"For a very long lime the courts in British India have held without reservation and qualification that under all circumstances apostasy automatically and immediately puts an end to the married slate without any judicial proceedings, any decree of court, or any other ceremony. That has been the position which was taken up by the Courts. Now, there are three distinct views of Hanafi jurists on the point. One view which is attributed to the Bokhara jurists... The Bokhara jurists say that marriage is dissolved by apostasy. In fact, I should be more accurate in saying—I have got authority for that—that it is, according to the Bokhara view, not dissolved but suspended. The marriage is suspended but the wife is then kept in custody or confinement till she repents and embraces Islam again, and then she is induced to marry the husband, whose marriage was only suspended and not put an end to or cancelled. The second view is that on apostasy a married Muslim woman ceases to be the wife of her husband but becomes his bond-woman. One view, which is a sort of corollary to this view, is that she is not necessarily the bond-woman of her ex-husband but she becomes the bond-woman of the entire Muslim community and anybody can employ her as a bond-woman. The third view, that of the Ulema of Samarkand and Balkh, is that the marriage lie is not affected by such apostasy and that the woman still continues to be the wife of the husband. These are the three views."

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