True Virtues

Burglary

Burglary refers to the criminal offense of breaking and entering a private location and stealing valuables. Secular countries typically implement prison sentences for burglars. In Islamic law, the burglar (saariq) is the one who breaks into and steals from a secure place a notable amount which belongs to someone. If he repents and returns the goods before he is apprehended then he is pardoned. But if he does not, then his hand is amputated [see Qur'an 5:38]. Which punishment is more effective for burglary? The secular punishments or the Islamic punishments?

Let us turn to some recent statistics from the United Nations survey of crime trends. According to statistics taken between 1998 and 2000, the United States has the greatest number of burglaries per year with 2,099,700. United Kingdom came second at 836,027. Australia came third with 436,865. If one scrolls all the way to end of the list, they will find that the country with the lowest number of burglaries is Saudi Arabia, with only 11!!!! Yes, you read that right. Only eleven burglaries in the entire country in an entire year!! Not two million like the US or eight hundred thousand like the UK. ONLY ELEVEN!

If we factor in the population and look and look at the number of burglaries per 1000 people, then US has 7.1, UK 13.8, Australia 21.7 and Saudi Arabia only .00042. This means that per capita, the US has 17,052 times MORE burglaries than Saudi. UK has 33,220 times MORE burglaries than Saudi. And Australia has 52,225 times MORE burglaries than Saudi. Would you rather live in a country like Saudi where burglary is practically non-existant, or a secular country that has not ten times more, or a hundred times more, but FIFTY THOUSAND times more burglaries per year??

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_bur_percap-crime-burglaries-per-capita

Therefore, we can conclude that the Islamic law on burglary is fifty thousand times more effective at reducing crime than secular laws. In a conference amongst Saudi scholars and western intellectuals, one of the Saudi scholars remarked

“I have been in this country for seven years”, he said, “and I never saw of heard of, any amputation of the hand for stealing. This is because the crime is extremely rare. So, all that remains of that punishment is its harshness, which has made it possible for those who are tempted to steal, to keep their hands whole. Formerly, when these regions were ruled by the french-inspired Penal Code, under the Ottoman Empire, pilgrims travelling between the two Holy Cities – Mecca and Medina, could not feel secure for their purse or their life, unless they had a strong escort.
But when this country became the Saudi Kingdom, the Qur’anic Law was enforced, crime immediately disappeared. A traveller, then, could journey, not only between the Holy Cities, but even from Al-Dahran on the Gulf to Jeddah on the Red Sea, and traverse a distance of more than one thousand and five hundred kilometres across the desert all alone in his private car, without harbouring any fear or worry about his life or property, be it worth millions of dollars, and he be a complete foreigner.”

Purpose of Punishments

In both secular and Islamic law, punishments serve many purposes for society including:

Security (both physical and moral) – they protect society from violence, corruption and injustice and remove dangerous offenders from public life
Deterrence – they discourage people from committing the crime out of fear of the punishment
Denunciation – they show that society condemns and abhors the crime
Retribution – in the case of a crime where there is a victim, it allows for justice to be carried on behalf of the victim
Remediation – they serve to expiate the sin of the offender, saving the individual from the more severe punishment in the afterlife

Due Process
In both Islamic and Secular law, criminals must be taken into custody and prosecuted by the courts according to due process. This means that their rights are respected and the punishment is not implemented against them unless their guilt is established. The Prophet said “Do not implement the punishments in the presence of doubt [as to the guilt of the accused].”

Murder
Murder refers to the criminal offense of premeditated homicide. Secular countries differ in their punishments for this offense; some prescribe imprisonment, others such as many US states, still prescribe the death penalty. In Islamic law, there are three possibilites: the victim’s family forgives the murderer, the victim’s family opts to receive blood money (diyah), or the murderer is executed (Qur’an 2:178).

Let us consider some international statistics from the UN survey on criminal trends, 1998-2000. Out of all the countries in the world, the two countries with the lowest murder rates are Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which both have Shari’ah courts for criminal law. These two countries have almost 200 times lower murder rates than Columbia and South Africa – two secular countries which have abolished the death penalty.

66% of all executions in the world occur in China, which had 1,067 executions in 1998. By comparison, the United States had 68 and Saudi Arabia had 29.

The effectiveness of the death penalty as a deterrent is something confirmed by many research publications. Here are seven such studies:

• (2003) Emory University Economics Department Chairman Hashem Dezhbakhsh and Emory Professors Paul Rubin and Joanna Shepherd state that “our results suggest that capital punishment has a strong deterrent effect. An increase in any of the probabilities — arrest, sentencing or execution — tends to reduce the crime rate. In particular, each execution results, on average, in eighteen fewer murders — with a margin of error of plus or minus 10.” (1) Their data base used nationwide data from 3,054 US counties from 1977-1996.
• (2003) University of Colorado (Denver) Economics Department Chairman Naci Mocan and Graduate Assistant R. Kaj Gottings found “a statistically significant relationship between executions, pardons and homicide. Specifically each additional execution reduces homicides by 5 to 6, and three additional pardons (commutations) generate 1 to 1.5 additional murders.” Their “data set contains detailed information on the entire 6,143 death sentences between 1977 and 1997. (2)
• (2001) University of Houston Professors Dale Cloninger and Roberto Marchesini, found that death penalty moratoriums contribute to more homicides. They found: “The (Texas) execution hiatus (in 1996), therefore, appears to have spared few, if any, condemned prisoners while the citizens of Texas experienced a net 90 (to as many as 150) additional innocent lives lost to homicide. Politicians contemplating moratoriums may wish to consider the possibility that a seemingly innocuous moratorium on executions could very well come at a heavy cost.” (3)
• (2001) SUNY (Buffalo) Professor Liu finds that legalizing the death penalty not only adds capital punishment as a deterrent but also increases the marginal productivity of other deterrence measures in reducing murder rates. “Abolishing the death penalty not only gets rid of a valuable deterrent, it also decreases the deterrent effect of other punishments.” “The deterrent effects of the certainty and severity of punishments on murder are greater in retentionist (death penalty) states than in abolition (non death penalty) states.” (4)
• (2003) Clemson U. Professor Shepherd found that each execution results, on average, in five fewer murders. Longer waits on death row reduce the deterrent effect. Therefore, recent legislation to shorten the time prior to execution should increase deterrence and thus save more innocent lives. Moratoriums and other delays should put more innocents at risk. In addition, capital punishment deters all kinds of murders, including crimes of passion and murders by intimates. Murders of both blacks and whites decrease after executions. (5)
• (2003) FCC economist Dr. Paul Zimmerman finds: “Specifically, it is estimated that each state execution deters somewhere between 3 and 25 murders per year (14 being the average). Assuming that the value of human life is approximately $5 million {i.e. the average of the range estimates provided by Viscussi (1993)}, our estimates imply that society avoids losing approximately $70 million per year on average at the current rate of execution all else equal.” The study used state level data from 1978 to 1997 for all 50 states (excluding Washington D.C.). (6) (2003) Emory University Economics Department Chairman Hashem Dezhbakhsh and Clemson U. Professor Shepherd found that “The results are boldly clear: executions deter murders and murder rates increase substantially during moratoriums. The results are consistent across before-and-after comparisons and regressions regardless of the data’s aggregation level, the time period, or the specific variable to measure executions.” (7)

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A topic that is frequently raised in order to present a distorted image of Islam is the subject of criminal punishments in the Shari’ah, or the Islamic penal law. In fact, for most non-muslims and many muslims the word “Shari’ah” first and foremost conjures images of such criminal punishments even though the Shari’ah encompasses guidance for all aspects of our lives. But in addition to focusing on this one aspect of Shari’ah, the critics go further by misrepresenting it and using cases that are not Islamic. In light of the media barrage of negativity, it becomes prudent for Muslims to clarify the reality of the Islamic penal law as well as illustrate the many benefits and wisdoms of this system over and above man-made systems.

Two categories of punishments

In Islamic law, there are two general categories of punishments: the Hudood and the Ta’zeer. Due to sensationalist media stereotypes, most people seem to know only of the hudood, even though it is the ta’zeer rulings which are fundamental to most cases with specialized circumstances.The hudood are those punishments which have been prescribed and fixed in Islam eg. murder, burglary, adultery, armed robbery, etc. These punishments have very specific and strict conditions to be met before they are implemented, and once these conditions are met the punishment must be implemented and cannot be increased or decreased.

The ta’zeer punishments are discretionary punishments for which no punishments have been prescribed in Islam eg. kidnapping, arson, drug smuggling, criminal negligence, shoplifting etc. Ta’zeer punishments are determined by the judicial authorities according to what is appropriate for the offense. It may include imprisonment, fines, or anything else. For example, the scholars of Saudi Arabia have fixed the death penalty as the punishment for drug smugglers who bring large quantities of drugs into the Islamic society.

Inshaa’Allah, this article series will remove the common confusion surrounding some of the hudood punishments.