Have a look at this telling research from Pew on blasphemy and apostasy laws around the world.
Khartoum says Meriam Ibrahim, a Christian, must hang for “apostasy.”
No one is known to have been executed for apostasy in Sudan since 1991, when it was made a capital crime.
It's for the crime of apostasy (in this case, writing a novel) that Ayatollah Khomenei sent death squads for Salman Rushdie.
For another year I fought the dread of my apostasy being discovered.
Also that hankering after an overt or practical effect seems to me an apostasy.
And he averted his head from her, as though from a temptation to apostasy.
Their commander purchased his life by apostasy and a treasonable oath.
Just then it was, if we mistake not, that their apostasy began.
So Peter tells us that the alternative is growth or apostasy.
late 14c., "renunciation, abandonment or neglect of established religion," from Latin apostasia, from later Greek apostasia, from apostasis "revolt, defection," literally "a standing off" (see apostate). General (non-religious) sense is attested from 1570s.
