Islamic Penology

Governmental Practice

We may now consider the application of Islamic principles in contemporary criminal law and penology. A number of Muslim (or Muslimdominated) 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 rightthinking Westerners  beheadings, stonings, amputations of hands. Actual, detailed information about the rates of imposition of various punishments, about criminalcourt 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 t

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s. Abdul Aziz ibn Sa'ud, the first King of Saudi Arabia, did not hesitate to use Western techniques and tools  often alongside more traditional institutions and practices  in establishing Saudi authority across most of the Arabian Peninsula. Thus, his original forces included both an army trained and equipped in Western fashion, and the Ikhwan, an armed force of Wahhabi zealots. (Once securely in power, the Ikhwan was suppressed as a threat, but the Wahhabi orientation of the state remained and remains strong; see the extensive account of modern Saudi Arabia's foundation in Lacey, 1982.) A similar parallelism operates today in Saudi legal, police, and security institutions. Saudi Arabia has a national police force which is trained and equipped in essentially Western fashion. This is a practical necessity; regular police existed neither in traditional Islamic society nor in any other premodern society (including that of the West; the first police force in the modern sense was the London metropolitan police founded by Sir Robert Peel, and still called "Bobbies," a term derived from Peel's first name). Alongside this, however, operates the Mutawa, the "Society for the Prevention of Vice and Encouragement
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Approximate Word count = 4015
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)

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