I was preparing a post on the recent proposal to introduce American-style "victim impact" statements in British murder and manslaughter trials, which I think is a really foolish idea. You can guess that it's supported by the popular press. Today, another dumb idea was being discussed on the news: to invite the families of the London bombers to a memorial service for the victims, which is to be held in St Paul's Cathedral on 1st of November this year. So I thought I'd combine the two.
I'm opposed to VI statements here for two reasons. The first is that they are unncessary, particularly for murder and manslaughter. In the case of murder, which is premeditated killing, the judge (who, unlike in parts of the US, is solely responsible for setting the sentence) has very little discretion: he must pass a life sentence, and can only recommend a minimum tariff. This generally varies from twelve years to life, although this can be extended or reduced by the Home Secretary. Manslaughter is other unlawful killing, and the judge has much more discretion in such cases, although even here, the difference made by a VI statement would be very limited. It wouldn't change a five-year sentence to a life sentence, for example.
I actually dislike the idea of VI statements because it adds emotional performance to the process, and some people are better able to convey emotion than others. Sentencing should take into account the amount of material damage the killing has caused - for example, several children left without a mother and a family split - but for this to rely on a public statement would mean that sentencing would in part depend on the articulacy of the person giving the statement. And, of course, a conspiracy to frame an innocent man could be aided by a well-delivered sob story, possibly from the real murderer! Besides, the circumstances which led to the introduction of VI statements in the US, namely the practice of allowing a succession of witnesses attesting to the good character of convicted killers, are not seen here. (The BBC has a "talking point" discussion on this issue here.)
When I heard about the plan to invite the bombers' families to the St Paul's memorial, I really couldn't believe what I was hearing. It's a recipe for disaster, both in terms of the memorial itself and the PR surrounding it. It's yet more negative publicity for the Muslim community, another excuse for Islamophobes to attack "liberal capitulation" and "dhimmitude". I've looked in the usually suspect places and not found it yet, alhamdu lillah, but it was a major topic on the Vanessa "is there such a place as Palestine?" Feltz show this morning.
If they'd bothered to ask a reputable Islamic scholar, they would have discovered that Muslims do not, as a rule, attend non-Islamic religious rituals (as opposed to the social celebrations, and only then when they are in the family or something like that). If we must, we sit at the back or the edge and keep quiet. This would be the likely action of the bombers' families if they were to attend, which would not look good. Were they to decline the invitation, this would be called a snub. They would be in a no-win situation.
Now, a caller on the show this morning commented that "the apple never falls far from the tree", in other words, that they must have been partly steered along their path by their families, and that these families "must have known" - they must have noticed something unusual in the weeks before the bombings. In other words, they are not completely innocent. This is really quite ludicrous and offensive, because they could not have noticed anything specific; only that they were away from home longer than usual, or out later than they usually are, or "acting wierd", all of which could point to any number of things.
In other words, unless it can be shown that they were encouraged by their families to carry out these acts, they have nothing to answer to anyone on earth for. They have lost their children and brothers, and need to grieve apart from the families of the victims because their grief is not the same, and should not be "invited" to an event which could lead to a physical confrontation. They should simply be left alone.
(More here.)
Yusuf,
I completely agree. I dont think thier families should attend Islamically they arent responsible unless they had knowledge and acting suspiciously can mean a number of things. Maybe they would have called the drug police instead of the intelligence police. What good what that have done. Also, I hear that some were estranged from thier families as some young men tend to be.
Secondly what is up with this issue of "dhimmitude?" These kafirs suffer from narcisism. They think everyone wants to jump thier bones. On the one hand they know more about Islam than Muslim but on the other hand all Muslims are apart of some grand conspiracy to come to kafir countries multiply and take over. Sorry guys but if there is a conspiracy out there like that I didnt get the memo, email, whatever. LoL, most Muslims cant even bother to accept others Muslimss as Muslims. We can only dream of that kind of coordination. Interesting how they fear becoming second class citizens in their countries while actively treating Muslims as such in thiers.
"I actually dislike the idea of VI statements because it adds emotional performance to the process, and some people are better able to convey emotion than others."
But Yusuf, don't you think the rhetoric used by lawyers in the courtroom is also part of the 'performance'? I'm not saying victim impact statements are necessary, but I do think you're overestimating the objectivity of the individuals arguing for their client. Of course, it's the judge (or jury) that must weigh the evidence - emotional or not - and then make a sound judgement, and I would guess that there isn't a lot of emphasis placed on these statements. Judges likely don't need to hear VI statements to determine the impact of the crime.
These kafirs suffer from narcisism.
Why do you choose to live amongst us then?
Kafir,
"These kafirs suffer from narcisism.
Why do you choose to live amongst us then?"
My personality demands that I have a negative attitude of most people. Thats just who I am. Also, I live amoung kafirs because I was born among kafirs, raised among kafirs. Lastly Listening Kafir, I think Muslims are disobidient, arrogant, and stiff necked, does that mean I cant live among them either. As I mentioned earlier, I am an obnoxious, oftentimes self righteous young girl which causes me to be averse to the lifestyles of most people. I guess I should build my spaceship to the moon then. I dislike everybody. Just kidding. Hee Hee...
Bikhair - LOL - hope you are kidding. Otherwise I pity the poor little green men on the moon!
UZ: I thought that, in the US, the jury did that? At least in some states?
>>the judge (who, unlike in the US, has the duty of setting the sentence)
Yusuf wrote: "I thought that, in the US, the jury did that? At least in some states?"
It depends on the state and the crime (whether the crime is a capital or non-capital offence). The vast majority of US states have the judge decide the sentence.
Alright guys I have a legal question? When someone is sentenced to 15 to life or 25 to life what does that mean? Do they do 15 years and go free, do they do 25 years and go free? I dont get the "15 to life" part. Can someone explain.
Someone can be sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that they serve 15, 20, 25 years.
Life imprisonment is authomatic for murder, but this system recognises that there are mitigating circumstances, eg mercy killings.
hmm...just a thought:
It's interesting that we find no prisons (or prison sentences) in the Sunnah of Muhammad (peace be upon). Obviously, because such practises are destructive to human development. How are they (the prisoners) ever going to be rectified/reformed?
Imagine depriving a rapist of sexual enjoyment for 15 years, I feel sorry for the first woman he sees when he walks that door of "freedom".
That is, if he is still attracted to women. Sorry to be crude!
So what would you do with the rapist then? 'Honour' kill the victim, probably - that's what tends to happen in Muslim countries.
no, no, far from it.
May such barbarity be far from the Islamic Teaching.
In Islam, there is a justice system, as will be applied by those who are qualified.
And it is indeed hard to prove guilt in Islam without any mitigating circumstances. So take note of that point and don't be swayed by the media portrayal of empty shells who are quick to cry foul, foul on fellow men.
What Islam is looking for in any crime is "capitulation" of traits. i.e. When it is possible to prove that a man's evil deeds are one and identical with his ordinary day to day actions and conscience, ...basically a walking evil... which is not allowed to fester in the society.
But so long as there are excuses and mitigating circumstances for the crime, and the criminal insists innocence, and there are no witnesses account to out weigh such claims to innocence or outweigh the mitigating factors... every man will walk free, or in the least get some lashes in their butt.
But wherever evil ascertained, it must be stamped out unequivocally so that the society is free not only from material harm but from spiritual crisis. It is probably too late.
And it is interesting how the pain of death can rectify a soul, and that you and I have no knowledge of.
However, some good things have circustantially come out of the prisons, like The great martyr Malik El-Shabbaz (Malcolm X - May Allah sanctify his soul).
The prophet (saw) said: "Make 70 excuses for your brother is you have to". His wisdom is unsurpassable.
And to add that the punishment that fits each crime is clearly laid out in Islam. It only remains to prove/disprove the CRIME without any reasonable doubt any mitigating factors. And if such is proven, the punishment is applied. Isn't it the same in the courts everywhere, except that the punishment in most courts hardly fits the crime or is blatantly unjust.
Stroppy Kafir,
We have to address one thing.
If I were to say, that the christians practise pedophelia, what would be your response?
So why are you always challenging Islam based on what muslims do in or out of muslim countries. I am refering to your comment: So what would you do {islamically?} with the rapist then? âÂÂHonourâ kill the victim, probably - thatâÂÂs what tends to happen in Muslim countries..
Muslims are just as human as anybody and are thus subjected to the same failures of human beings. How many people do we read on the new who kill their wives or mother, etc and hides them in the cupboard. Of course that is very civil.
The muslims' religion is suppose to be an inspiration for them to transcend those failures and not be like the rest ... and to allow them to ultimately fulfil their human purpose and destinay. Not everyone however is able to keep steadfast, especially when riff-raffs have taken over the world. There are too many influences and baggages both from of old cultures/habits and from the present times that obstruct people's religious steadfasteness. And when they fail, is is due to the religion that is meant to prevent them from failing in the first place?
I think it is not very smart when you challenge Islam by saying .."Oh muslims do such and such, how awful Islam is". Rather, you should ask whether such and such is from Islam. Of course we are all subject to making stereotypes, but it is important that we realise this and are able to separate fact from fiction where necessary....which is always necessary.
I tell you, it is extremely odious to think that Islam condones "honour killing". In fact, the fact that I am rebutting it is odious. I am not sure if you follow me.
For example, if football fans riot and kill each other at stadiums, it is called bad behaviour, hooliganism, etc, without providing any ideological inspiration for is...such as saying it is due to secular democracy, it is due to satanism, it is due to this, due to that. We see it as a human failure. However when a muslim somewhere around the world go out of their teaching and act according to some wanton zeal or whatever motive using Islam as a smoke screen just as any criminal will make an alibi for his crime, you are quick to describe Islam as a bad religion. It seems there is something in peoples head that makes it easy for them to associate bad things with Islam. They have been brainwashed.
If take count and check the numbers of people who carry out atrocities in the name of Islam such as "honour killing", they are probably at most 10,000 in number...you can double or triple or quadruple that figure if you want. And what is the muslim population in the world, perhaps over 2 billion.
You can work out the rest of my argument..
OK, but I was just puzzled by this idea that rapists shouldn't be locked up. Of course they should. And some of them are sick, and get treatment so they don't re-offend. They have to question their attitude to women that sees them as sex objects. Prison can be about re-habillitation as well as punishment, though punishment is an important part of it.
There are too many in prison when a different punishment would be much more effective, eg community service where they had to do something to help the victims family. But for violent offences sometimes it is the answer.
I believe it was Umar (RA) who instituted house arrest as a form of punishment - similar to prison in many respects.
Safiyyah,
Needless to say we have high-jacked the original topic of this thread.
Anyway...
I doubt house arrest bears any resemblance to prisons - at all.
With house arrest, you can be with your wife, family, and loved ones. Eat good food, have your privacy, and do some reflection.
In prison, you can be with drug addicts, and worse. The possibilities are endless. It is the worst place to be besides hell. You don't even want to hear what goes on in prisons. Worse than animal kingdom.
Umar's (RA) instituting house arrests should not be seen as less than a Muhammadan Sunnah, as you know. "The companions are stars, whichever one you follow, you will be guided".
The salient point here however is to appreciate how Islam in its traditional sence is pure Mercy. Even in punishing a crime, there is concern for the perpetrator's soul not to degenerate any further. Ironically as it may sound, even this mercy is found in the hudud capital punishments.... when carried out as prescribed in scriptures of previous religions up until Islam .... perhaps it may actually cause a redemptive upheaval in the soul. As in the story of the adulteress who kept returning to the Prophet (saw). He (peace be upon him) said about her that her tawba can go round everbody on earth, or something like that.
In Islam, we don't put people in prison just so that we can be safe and they can rot away as most of them do. Prisonser are psychologically scared for life. If you read Malcolm X's (Allah have mercy on him) biography, he mentions that the worst thing you can do to a human being is to put him behind bars. He said, such a person will never forget the experience, and that he will keep seeing those bars even after having left the prison.
Even "captives of war" the most dangerous ....in Islam are to be distributed to the homes of muslims where they can eat and live decent lives, learn good adab, get married if need be, etc. and those that are 'safe' to re-integrate into the society are eventually freed. Of course some people may need to be subdued if they are going to be violent. Most human beings however can change if the right methods of reformation and the right environment is presented to them. This was the prophetic mission.
And this is the message of Islam, which is the different from our own message of condemning and cursing everyone which ofcourse I am first of the guilty....
back to work!
In this thread, the topic of VI statements has evolved into a discussion of criminal punishment. The topic of the appropriateness of inviting the London bomber's families to the memorial remained in the mix only in terms of Christians vs. Muslims or, perhaps slightly more accurately, West vs. Islam, since many "Westerners," even including self-identified Christians, are actually secular in their outlook. However, no single term can really encompass and describe all of the people that we lump into those two categories.
Regarding punishment. You can't get everybody to agree on what should be done with (or to) convicted criminals. To oversimplify, there's an ongoing tension between retributive vs. rehabilitative justice. Someone mentioned how Malcom X once said that the worst thing you can do to a man is to put him behind bars. His statement embodies the concept of sending someone to prison "as punishment," which is the legal intent of the American system of criminal justice. Many people, however, want to send criminals to prison "for punishment," i.e. not only should they be confined, additional suffering should be imposed or at least permitted and, of course, that is what usually happens in reality. Not so much in the forefront these days is the concept of rehabilitation, in which treatment is undertaken to ameliorate underlying causes and alter personality and behavior.
Half the people in America will scream about my "wrong headed liberal ideas" for saying so, but the evidence suggests that punishment, but not abusive punishment, plus rehabilitation is the most demonstrably effective approach. However, it's the least emotionally satisfying to individuals and society. It seems that we don't so much want criminals to get better as much as we want them to hurt... a lot, and then quit or we'll hurt them again, but although massive punishment alters behavior, it's not necessarily in the way that we expect.
It appears to me that the more people feel insecure and threatened, the more punishment of perpetrators they want. It's notable that in the United States, the incidence of violent crime has been declining for years, but the fear of violent crime seems to be increasing. Perhaps this is due in part to an apparent escalation of the violence in individual crimes or perhaps the implacable meaninglessness of the more violent crimes, e.g. the Columbine High School killings, not to mention the destruction and murder of September 11. Other reasons are also possible, but would take too long to enumerate.
Victim impact statements are a means for hurt people to "get their licks in." I.e., to express their anger, hurt and hatred to the judge, jury, press, public and, especially, the convicted (presumable) perpetrator. I understand it, but I don't necessarily think it's a good idea. I'm sure it can affect sentencing, but judge's discretion has already been heavily curtailed by mandatory sentencing laws, so I don't think it has as much of an affect as the victims hope for. I think it's understandable that the victim of a crime, especially, but not exclusively, a violent crime, will want unlimited retribution. That doesn't make it a good idea.
Regarding "West vs. Islam," as I styled it, I'm not really well-qualified to comment. Everyone does (comment), but I think few of us really know enough. It's notable to me that both sides frequently overgeneralize. An anonymous poster complained of Christians overgeneralizing about Muslims. A valid complaint, but it contains a germ of the same problem. "Christians" is itself a generalizing term. Not all so-called Christians think and act alike, even self-identified Christians don't always agree on exactly what it means to be a Christian. Not long after Sep 11, Jerry Falwell, a noted Christian leader, but also, in my view, a fatuous, ego-driven politician, made disparaging remarks about Muslims which resulted in riots in some Islamic nations which actually lead to people dying over what "the Christians" in the United States say about them. Notwithstanding his leadership status, Falwell does not speak for all Christians, much less all of the people United States, whether they self-identify as Christians or not.
We know so little of each other, that we don't know when we're hearing arrant nonsense. I have come to understand that many reprehensible things which are presented as "Islamic" by self-identified Muslims, are really something else cloaked in Islamist rhetoric. At the risk of sounding patronizing, a lot of tribalist traditions are presented as Islamic when they are not. The so-called Islamic former government of the Taliban in Afghanistan combined tribalist traditions with a dictatorship of swaggering bullyboys who temporarily gained the upper hand in that country. It is perhaps instructive in that case that Taliban leaders were later found to be indulging in the same "decadent" indulgences they condemned in the West, sometimes to a remarkable degree.
Additional examples on both sides of the divide are readily indentified, but not in this post. I've already gone on too long over these relatively simple points.
ITPro,
I dont know about prisons. They seem like hell on earth where people like us have to pay to maintain criminals who continue thier lifestyle while incarcerated. There is alot of violence in prison and I dont want to pay for that. It is however a very complex issue. As cool as I am, even I cant opine.
Listening KAfir,
"Someone can be sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that they serve 15, 20, 25 years."
I still dont get it. You have to really break down what a sentence like "15 to life" means. If a person is sentenced to life, why not say life, or if a person is sentenced to 15 why not say 15.
bikhair wrote: "I still dont get it. You have to really break down what a sentence like âÂÂ15 to lifeâ means. If a person is sentenced to life, why not say life, or if a person is sentenced to 15 why not say 15."
Judges are not being intentionally obtuse when they sentence someone to, say, 15 years to life." :) What a "15 to life" sentence means is that the prisoner will serve a minimum of 15 years* for his or her crime. If, in the opinion of the parole board, the prisoner shows enough remorse, has reformed enough so as to re-enter society, etc., then that person may be eligible for parole after that time has lapsed. However, if the parole board feels that the prisoner is still a danger to society, then they may choose to keep the prisoner jailed for up through his or her natural life. For more information, see Wiki.
* The minimum could actually be much shorter than 15 years. For example, many prisoners earn time off their sentence for good behavior. This is one reason why some states - a few years back - tried to legislate "truth in sentencing" laws (e.g., where a prisoner had to serve at least 80% or so of the minimum sentence), in order to keep prisoners in jail longer.
ITpro,
Thanks for your thoughtful post
In response to one of your comments:
Regarding punishment. You canâÂÂt get everybody to agree on what should be done with (or to) convicted criminals. To oversimplify, thereâÂÂs an ongoing tension between retributive vs. rehabilitative justice.
Sure, it's difficult to get everybody to agree on what should be done, however one would expect muslims to follow their own model for what should be done. And my whole point is that Islam has an unambiguos view point on what should be done with offenders - amongst other things..
My understand of the readings of Islam is that offenders (or criminals) who are guilty of a crime (of course without any mitigating circumstances or factors) should be treated in accordance with the Islamic justice codes. I hesitate to use the word punishment. Cos it isn't punishment , it is not punishment - the application of the Islamic injunctions is nothing personal between the society and the criminal. In fact it is supposed to help the criminal and the society all together wholistically. Hence for choice of a better phrase, the Islamic position should be considered nothing but "rehabilitative justice". I don't think one should expect anything less from from any religion. When a life is destroyed by the justice system, something part of the society is destroyed, and hence a part of all of us is destroyed.
The idea is that a system or religion (or whatever) should not make the life of the criminal and the society worse than what it was when the crime was committed This is sharply missing in the justice systems we have today. Everything has become a quick fix, and we pick up the pieces later. And the pieces are shared collectively, tho the burden falls mostly on the weaker of each societies.
Rather, we should view things against the back drop of timelessness, i.e. as if the world will go on forever. It's like being eco-friendly!