Qaradawi's admission

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Spiritual Guide to the Muslim Brotherhood and popular Al-Jazeera television personality, whose oeuvre of Sharia supremacism and traditional Islamic Jew-hatred inspired the Orwellian-named Al-Qaradawi Centre for Islamic Moderation and Renewal in Qatar, and The Arab Spring itself, has once again aired his Sharia-compliant views on apostasy.

As is his wont, Sheikh Qaradawi makes his opinions -- and their sound Islamic foundations -- pellucid:  

Qaradawi elaborated his learned Islamic views on apostasy in this essay, "Apostasy: Major and Minor," published April 13, 2006, and subdivided into the following sections:

Facing Apostasy: The Role of Muslims

Major and Minor Apostasy

Why Is Apostasy Severely Punished in Islam?

Ideological Guidelines

Refuting Objection of Intellectuals

Apostasy of Rulers

Hidden Apostasy

The crux of his argument is summarized here:

People who apostatize from Islam give up their loyalty to the Muslim nation and pay allegiance, heart and soul, to its enemies. This is denoted in the agreed-upon hadith that clarifies the kinds of people whose blood is lawful to shed and describes among those people the apostate, by saying, "Or someone who abandons his religion and the Muslim community" (Ibn Mas'ud).... Negligence in punishing apostates who proclaim and call for their apostasy jeopardizes the whole community and exposes it to afflictions whose consequences Almighty Allah only knows. This may lead to apostates' enticing other people, especially the gullible and those of weak faith, to join them. This, in turn, may lead to those apostates forming a group hostile to the Muslim nation and seeking the help of its enemies against it. In this way, the Muslim nation will fall into intellectual, social, and political disputes and disintegration, which may develop into bloody ones or even into a civil war that could destroy everything.

(Thanks to James Cohen who found the accompanying video, and Mamdu Shauki who translated and subtitled it)