Islamic Penology: Normative Standards versus
Governmental Practice
We may now consider the application of Islamic principles in contemporary criminal law and penology. A number of Muslim (or Muslim dominated) states have, in recent years, moved with great fanfare to adopt "Islamic law" and punishments. These include, most notably, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan. These states present us with most of our available evidence of the application, or attempted application, of Islamic criminal procedure and penology in the modern world.
Even for these states, the actual information available regarding procedure and punishments is extremely limited. There is considerable reportage in the Western press of the more dramatic impositions of Islamic punishments of the sort that shock right thinking Westerners beheadings, stonings, amputations of hands. Actual, detailed information about the rates of imposition of various punishments, about criminal court procedures, and other features about criminal procedure and penology are, however, largely lacking. In many cases this information may not have been compiled at all; even if it has been, it is not readily available to investigators. Thus, our information on actual governmental practices is largely anecdotal rather than systematic; as we shall see below, our information on "normative" practice is even more limited for historical reasons which were outlined in the previous chapter.
The first general point we must note is that, everywhere in the Islamic world, the application of an Islamic criminal law and penology is a very recent development. Between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, most of the Muslim world fell under either Western colonial rule or "neo colonial" Western cultural domination. Under Western rule or influence, pre existing legal systems were in large measure scrapped and replaced by Western styl...