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

This study seeks to identify the major trends that have shaped the past history and present development of Shari'a ("Islamic Law") approaches to criminal justice and penology. It further attempts to show how the record of Islamic legal thought contrasts to the simplistic Western image of "Islamic law" as characterized by, or even limited to, harsh public punishments for minor offenses or sexual conduct of a sort no longer criminalized in the West.

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

Related Essays

HONOR CRIMES & THE JORDANIAN PENAL CODE Thi .... Islamic establishment adopts a legalistic approach to the .... well as the support of Islamic political parties .... Crimes Continues." WIN "Jordanian .... Excuses Murder .... (2801 11 )

Violent Extremism in the United States .... even though the threats from the Islamic fundamentalist terrorist .... Western nations wedded to a ....-based paradigm .... Whether to approach terrorism as a problem o .... (6487 26 )

Essay on Darfur & Essay on the World Bank This essay discus .... foreign governments that too tough an approach might deny .... a stand might usher in another Islamic fundamentalist government .... World Bank is vested by .... in its .... (5232 21 )

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP and EXECUTIVE ETHICS .... eye of the follower: "For the Iranian Islamic revolutionaries, Khomeini .... in acting ethically or within the ..... .... but instrumentalist in their approach, and that .... (3601 14 )

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

Category: Foreign - A