Islamic Law or Sharia: From what I was told in Doha,...

• From what I was told in Doha, crime is minimal. Is this a consequence of the existence of the Sharia law?

  28 May 2007, 10:48 Fred

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• the Sharia law

  Many Islamic nations--such as Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan, and Yemen--have certain criminal laws that reflect traditional Islamic practice, banning Muslims, for example, from drinking or selling alcohol. Enforcement of these laws is often spotty, and non-Muslims are generally exempted. The vast majority of Islamic nations no longer apply the traditional corporal punishments for violations of specific Quranic criminal laws. These punishments include flogging, amputation, and stoning.
  
  Five crimes known as the Hadd offenses, Lombardi says. Because these offenses are mentioned in the Quran, committing them is considered an affront to God. They are:
  
  * Wine-drinking and, by extension, alcohol-drinking, punishable by flogging
  * Unlawful sexual intercourse, punishable by flogging for unmarried offenders and stoning to death for adulterers
  * False accusation of unlawful sexual intercourse, punishable by flogging
  * Theft, punishable by the amputation of a hand
  * Highway robbery, punishable by amputation, or execution if the crime results in a homicide.
  
  Adopting hadd punishments is considered a symbol of a country’s Islamic identity, even if they are rarely carried out, Powers says. Saudi Arabia and Iran have hadd crimes on the books, as do some federal states in Nigeria. However, the most severe punishments--stoning and amputation--are inflicted sparingly, experts say, in part because the Quran insists on strict evidentiary standards. "They aren't applied in cases of doubt," Powers says. States often go beyond the Quranic safeguards to add new ones. Pakistan has hadd punishments on the books, but it has set up a series of procedural roadblocks to insure they can be enforced by the state only rarely, if ever, Lombardi says. Still, vigilante applications of hadd punishments occur in Pakistan and other parts of the Islamic world.

  Yussuf 28 May 2007, 10:50 - Report