liction of these punishments into a form of defiance of Western dominance. The rigorous punishment of sexual misconduct in particular (ranging from adultery to the wearing of revealing clothing by women) is a convenient way to score political points with a lower middle class to poor urban population which is not only offended in moral terms by these things, but which associates them socially with the nightclub culture of the Westernized rich and their foreign friends. Finally (as can be seen in American society as well), harsh punishments are a cheap and convenient "law and order" measure for politicians who cannot or will not take effective measures to reduce rates in crowded, anonymous cities.
A politician can thus proclaim his intention of imposing "Islamic law" on a country, and gain great publicity by carrying out a few heavily publicized canonical punishments. Yet he may take few if any measures to actually establish Islamic legal principles in any broader way to the criminal justice system. These principles call for high standards in the conduct of trials and the standards of testimony. An ambitious politician who proclaims "Islamic law" may likewise fail to take serious action in the general realm of family and commercial law which, much more than criminal law is central to the concepts and tradition of Islamic jurisprudence.
Therefore, before turning to examine comtemporary Islamic thought on criminal justice and penology, and the real or feigned application of Islamic principles to penology in present day Muslim countries, it is important to outline some of the principles which underlie Islamic jurisprudence, and to examine the historical development of law in the Islamic world. Very broadly, the development of Islamic jurisprudence can be divided into four periods. The first is the period of origination, which can be taken as comprising the time of the Prophet's life work, and the first few gener...