Islamic Law and Legal System/Vogel 2000
The hudūd are usually enumerated as the following crimes: adultery (sexual intercourse between a couple not married to each other), theft, wine-drinking, slander involving imputation of adultery, brigandage, and apostasy. All of these crimes are recognized in Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia has prosecuted cases for all of them.
Qu'oran
Now as for the man who steals and the woman who steals, cut off the hand of either of them in requital for what they have wrought, as a deterrent ordained by God: for God is almighty, wise. But as for him who repents after having thus done wrong, and makes amends, behold, God will accept his repentance: verily, God is much-forgiving, a dispenser of grace. [5:38?39]
As for the adulteress and the adulterer?flog each of them with a hundred stripes, and let not compassion with them keep you from this law of God, if you believe in God and the Last Day; and let a group of the believers witness their chastisement. [24:2]
On the authority of the sunna, the penalty of flogging set in the second verse applies only to the offender who has never married; for adulterers who are or have been married the punishment is stoning to death.
Qu'ran
As for those who accuse chaste women [of adultery], and then are unable to produce four witnesses, flog them with eighty stripes. [24:4]
This verse defines the hadd of slander involving a false accusation of adultery. This hadd was interpreted to mean that if an accuser of adultery cannot produce four witnesses?who, the law further provides, must each be male, of good character, and eyewitness to the very act of penetration?then he is guilty of slander. One can imagine the diffculty of obtaining this proof: scholars even claim that the offense of adultery has never been proved by means of witnesses. The offense of slander itself supports a pervasive Islamic norm against speaking ill of others, or attributing to them evil deeds without proof.
Over the eleven years between May 1981 and April 1992, a total of four executions by stoning and forty-five amputations for theft were carried out in Saudi Arabia, an average of one stoning every three years and four hand-amputations each year. Although offcial statistics of hadd crimes are not available, it is almost certain that current levels exceed historical averages; Saudis think that this is because their country is having a crime wave, and that in the past hudūd punishments were extremely rare.
(October 18, 1982 to October 6, 1983), for example, while there were 4,925 convictions for theft (the most common crime, at 31 percent of all crimes committed), only two hands were cut off, the rest being punished by ta'zīr punishments of lashes and imprisonment. In that same year, out of 659 convictions for adultery, sodomy, and sexual assault, no stoning at all was inflicted.
The second category of crime we consider, ta'zīr, ?moral correction? or ?chastisement, ? is the least developed type of crime in law but by far the most extensive in application. Ta'zīr covers all crimes for which no specific penalty is fixed by sharī'a.
For example, in Saudi Arabia a man was accused of sodomy, which, according to the Hanbalī view applied in Saudi Arabia, is the hadd of adultery, punishable by stoning. He made a complete, detailed confession in his own handwriting, but under trial for the hadd he retracted the confession and thus avoided the penalty of stoning. The case was referred to another court for trial as a ta'zīr crime. In that court, on the basis of the same confession, the man was sentenced to one year's imprisonment, with 65 lashes to be inflicted after six months and again at the end of his term.
The standard ta'zīr penalty is lashing, but scolding, public humiliation, cuffng, imprisonment, and, according to some scholars, fines are also possible punishments. All of these are accepted as valid in Saudi Arabia. Lashing in ta'zīr is not meant to be severe: although it causes bruises, it must not break the skin; the lasher's arm should not be extended, only cocked; the lash must be of moderate size. Lashing is excluded if it entails any risk of permanent injury or death.
There are certain specified ta'zīrcrimes that are, on special textual grounds, subject to the death penalty. Examples are sorcery, propagandizing for heresy, or spying by a Muslim for infidels
Executions siyāsatan have been a long-time practice of Saudi Arabian kings. They decree sentences without any formal trial, although usually after obtaining the approval of key 'ulamā'.
Examples from Saudi Arabia are the execution by firing squad, within days of complaint, of three members of a Saudi security force who exploited their authority to abduct and rape a Filipino man, and the execution of a man who killed his wife and children. In the first case, convicting the offenders of adultery (to which sodomy is assimilated) was regarded as too slow and uncertain a remedy given the offense to public peace and security they committed. In the second case there was no applicable severe fiqh penalty at all, since fiqh denies a right of retaliation against parents.
Through April 18, 1992 of this entire group, convictions for the hadd of hirāba, the hadd of ghīla (surreptitious killing), ta'zīr execution, and execution siyāsatan totalled 177. Nearly all of these culminated in beheading, two with crucifixions after beheading; the only other punishments were one death by shooting and four cases of amputation of an arm and the opposite leg. These 177 cases cover all capital punishments other than for adultery, apostasy, and ordinary murder, and therefore include all those implemented under Fatwā No. 85, whether in its abduction or its drug offenses arm.
On hearing evidence the judges were struck by the debauched, unrepentant, and recidivist attitude of the accused, though a young man. Only twenty-five years of age, he had nine previous convictions for drinking, sodomy, theft, and forgery. His mother testified against him, accusing him of adultery and irreligion. His incest victim gave birth. Very likely the judges took the case out of the adultery category because the penalty of stoning was unavailable, either because the offender had never been married and would thus be subject at most to only one hundred lashes, or because the offender's confession was inadequate to support the hadd. Instead the judges prescribed the ta'zīr death penalty ?to cut off his evil from society, to secure the general welfare, and to be an admonition to others.? The use of this penalty outside drug smuggling represents an extension of the fatwā, and a notable advance in 'ulamā' jurisdiction compared to traditional patterns. Death was by shooting, for an unexplained reason.
The king decides? that the punishment for the smuggler of drugs is death. This is because of the great corruption caused by smuggling of drugs
One year after Fatwā No. 138 announced death penalties for drugsmuggling, Saudi offcials claimed drug smuggling had decreased 40 percent and that ?the crime rate decreased 12%? in the Hijrī year 1407, ending August 1987. 171 Since then, reported rates of execution (including for murder) have been very high by international standards, certainly on a per capita basis: 111 executed in 1989, 17 in 1990, 26 in 1991, 66 in 1992, 88 in 1993, 53 in 1994, 192 in 1995, 69 in 1996, 122 in 1997, 29 in 1998, and 85 up to September 17, 1999. Amnesty International, opposed to all capital punishment, has repeatedly raised the issue with Saudi offcials.
In Saudi Arabia today, the hudūd penalties are inflicted before huge crowds in a public square immediately following the Friday noon prayers. No prior announcement is made and punishment may not be televised or photographed, but they are solemnly announced in the news afterwards, with details of the crimes and the court judgments.
While the punishments for theft and adultery are terrible, the others are also severe. The punishment for apostasy is death by beheading; for brigandage (roughly, highway robbery), either death (sometimes followed by crucifixion), cutting off one hand and the opposite foot, or exile (life imprisonment); for slander, eighty lashes; for wine-drinking, either forty or eighty lashes.
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Edited by ChiefKahuna at 09/22/2008 4:33 PM PDT
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Edited by ChiefKahuna at 09/22/2008 4:51 PM PDT
