are not creating fitnah, rather he was the one who is creating fitnah and the others who pointed it out are only doing their duty and it points to their sincerity and well-wishing for the society. It also indicates that the system of medical practice is having effective and robust mechanism for preventing it's misuse and abuse by any erring individual. This mechanism should actually increase the credibility of the system and strengthen the trust of the people in it.

Female scholars in history vs Modern working women:

Female scholars in our history generally took the knowledge from their mahram relatives, who were scholars themselves, at home. And their numbers compared to the total number of scholars and Imams is small. 

A good example of women learning from their mahram relatives is Imam Ala' al-Din al-Samarqandi's daughter Fathima. Imam Al-Kasani was a student of the Hanafi legal scholar 'Ala' al-Din al-Samarqandi (died 1144), the author of Tuhfat al-Fuqaha'. Al-Samarqandi's daughter, Fatima, was also trained in Fiqh. Fatima al-Samarqandi was highly sought after for marriage. Fatima and her father only accepted Al-Kasani's proposal after he wrote Bada'i As-Sana'i as an explanation of Tuhfat Al-Fuqaha, and Bada'i As-Sana'i was accepted as a Bridal Gift for Fatima. This book is considered as one of the authoritative Hanafi fiqh books and is even today taught to fiqh students in madaris. 

However, such examples simply cannot be used to push the justification of modern universal female employment in factories and general offices. There have been some excellent fighters among sahabiat too that we read in history but it was not the norm for ladies to fight. Exceptions were there and will always be there and it cannot be used to generalise that for all. 

Ayesha siddiqua RA narrated 2100 ahadeeth in her 63 years of life. The Sahaba used to come and ask her from behind a curtain or used to write a letter asking the questions and she used to answer them by narrating the ahadeeth. It cannot be compared to the modern jobs that women do in any way. The female Hadith narrators (who were generally elderly in age) afterwards too used to listen to the ahadeeth from behind a curtain and give ijaza of that Hadeeth to the seekers who used to read out the Hadeeth loudly to her from behind a curtain. 

Their example simply doesn't justify modern women working in factories and general offices. 

Some people use the names of Hadith female narrators to make a claim that women used to learn and teach every where in society even in mixed gatherings. First of all we should know that every narrator of Hadith was not a scholar. Even common people used to memorize some ahadeeth and narrated to others. It doesn't make them scholars.

Islam doesnt discourage females from learning or teaching ilm but it has to be with the conditions stated by Shariah. Learning relevant basic Deeni knowledge is compulsory on every male and female. So definitely we need female scholars too to teach the women. 

Islam has a general scheme of social and family roles for males and females and it cannot be changed at our whims and to match the modern trends. The consequences of altering it will be disastrous. Let us keep all the genuine exceptions given in Shariah for women to work outside as exceptions without upsetting the divine balance.

Most of the Female Hadith transmitters were not scholars:

Most of the Female Hadith transmitters were not scholars:

"Due to the paucity of female authors in Islamic history, there has been a temptation to assume that any Muslim woman who was involved in hadith transmission was a scholar. 

Davidson thoroughly demolishes this assumption on the basis of his careful analysis of al-Sakhāwī’s (d. 902/1497) famous biographical dictionary, al-Ḍaw’ al-lāmi‘, and audition notices preserved in Damascus. 

He shows that a very small number of female transmitters were in fact scholars, such as Karīma al-Marwazi-yya (d. 463/1070) and Zaynab bt. al-Kamāl (d. 740/1339), which the vast majority of them were lay women. 

Part of his evidence for this argument is that these female transmitters were only sought out and audited when they were in their seventies and eighties, once their chains of transmission had become shorter than those of their contemporaries. Given that women who survive childbearing generally live longer than men, the Sunni quest for elevated chains of transmission presented long-lived women with an opportunity to become valued hadith transmitters. 

However, this same culture that valued elevation also did not demand that the transmitter be literate or a scholar, and this fact is reflected by Davidson’s finding that female transmitters were always passive participants in their audition sessions and rarely described as having scholarly credentials. 

In other words, a man read the hadith book out loud to the audience in the presence of the elderly female transmitter, like what we saw above in the case of al-Ḥajjār. This finding is especially devasting for a book such as Mohamad al-Nadawi’s al-Muḥaddithāt: The Women Scholars of Islam (Oxford 2007), because it means that the vast majority of women mentioned in it almost certainly were lay transmitters who lacked the basic credentials associated with Muslim scholarship." 

- Scott Lucas, Associate professor of Islamic Studies, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA, in his review of the book Carrying on the Tradition: A Social and Intellectual History of Hadith Transmission across a Thousand Years (BOSTON: BRILL, 2020) By GARRETT A. DAVIDSON in American Journal of Islam And Society 38:3-4 

https://www.ajis.org/index.php/ajiss/article/view/2992/2648

Why the Deeni Madrasas are the most important assests of the community and why we need to support them?

Why the Deeni Madrasas are the most important assets of the community and why we need to support them?

Madrasas are the most productive institutions today when we consider the amount the community spends on them (compared to other institutions) and their crucial services to the community. Madrasas play multiple roles. Our investment on them is almost totally from zakat which any how we have to give as a fardh. 

Apart from imparting free Islamic education to the poorest of the poor, the madrasas provide them free food and shelter for 8 to 10 years & with dignity. Many of these madrasas have orphans too making them the largest network of orphanages in the community. Madrasa system not only gives their students Taleem and academic certificates but also do their Deeni and akhlaqi tarbiyat & make them responsible & morally much better human beings. I don't know which modern schools do such fine deeni tarbiyat. All the Deeni services needed for the community are provided by the graduates of madaris whether it's the basic level like regular imamat of masajid, khateebs for Juma and Eid prayers, funeral services, teaching Quran to children, giving duroos in the masjids etc to the higher level roles like managing various community organisations, providing milli leadership and guiding the ummah in Deeni matters and the highest and most important role of preserving the knowledge of the Deen and passing it on to the future generations to safeguard the Deen till qiyamat and protecting the Deen from Tahreefaat and distortion. Basically it's the madaris and their graduates which keep the Deen alive in the community by acting as a link between the Deen and the masses.

There are different categories and levels of madaris just like in modern schools and colleges there are different levels. So definitely all madrasa graduates are not at the same level. The top madaris have produced and continue to produce some of the best Ulama whose erudition and authority is widely acclaimed in the Islamic world. Most of the milli leadership is comprised of Ulama from these madaris even today. In the matters of Deen, the modern educated people generally cannot compare with them in both ilm and taqwa. It's almost impossible for those like us who have studied under a secular educational system since childhood to be totally free from it's ill effects which have seeped in to our way of thinking, our priorities, our way of looking at the dunya, our weltanschauung & our response to various challenges of life. Those who studied the Deen in madrasa system don't have that spiritual and ideological disadvantage. Their minds and hearts are purer, more natural & aligned with Islam.

It's not an exaggeration, this is what one feels again and again when one sits with them. 

Even knowledge wise, the ilmi depth of the curriculum they teach in madrasas is way beyond what most of the modern Islamic schools teach. There is no comparison. One just needs to go through the books they teach to realise this.

Some exceptions are there everywhere. But we have to see the general picture.

Many people mock the madaris that they teach only by rote learning and that their syllabus is outdated.

We should know that the Memorisation based learning is done only at the level of Hifz of Quran and few initial Alim course subjects where one has to memorise Arabic grammar rules, Sarf and vocabulary. After that it's mostly an understanding based learning with some amount of necessary memorisation. Most of the Darse Nizami books are so voluminous that its impossible to do rote learning! 

Infact the darse nizami syllabus teaches Logic and philosophy too which teach critical, coherent and systematic thinking from a young age. Fiqh and Usool al fiqh are the pinnacle of rationality applied to Quran and Hadith for practical scenario application and problem solving. These skills are perfected at Ifta level to the maximum. 

We have a lot of misunderstandings about the madaris and their syllabi because we dont know much about it. I realised it all after studying these books with the ulama alhamdulillah. Many books I could simply not understand unless the teacher explained it repeatedly in class. All my previous extensive reading of general Islamic literature and listening to general bayans and lectures couldnt help me there. It's a totally different level. The Islamic intellectual tradition is quite strong and unique and no way less in-depth compared to modern subjects.

There is a wide gulf between the modern educated and madaris graduates. Misunderstandings are there on both sides and common Muslims tend to get biased also because of the image that western and Indian media have willfully created of the madaris and their education being outdated and useless and extremist, narrow minded etc, all Islamophobic tropes. We need to be careful in this. 

Ofcourse there is a room for improvement in the system of madaris we have today. And the Madrasa managements are very much aware of this. Many big madaris are infact teaching English, maths and computers to their students. But their major problem is they are not able to find proper teachers to teach these subjects due to low salaries the madaris can offer, apart from other difficulties. But slowly things are changing. The more we get involved with madaris and offer our help, the more they will improve and serve the community better. The increasingly complex challenges the community is facing from different directions makes it incumbent upon us to strengthen the madaris more so that they can prepare to meet the challenges better. InshaAllah.

(The author is a Medical Doctor who has completed traditional Alim course too)

Interesting dialogue between a great Sahabi and an educated woman who challenged his fatwa on women's cosmetic procedures:

Interesting dialogue between a great Sahabi and an educated woman who challenged his fatwa on women's cosmetic procedures:

Hazrat 'Abd Allah bin Mas'ud said:
Allah has cursed the woman who tattoo and the women who have themselves tattooed, the women who add false hair and the women who pluck hairs from their faces, the women who spaces between their teeth for beauty, changing what Allah has created.

When a woman of Banu Asad named Umm Ya'qub, who read the Qur'an heard it, she came to him and said: I have heard that you have cursed the women who tattoo, those have themselves tattooed, those who add false hair, those pluck hairs from their faces, and those who make spaces between their teeth, for changing what Allah has created.

He said: Why should I not curse those whom the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) had cursed and those who were mentioned in Allah's Book?

She said: I have read it from cover to cover and have not found in it.

He said: I swear by Allah, if you read it, you would have found it. He then recited: "What the Apostle has brought to you accept it, and what he has forbidden, refrain from it."

She said: I find some of these things in you wife.

He said: Enter (the house) and see.
She said: I then entered (the house) and came out.
He asked: What did you see ?
She said: I did not see (anything of that sort).
He said: Had it been so, she would not have been with us. 

-Sunan Abi Dawud 4169 (graded Sahih)

Subhan Allah, even today people argue similarly if they don't like a shariah ruling.

Speaking without knowledge:

Speaking without knowledge:

A descendent of the sahabi Abdullah bin Umar (RA) was asked about something that he did not have knowledge about, so Yahyā bin Sa’īd said to him:
‘By Allah, indeed it is a grave matter that the likes of you, a descendent of two Imāms of guidance – meaning Umar and Ibn Umar (RA)– is asked about a matter and you have no knowledge of it’. 

So he replied:

 ‘By Allah, more grave than that according to Allah, and to whoever reflects about Allah, is to speak without knowledge or to report on authority of one who is not trustworthy’.

-Sahih Muslim Hadith 34 of Muqaddimah.

Our Islamic activists and social media "Daees/scholars" should reflect on this before posting or commenting on every Islamic issue.

Global Hunger problem and it's Islamic solution:

Global Hunger problem and it's Islamic solution:

The Global Hunger Index 2021 has been released. Some of it's findings are shocking.
India stands at 101 out of 116 countries just near to Afghanistan which is at 103.
While our neighbours Pakistan is at 92, Nepal at 76, Bangladesh at 76, Myanmar at 71.

(See full global hunger index ranking here:
https://www.globalhungerindex.org/ranking.html )

It's indeed very sad, painful and shameful that so many of our brothers and sisters are suffering from hunger while we enjoy delicious food to our hearts fill & even shamefully throw out food regularly.

Millions going hungry is not due to food shortage or "over population". It's due to Food wastage by the rich, dumping extra food in the oceans by the capitalists to keep the prices high, improper distribution, selfishness, negligence & the world-order built on injustice & oppression.

An article in the Scientific American magazine revealed that reducing Food Wastage Can Feed the World as Globally 30% to 40% of food intended for human consumption is wasted while more than 800 million people go hungry every day.
(See detailed article here:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/massively-reducing-food-waste-could-feed-the-world/ )

The solutions to this global problem of hunger and food wastage are given by Islam:
“Eat – But waste not by excess: for God does not love the wasters.” (Qur’an, 6:141).
This command of the Quran is for the individuals as well as the business establishments & governments.

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ instructed that if a piece of food falls down, it should be picked up and any dirt should be removed from it, and it should be eaten.
The prophet ordered us not to leave anything in the plate and he said: "You do not know in which portion of your food Allah has put the Barakah (Blessing).

While Islam prohibits wasting food & over consumption and also it commands to feed the hungry.

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said,
“He who eats to satisfaction while his neighbour is hungry is not a believer.” (Baihaqi)

“A man asked the Prophet ﷺ ‘Which aspect of Islam is best?‘
He said, ‘FEEDING PEOPLE ...' (Bukhari)

The Prophet ﷺ said ,“FEED THE HUNGRY, visit the sick and free the captives” (Bukhari)

May Allah give good sense to humanity to follow His guidance. Aameen.

The Roots of Modernist objections on Prophet Ibrahim:

The Roots of Modernist objections on Prophet Ibrahim: 

The thing that blocks us from benefiting from the stories of Hazrat Ibrahim عليه السلام  (of leaving his wife & infant son in a desert on Allah's command and of his sacrificing his son) is the influence of modern intellectual ideas on our ‘aqida, i.e. what we think and believe to be true. The great equalizing push of secular liberalism means that we no longer see the prophets as being on the very top of a grand hierarchy, set up by God as a way to teach us how to be. We see them to be men, “just like us,” due to the liberal idea of the fundamental equality of all men and also because of modern movements in Islam that deemphasize concepts like adab (decorum) and the veneration of godly people. 

The more we see ourselves approaching their status, such that the gap between us and the divinely inspired prophets decreases in our eyes, the less we feel compelled to push ourselves to understand what Allah is getting at by telling their example.

When not compelled to move beyond our own realities to higher spiritual ones, we can then only interpret the actions of the prophets through our own inclinations and social understandings. 

With the equalizing push of secular liberalism comes a growing emphasis on the right of the human toward self- (and not divine) determination. We feel entitled to our own opinions and our own perceptions in a manner unlike any era of the human past. What this ultimately means is that the human, “rational,” way of understanding what is right and wrong takes precedence over any understanding that comes from God. And in this way, we are left completely unable to comprehend a subtle but critically important theological point: Allah is the One who determines what is Right and what is Wrong, whether you understand the reasoning behind His determinations or not. 

This point of ‘aqida is deeply connected to the idea of submission and slavehood to Allah. To restate it: according to the ‘aqida of Ahl al-Sunna wa al-Jama‘ah (the formal name of those who consider themselves to be “Sunni” Muslims), the meaning, or ultimate consequence, of any given action can only be determined by Allah Himself, the Lord and Master of all creation.[xii] Out of His Generosity to us, He has made it so that we can see the wisdom in many of His rulings. For example, it is not difficult for a human being to understand why murder is unlawful, why charity brings reward, and why slander is a sin. But sometimes religious rulings are not based on any rational sense (e.g. why must we pray five times a day, instead of four, or six?). And sometimes on rare occasions, when dealing directly with his prophets and not as commands to the generality of believers, Allah might even reverse the ruling so that it seems to go against reason in order to bring higher truths to light. 

Regarding these particular accounts of Sayyiduna Ibrahim (Allah grant him peace), we learn something great as far as the internal aspect of how we should be. The starkness of the action and the unapologeticness of Sayyiduna Ibrahim (Allah grant him peace) afterwards are signs to us of what our internal state should be with our Lord. As modern people, we have a desire to understand with our minds everything, but this sometimes clashes with the soul’s ability to submit to the divine call. As submitted Muslims, we might not understand the rationale behind every divine command, but we must do them anyway. Some believers manage to still act on the commands they don’t understand because they trust in His Wisdom and in the fact that He has promised that a believer’s good deeds will never go to waste (such deeds always result in even more good, both in this world and in the Next). Others, at an even higher level of iman, act simply because they understand the supreme rank of Allah as Lord, and so their attitude is: “We hear and we obey”[Quran 2:285] without hesitation and without needing an explanation. They are the perfectly submitted slaves of Allah, who see nothing before them except Him. 

-extracts from 'Ibrahim عَلَيْهِ ٱلسَّلَامُ: The Father of Supreme Devotion' by DR. FAREEHA KHAN 

https://thesilainitiative.org/modern-questions-grounded-answers/ibrahim-the-father-of-supreme-devotion/20201021/by-dr-fareeha-khan/#_edn17

Basic Principles of Takfir: when does a Muslim go out of the fold of Islam

Basic Principles of Takfir: 

By Mufti Muhammad Zubair Butt 

The issue of takfir (declaring someone a kafir) is an extremely delicate issue and should be approached with extreme caution. It is a grave sin to declare a Muslim to be kafir or murtad (apostate). The Holy Qur’an states: 

O you who believe! When you go in the cause of Allah, verify [the truth of all matters], and say not to anyone who greets you: “You are not a believer”; seeking the perishable goods of the worldly life for there are with Allah booties in abundance. Even as he is now, so were you yourselves before till Allah conferred on you His favours [i.e. guided you to Islam], therefore, be cautious. Indeed, Allah is Well-Aware of what you do. [4:94] 

It is reported on the authority of Ibn ‘Umar (R) that the Messenger of Allah sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam said: 

Any person who called his brother: Kafir, [has in fact done an act by which] one of them has returned with it. If it were so, as he asserted [then the unbelief was confirmed], but if it was not true, then it returned to him [who labelled his brother Muslim). [Sahih Muslim] 

However, just as it is a grave sin to declare a Muslim to be a kafir or an apostate, it is equally incorrect to consider a kafir to be a Muslim without due consideration to the erroneous beliefs he may hold. In this regard the Holy Qur’an states: 

Do you want to guide him whom Allah has made go astray? And he whom Allah has made to go astray, you will never find for him any way [of guidance]. [4:88] 

Therefore, before submitting a direct answer to your question, it is important to first discuss the basic principles according to which one who was previously a Muslim may be considered to be an apostate. There are two fundamental ways in which one who was previously a Muslim may be considered to be an apostate: 

One who was previously Muslim totally renounces Islam [ والعياذ بالله ] and adopts another religion such as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, etc. or denies the existence of Allah (SWT) entirely, or the concept of tawhid or denies the prophethood of Rasulullaah sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam. Such a person is undoubtedly an apostate. 

Although one who was previously Muslim does not renounce Islam and adopt another religion, nor deny the existence of Allah (SWT) or the concept of tawhid or the prophethood of Rasulullaah sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam, but adopts beliefs that amount to the denial of the text of the Holy Qur’an or the prophethood of Rasulullaah sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam. For example, such person denies an injunction established through a text of the Holy Qur’an that is definitive in its meaning or through a definitive mutawaatir hadith of Rasulullaah sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam. Such a person is also considered to be an apostate by the consensus of Muslims. 

To elucidate further, in the latter case, apostasy will only apply if one denies an absolute injunction ( الحكم القطعى ) that has been established from evidence that is unquestionably established قطعى الثبوت (qat‘i al-thubut) and unquestionable in its purport قطعى الدلالة (qat‘i aldilalah), i.e. it does not admit more than its one apparent meaning. This can be either through a text of the Holy Qur’an that is definitive in its purport or through a mutawaatir hadith (prophetic tradition that has been transmitted to us via indisputably authentic chains of authority) that is definitive in its purport. 

Then, if the knowledge of such absolute injunctions is widespread amongst the Muslim masses to the extent that one does not have to venture to any great length to acquire knowledge of them, such as the injunctions of Salaah, Zakaah, Hajj, and fasting, the prohibition of theft and the consumption of wine, such injunctions are referred to as ‘dharooriyyaat al-deen’ (essentials of deen). If the knowledge of such injunctions is not so wide spread, then although they are absolute injunctions there are not referred to as ‘dharooriyyaat al-deen’ (essentials of deen). The difference in the ruling between the two is that the denial of those absolute injunctions that are also from the ‘dharooriyyaat al-deen’ (essentials of deen) immediately renders one apostate according to the consensus of the Muslims. Ignorance is not considered to be an excuse, and any other divergent interpretation is unacceptable. With regards to those absolute injunctions whose knowledge is not widespread amongst the Muslim masses to the extent mentioned above, denial of such injunctions will not immediately render one an apostate. Instead, one will be made aware that the injunction in question is an absolute injunction that has been established from evidence that is unquestionably established قطعى الثبوت (qat‘i al-thubut) and unquestionable in its purport قطعى الدلالة (qat‘i aldilalah). If one still continues in one’s denial, one will be considered an apostate. 

However, if one does not deny such injunctions, even if one’s practice is to the contrary, although one will be considered a transgressor, one will not be declared an apostate. 

In short, just as renouncing Islam and adopting another religion is apostasy, in the very same manner, to deny an absolute injunction, or offer an interpretation that is contrary to the established interpretation is also apostasy. The latter form of apostasy is referred to in the Qur’an as Ilhaad: 

Indeed, those who deviate in Our verses [by attributing self assumed meanings to them that are contrary to the clear and explicit meanings recognised by the ummah and that change the intention of the Holy Qur’an in it’s entirety] are not hidden from Us. [41:40] 

The scholars of scholastic theology and jurisprudence refer to such apostasy as baatiniyyah and also zandaqah as ‘Allaamah Sa‘d al-Din al-Taftaazaani has done in Sharh al-Maqaasid. 

From: https://www.ilmgate.org/what-is-the-status-of-one-who-considers-homosexuality-to-be-permissible/