Some thoughts on the article:
The article is written by members of the Ahmadiyya community, which makes it likely to be outright rejected by many Muslims, although such an action would be an obvious fallacy.
"The concept has therefore arisen from the conduct and policies of the post-Khalifat-i-Rashida1 Muslim governments of Baghdad."
It can be argued that this is untrue because history books detail the punishment to have been meted out during the times of the Rashiddun Khalifas too. However, those are only historical narratives and not hadiths which go through an exhaustive authentication process and therefore can not be used as basis for Islamic
Shariah.
"... the use of force for the spread of its ideology"
Although, this became a common practical implementation of this punishment, Muslims who are proponents of the punishment definitely do not see this as a method of forcing their ideology on others. They argue that the individual of his/her own free will chose Islam (and with it all of its laws), no one forced them into accepting the religion.
As
Surah Tauba is mentioned in the article, for information purposes I should also mention that some critics of the capital punishment for simple apostasy, argue that the people who were killed for changing their religion from Islam were on the basis of the fifth verse of this
Surah. Here, Muslims, after the passage of four months, are ordered to fight the idolaters who either still remain polytheist or have not vacated a specific geographical location (probably the area of
Hijaz). Some of them probably left while others converted to Islam. From these particular set of converts, if someone later apostatised, for
them was ascribed the capital punishment as that punishment had already been defined for them and had been stopped only because of their conversion.
Regarding a woman's apostasy, in classical Islamic
fiqh only the
Hanafi school of thought holds that women cannot be killed (although they still can be imprisoned for an indefinite time until they "repent"). The other three schools of thought don't have any such restriction. Additionally, according to some jurists, also in cases where apostate women have been involved in active violent rebellion, they can be killed.
"It should be remembered that these traditions were compiled some three to four centuries after the advent of Islam..."
This is pretty much false or at-least misleading. The final compilation and authentication process can be argued to have been completed about three centuries after the Prophet's death, but the first writing down of the traditions happened much before. From what I have read, we even have extant manuscripts of haidth books dating from the end of first century
Hijra. Additionally, the authentication (and therefore compiling) process is always an ongoing process, the latest, if I'm not mistaken, was Sheikh Albani's performed just a few decades ago.
"There are no two opinions regarding the accepted fact that whenever any so-called tradition attributed to the Holy Prophet of Islamsa contradicts any clear injunction of the Holy Quran, such a tradition is rejected as false and is not accepted as the word of the Holy Prophetsa."
As much as most Muslims would like to believe, this is not an "accepted fact". In early Muslim history, there were found to be apparent contradictions between what the Qur'an said and what was reported about the Prophet's actions (i.e. hadiths). When it came to widely accepted hadiths, a reconciliation was needed, which came in the form of the concept of abrogation of Qur'anic commandments by actions attributed to the Prophet in hadiths. This is pretty much the case for the issue of
stoning of adulterers.
Why was Maulana Maududi specifically criticised? Some can argue against the article as being slightly non-objective because of this.
Most other things in the article, I agree with, found to be irrelevant or don't know enough to comment upon. One interesting question that I should add is the odd nature of the fact that the Ikramah hadith accepted by so many scholars was apparently not accepted by Imam Muslim.
For a more thorough investigation of the relevant hadiths in this regard, I would recommend Dr. Ahmad Shafaat's
THE PUNISHMENT OF APOSTASY IN ISLAM, Part II: An Examination of the Ahadith on the Subject.
