In the present descriptive-analytical study, the classification of apostasy (“riddah”) as a ḥadd crime under the criminal laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran - grounded in Article 167 of the Constitution and Article 220 of the Islamic Penal Code (2013) - is critically reexamined under the title “A Reflection on the Ḥadd Nature of the Punishment for Apostasy”. The central question addressed is as follows: Why has an offense purportedly subject to the gravest punishment - namely, deprivation of life, the most fundamental and valuable human right - not been explicitly criminalized in worldly terms, with a clear and definitive sanction, in the Qur’an as the most authoritative revealed source? Although apostasy and its reprehensibility are mentioned repeatedly in numerous chapters and verses of the Qur’an, no explicit worldly punishment - particularly one possessing the clarity and determinacy characteristic of ḥadd penalties - has been unequivocally prescribed. This omission appears especially significant given that the protection of life (“Ḥifẓ al-Nafs”) constitutes one of the supreme objectives (“Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah”) of Islamic law. The findings of this study indicate that apostasy should be regarded as a taʿzīr offense rather than a ḥadd crime. In light of the occasion of revelation (“Shaʾn al-Nuzūl”) concerning the verse on “muḥārabah” (armed hostility) and the concluding phrase of the Prophetic tradition -“… and the one who abandons his religion and separates from the community” (“al-Tārik li-Dīnihi al-Mufāriq li-l-Jamāʿah”) - which qualifies the well-known hadith “Whoever changes his religion, kill him” (“man baddala dīnahu fa-uqtulūhu”), it may be inferred that where apostasy is accompanied by additional acts constituting offenses against public order, security, and social stability, the offender is subject to discretionary punishment (“taʿzīr”), except in cases involving the commission of homicide, where the principle of “al-Nafs bi-l-Nafs” (life for life) applies.