sort of "independent judiciary" independent not only of potentates' whims, but separate and isolated from the whole system of police, criminal procedure, and officially meted out punishments. Moreover, because this system was the only one having widespread prestige, the development of governmentally directed legal practice for criminal cases was fundamentally stunted. At best it became a rough sort of "ad hoc equity" (Hogdson, 1974: 349), not an established tradition of criminal justice.
Thus, when modern Islamic reformers have sought to create a system of "Islamic justice" for their criminal court systems, there has been no real tradition of shari'a criminal justice to which they could turn for guidance. Their task, instead, has been to create, out of a handful of references in the Qur'an and general Islamic concepts of justice, a new system of criminal justice that could meet Islamic standards and answer to the practical needs of a modern society. This task is necessarily very difficult. In contrast, it has proven very mu
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