REPREHENSIBLE AUDACITY AND THE MUSLIM’S STANCE ON SHARIA PUNISHMENTS An article written by Dr. Abdul Karim Zaidan in response to an article published in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai Al-Amam in 1978 in which the writer attacked the legally prescribed penalties for the thief and adulterer . The article was published in the Iraqi Islamic Education Magazine, in its ninth issue (the twenty-first year), issued in Rabi` al-Thani 1399 AH / February 27, 1979 AD Note: The translation below may need revision... We welcome any correction by emailing us Written by Dr. Abdul Karim Zidan Preface 1) If boldness is commendable in many places, then it is certainly reprehensible if it is in accordance with the law of God, and it is even more ugly if it is about Islam in the abode of Islam and in the face of openness, the public and the Muslims are many. 5406 issued in Kuwait on 23 Dhu al-Hijjah 1398/23 November 1978 AD on its tenth page and under the title (Raise the voice and the hand as well) mention the following : The writer said (since the Minister of State for Legal Affairs presented the draft of the new penal code to the public opinion, and people have been discussing some of its articles, especially those related to the application of the punishment of amputating the hand of the thief and the flogging of the adulterer, with what such unfair punishments provoke in the human soul from disgust that may reach the point of freezing. And freezing is, in fact, a loss of feeling for everything that is going on in the external environment and the senses disabling from seeing the light of the bright truth, which makes a person who enters in such a state of freezing more like something that has no value or weight, and we do not think that there are those who accept to be placed forcibly. Or willingly in freezers or molds that do not belong to this age and are consistent with its data ... etc .). The legal ruling in this talk and its owner 2) This statement is a blatant disbelief that cannot be interpreted, because it describes the two punishments for amputating the hand of a thief and flogging an adulterer with unfairness . The author knows that these two punishments are among the punishments that God has prescribed in the Qur’an, and that God is impossible for him injustice . Also, the writer claims in his speech that these unfair punishments provoke disgust in the soul, and there is no doubt that this disgust aroused only in dark, infidel souls, but in good believing souls, only pleasure and human beings arise because they receive the law of God with consent and acceptance, and she says in the language of the case and the article (We heard and obeyed) Also, in this speech there is a blatant call to revolt against the law of God and to refuse to apply Sharia punishments on the grounds that they do not belong to this age . 3) If this statement is an outright infidelity, then its owner abandons Islam if he is a Muslim, and his covenant is invalidated if he is a non-Muslim - dhimmi or trustworthy - and with the apostasy his marriage is annulled if he is a wife and then he repents, otherwise he is killed. With the expiration of his covenant, if he is a dhimmi or trustworthy, his blood infallibility will disappear and he is not allowed to remain in the abode of Islam. These are established provisions in Islamic jurisprudence regarding the right of the apostate and the right of the dhimmi or the trustee if their covenant is broken . Defense of the writer 4) It may be said in defense of the writer :   A- He is mujtahid in what he said, and a mujtahid is rewarded if he made a mistake or was right .   B- Or he may be ignorant that his words lead him to apostasy, and the ignorant is excused until he knows, and with the possibility of ignorance the suspicion rises, and the boundaries are protected by doubts .   T- And the freedom of belief is safeguarded in Islam. The Almighty said (There is no compulsion in religion) and among the requirements of this freedom is freedom of opinion and its expression by both Muslims and non-Muslims . This defense was overruled 5) This defense was defective and rejected in the same sequence of paragraphs, so we say :   A- What the writer said does not come under the circle of ijtihad, because it is disbelief as I said: and because there is no ijtihad in the exposition of the text , and the texts are clear and many in the justice of God and the impossibility of injustice against him and his law. Islam .   B- Clinging to the ignorance of the writer in order to pay responsibility for him is not useful, because the established rule in Islamic jurisprudence is: ( Defending ignorance of the legal rulings in the abode of Islam is unacceptable ) and the meaning of this rule is that whoever wants to defend himself responsibility and not arrange the legal rulings on him in what he said or He did it under the pretext of his ignorance of the legal rulings while he resides in the abode of Islam. This payment is not accepted, and the Sharia rulings remain valid for him in what he says and does. If the plea is not accepted out of ignorance, then it is not suspicious to ward off the legitimate punishment .   T- Clinging to the freedom of belief does not help here, because the Muslim has committed himself to the rulings of Islam and not deviated from it, so if he breaks his commitment to breaking the basics of Islam, then he deserves the punishment established in Islamic law against anyone who breaches and breaks his commitment. In all the laws of this world, there are penalties that reach death for every citizen who commits some acts that are considered necessary for every citizen to abide by, such as espionage, for example, or for committing high treason for his country and so on. Islam, when the Muslim is blamed for what he says and is considered an apostate, and the rule of apostasy applies to him, but the Muslim is responsible for revoking what he committed to, and it is not correct in minds to push the responsibility on the pretext of freedom of opinion if this freedom or this opinion nullifies the commitment of what he committed to . If he joins the breach of the Muslim’s commitment to mocking the beliefs of Muslims and denigrating their commitment to the Sharia punishments and calling them to break with them, as stated in the writer’s words, then the Muslim’s offense from which this is issued is greater than a mere verbal apostasy that is devoid of publicity . As for the non-Muslim, who is a dhimmi who is trustworthy, he has no right to challenge and defame the Sharia of Islam, because he was not given the pledge of dhimmah or safety to challenge Islam, but he was given that on an explicit or implicit condition that he does not do so and has in return for that the freedom to reside in the abode of Islam, permanent or temporary, and he is not forced to Switch his creed . Muslim position on the Sharia punishments 6) And since I have explained the ruling of the Sharia in the words of the writer, I would like to explain the Muslim’s position on the Sharia punishments so that his faith will remain preserved and say : The Muslim, having believed in God as Lord, Islam is a religion, and Muhammad is a prophet and messenger , that his heart must embrace complete satisfaction, complete acceptance and absolute surrender to all that God Almighty has enacted, and that he believes in it with an unquestionable belief that it is right and right, and that what is absolutely contradicted by falsehood and that his satisfaction, acceptance and belief in it are not attached Knowing his rule and its usefulness, such a suspended faith does not benefit or makes a Muslim a Muslim . Sharia penalties and their advantages 7) Although the Muslim’s position on the Shari’a punishments and all what God has prescribed is what you have mentioned, this does not prevent the explanation of the wisdom of the Shari’a punishments and their characteristics and advantages, and that others do not condemn them with these characteristics and advantages, because this statement is a matter of increasing knowledge of the meanings and mysteries of Islam, and more Knowledge is what Islam has been assigned to, the Almighty said (Say: Lord, make me more knowledgeable). This statement is also a response to the suspicions of the invalidators, a refutation of them, a confirmation of the weak Muslims, and a means of salvation for those who are surrounded by suspicions of the invalidators. And this statement requires me to explain the following : Mercy is the basis of legal punishment 8) Sharia punishments are part of the Islamic law, and this honorable law is based on mercy, based on the Almighty’s saying (And we have not sent you except as a mercy for the worlds). That is why Imam Ibn Taymiyyah, may God have mercy on him, said about punishments that it prescribed a mercy from God to his servants . Mercy is meant to deliver benefit to people and ward off harm from them, and from their benefit and interest to facilitate a quiet life that helps them achieve the goal for which they were created, which is to worship God in the broad sense of worship, and this requires the right of their agreed necessary interests, which are preserving religion, soul, reason, blood, and money. This memorization is made possible by reforming souls from the inside on the basis of faith and Islamic belief, since with this internal reform souls are reformed, their evil is revealed to others, and a righteous and happy society is established that makes it easy for a Muslim to worship his Lord in the acceptable manner. However, souls do not benefit with this approach to reform, so they tend to commit crime and attack others, so there was a need for a way to correct them and prevent their aggression against others, so punishment was legislated in Islam. The legal punishment, then, was prescribed in the interest of the one who begged him to commit crime by preventing him from him, and in the interest of others he is prevented and prevented from attacking them.That is why the Mawardi jurist Al-Shafi’i said, while talking about the discretionary punishment, that he “agrees with limiting it and that it is a chastisement of reclamation and a rebuke . Justice legal punishment 9) The legal punishment is based on justice and equality, so there is no injustice against the perpetrator and no favoritism for the victim. The Almighty said (And the reward for a bad is as bad as it) is a name for when a person offends a bad one, and it enters into the meaning of the bad. Sharia punishments are greater than their obligations. Rather, it is a matter of short consideration, because equality between crime and punishment is not equivalent to equality between weights of tangible material things. Rather, it is an equality between the amount of disobedience and the harm that the crime carries and the punishment estimated for it. Appreciation, hudud punishments came, including punishment for theft and fornication. We must be assured of the fairness of this assessment and equality, and that the punishment in it is sufficient to deter the perpetrator and protect society from the evils of the perpetrators . Suspicions about the punishment for theft and fornication 10) Some of them said that the legal punishments in general, including the punishment for theft, which is cutting off the hand of the thief, and the punishment for adultery, which is his flogging or stoning, is characterized by cruelty and severity, amputation of organs, waste of human blood by flogging or stoning him, and confiscation of his freedom as he is punished for the act of adultery and all of these things are no longer appropriate for the modern era and its requirements. The time has come to put them aside, especially since the amputation of organs is to the detriment of society by disrupting some of its members from work and production ... until the last thing they said and say. We, in this word, do not want to be aware of all the garnished and camouflaged words they mobilized that do not promote those with insight, but rather we mentioned some of what they say, which is some of what the writer referred to, and we are now responding to these suspicions . Cruelty and severity in Sharia punishments 11) Punishment is not a prize or reward for a good deed until it is free of pain and distress, but rather a penalty for a harmful act committed by its owner in disobedience to his Creator, so this penalty must be sufficiently painful that it can deter those who beg for him to fall into the crime of theft. There is no doubt that this is achieved in the penalty for theft, and those who see otherwise must bring in their minds the image of the thief while he is walking in the cover of darkness, hidden from people, tearing the wall, breaking the lock, and branding weapons in the face of those who stand before him. To imagine the woman waking up with a grim thief’s face with arms in his hand and what might befall this miserable thief and turmoil that may lead to her life, and to imagine the children waking up in panic at the voice of their mother and seeing this frightening beast trampling or pushing them, and to imagine also what this thief’s action provokes. Of concern and turmoil among people, because the thief wants money and money is present in all of them, for they are exposed to his crime without discrimination.If they imagined this and others, they would have known with certainty that cutting the thief's hand is a completely fair and deterrent punishment for him and for his compliance . 12) Indeed, a witness to what we say, the punishment for amputation of the thief’s hand when it was applied in the past preserved the money and souls of people, and when it was abandoned and replaced by imprisonment, the number of thieves increased and the prison became a forum in which thieves meet and exchange their experiences in thefts, and that the graphical line of thefts and thieves is on the rise in all the countries that This penalty is abandoned . 13) As for the claim that this punishment involves amputation of a hand, the tendon of the organs is an old approach to punishment, and that it leads to the severing of the lump becoming a burden on society, this is a rash talk, because cutting the hand, which is a part of a person, is easier than cutting the head of a person, and cutting off the head of a person is found in laws Punishment, it is not surprising to cut off the hand, because cutting the part is easier than cutting the whole if its obligation is fulfilled . Flogging of an adulterer 14) As for the flogging of the adulterer and the fact that it wastes the human being, and exposes him to his freedom if he commits adultery with the consent of the other party, this is the words of someone who does not care about honor, morals, or building homes based on purity and chastity. The overarching statement regarding the punishment of flogging an adulterer and the response to this punishment is that Islam is keen on the cleanliness of society, its purity, the safety of symptoms, and the maintenance of morals. And if these matters are neither required nor desirable, their means are neither required nor desirable, and this is what the hearts of the objectors contain or their objection implies while they are not feeling . 15) Then the fornicator, by his disgraceful act, wasted his humanity and descended to a very low level, so he deserved to be felt by the whip after the voice of morals and the call of Islam did not sense him . As for the claim to confiscate the freedom of a person by punishing him for the act of adultery if it is done with consent and choice, then it is a false claim, because the offer is something that is not permissible in giving and giving as is done in goods and materials. Likewise, the act of adultery causes harm that extends to other than the perpetrator and the victim. The harm is paid, and personal freedom stands as a tool to harm others. The damages of adultery are more than we can list in this article, including the destruction of homes, suspicion of genealogy, loss of young children, reluctance to marry, and other tragedies and calamities . And Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds ,,.