Approach of Islamic Law to Criminal Justice This study seeks to identify th

The history and intellectual development of Muslim thought in the areas of criminal justice and penology are traced from early Islamicate times to the present day.1 The extensive development of Shari'a family, business, and other "civil" law through Islamicate history is contrasted to the general nonapplication of Shari'a criminal law by Muslim rulers who judged it overly lenient and procedurally demanding for their needs, or even their subjects' protection. Only with the advent of the Western challenge  which was felt in some parts of the Muslim world as early as the eighteenth century  was renewed attention given to the study of Islamic criminology and penology. At the present date, no serious effort to codify and systematize Islamic criminal law has yet been made. The future development of an Islamic legal code, and the West's response, will be an important element in shaping the future relations of the Muslim world and the West.

1This usage, borrowed from Hodgson (1974) distinguis

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e philosophical basis of natural law. Today, indeed, the above statement about the "nature" of a stone sounds strange to our ears. With respect to the world of living things, however, we still tend implicitly to think that way. It does not sound particularly strange or archaic to say that the natural purpose of an acorn is to grow into an oak tree (Hart 1975: 185). Along with the decline of teleology in the understanding of natural law, however, went a change in the understanding of what "natural law" itself meant. Increasingly, "natural law" no longer was seen as an expression of an "ought," but simply as an expression of an "is." In this respect, natural laws are today seen as quite fundamentally different from human laws. By definition, natural laws cannot be violated. If an astronomer finds that a planet is not where the law of gravity and planetary motions says it ought to be, he does not call NASA and request that a space mission be sent to ticket the planet for a violation, nor ask the International Astronomical Union for an injunction to order the planet back into its place. Nor does he conclude that the law itself is in error. Instead he concludes that our understanding of the law is in error, either be
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Islamic Law, Abbasid Caliphate, Shari'a Islamic, Islam Christianity, McConville Yerushalmi, Astronomical Union, Muhammad Muslim, Theory Law, Agrarian Age, Sassanid Persian, islamic law, criminal law, natural law, islamic legal, hodgson 1974, hadith reports, islamic justice, islamic jurisprudence, muslim world, western law, shari'a islamic law, criminal law penology, david brierley 1968, shari'a criminal law, criminal justice penology,
Approximate Word count = 9647
Approximate Pages = 39 (250 words per page)