Islamic Law in Theory and History
In the eyes of the general public in the Western world, "Islamic law" is virtually synonymous with certain "canonical" punishments, punishments which (in liberal Western eyes) are harsh, backwards, even barbaric: floggings, severing of hands, beheadings, the stoning to death of adultresses. Ironically, it is precisely the reaction of Western sensibilities to these punishments which, perhaps, most recommends them to cynical politicians in the Muslim world.
Serious efforts by Muslim reformers and intellectuals to construct a modern system of Islamic criminal jurisprudence and penology, by contrast, receive essentially no attention in the Western mass media. This is neither surprising nor necessarily due to any anti Muslim prejudice. Legal theory and penology are, to the general public, stupifyingly dull subjects. Coverage even of American penology in the American popular press is confined largely to polemical debates about the death penalty, and cries for "getting tough" on the one side and prison condition "exposes" on the other side.
In fact, however, strictly criminal jurisprudence has received rather little attention from Islamic legal thinkers. There are two reasons for this. One is that the existing body of Shari'a ("Islamic law"), and Islamic jurisprudential tradition, is overwhelmingly directed towards what an American would call "civil law," for reasons to be discussed below. As will also be discussed below, these are the areas of greatest interest to legal theorists. Thus, Islamic criminal law has received rather little serious attention from modern Islamic legal thinkers as well as from their traditional forebears and penology even less. Thus, the field of "Islamic justice" in criminal law and penology has been largely left to politicians, not to jurists.
The outrage of Western reporters or human rights activists elevates the inf...