Islamic Law and Penology
CHAPTER V
This is an excerpt from the paper...
The present day emerges as one of the most important and creative in the history of Islamic law, and especially of the criminal justice and penal elements of Islamic law. The current wave of interest in an Islamic penology represents a practical consideration of possible Islamic solutions to enduring problems of just government and just criminal administration. Such an effort to meet Muslim ideals in practical government has hardly been seen since the first generations of the Muslim community. From the time of the Prophet, Islam has been a religion of faith in action. Islam does not seek to set religion and its ideals off in a separate mental chapel, set away from the rest of life. Instead, the symbol of Islam might be the prayer rug, the place of worship which the worshipper can carry with him through the course of his daily life. Islam teaches its believers to follow the path of righteousness day by day in their social relations with others. Islam thus has, in principle, a public and "political" component. And indeed, the early Muslim community was a political entity as well as a community of faith. Its law, Shari'a, evolved in the first instance as a practical law, designed to apply both religious principles and common sense to the problems from business disputes to family law to crime and punishment that arose in the community of the faithful. Because it is a practical law as well as a law rooted in religious principles,
. . .
, the safety of the public and the rights of the accused are protected in theory by the strictest of safeguards, while human rights abuses are widespread in practice. Western and Muslim differences in philosophy of criminal justice, and their differing views of what constitute appropriate penalties for particular crimes, thus might seem to be of little practical importance. The real problem of criminal justice and penology in the Third World, we suggested in the last chapter, is the problem of creating legitimate government.
Only those governments which are firmly rooted in the beliefs and ideals of the people they govern can ever hope to adhere to high judicial standards. For unstable governments, justice must always take second place to security. We suggested, therefore, that the spread of Islamic government though the Muslim world would tend to favor the improvement of human rights conditions in the long run. Even where Western critics might disagree with certain elements of Islamic criminal law, most would greatly prefer to see a legal system that called for strict norms of procedure and high standards of evidence in preference to the arbitrary police power commonly found in the Middle East today.
Yet
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Islam Caliphate, Western Muslim, Westerners Muslims, Prophet Islam, Western Muslims, West Westernized, Prophet Muhammad, West Muslims, Third World, Middle East, islamic law, muslim world, criminal justice, muslim community, westerners muslims, criminal law, criminal justice penology, justice penology, middle east, western muslim, islamic legal, islamic criminal justice, saudi publishing house, muslim world west, penology criminal law,
Approximate Word count = 3764
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)
More Essays on Islamic Law and Penology
CHAPTER V
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
