During Ramadan, I always try to reconnect with my faith and renew my spirit for the coming year. However, I’ve begun to notice that more and more stories/judgements like these are deeply unpalatable to me. I have a problem with the plain old eye-for-an-eye retribution (wasn’t there a recent story about a woman who wanted acid poured into her attacker’s face?) never mind paralysing a man.

Perhaps this just demonstrates that I’ve become soft westerner but I really can’t support this aspect of Islamic law any more. I know that Tariq Ramadan has called for a moratorium on the hadd punishments but I’m not aware of his reasoning and under what conditions he would reinstate them.

Anyway, just wanted to get that off my chest. (Isn’t the internet wonderful? I don’t think I could mention anything like this in my local mosque.)

assalamu alaikum, thanks yusuf, your balanced overview will be useful to me if this topic comes up with anyone who has read some scandalous account of the matter in the daily mail etc..

I do believe in an eye for an eye, but in this case I don’t think it’s necessary for us to pass judgement, because we don’t really know the entire story. For all we know, the defendant is innocent or it was an accident or even self defence. We just don’t know the full story. As for an eye for eye, if someone intentionally injures another human unjustifiably, then why shouldn’t he be paid back in kind if the victim demands so? If you don’t want to lose your eye, then don’t intentionally cause someone to lose theirs.

Anonymous if you want to help someone with their faith don’t be so cheap and condescending. Anyone can mouth text-book religious truisms, safe in the knowledge that any criticism of their doing so can be depicted as anti Islam. You will get a chorus of MaSha-Allahs from the mob. And if you havn’t got your facts absolutely straight there will be another mob, with another demagogue, and by a strange co-incidence that’s where we seem to be most of the time. Now we are in a situation where some of us beat our chests about supporting questionably ferocious punishments before they even consider the evidence - for the crime, who actually committed it or even for the punishments. Once I heard on Sudanese brother finally lose with a Saudi and tell him “You Saudis think as long as someone is getting their hand cut off, this is Islam.” We are so easily duped. With what, and for whom.

If you want to show people the value of hadd punishments, show them the victims of the crimes they are to prevent. And the shocking proliferation of these crimes, and the horrendous numbers of victims. Might come as a surprise, oh one of mighty faith, but we are actually supposed to have compassion. Show them how rarely the punishments had to be used when they were used appropriately. Compare that with what takes place in Western countries every day. Show them the peace and security - of living in peace and security. But for a lot of people, it is not about that. It’s about ‘proving’ the strength of their faith over that of others, as if humans can actually tell. The usual tactic is to find something which is on its own unpalatable and force the chosen victim to accept it, utterly decontextualised, as some crude, macho test of faith, or be damned, because “they say so”. What the hell is the plan? Brainwash them into thinking Islam is just stuff like that? Get them to recant their faith and execute them? The Prophet (S.A.W) said he feared that Shirk As Saghir would afflict his Ummah. And that he was afraid of this more than anything else. He compared it with a black ant on a black rock in a black night. Seems that it has crept up on too many of us.

@CampbellH

Your thoughtful post was lost on the rather moronic posters who followed your comment. I guess there’s no lack of the condescending ‘Mashaallah’ choir boys in our midst. The bit about it being rarely used is also correct but I’m sure even that will fail to penetrate their thick skulls too.

Some people confuse condescending behaviour with toughness or ‘Iman’ not realising that there’s nothing courageous about systematically paralysing anybody. Most people have no knowledge about inflicting real-life violence on people and the psychological costs that it has. Most of what they know either comes from what they’ve seen on the media or what they’ve heard some from some nutjob cleric. I’d like to see the same people actually spill somebody’s blood and remain psychologically healthy afterwards. That’ll show which of them are just kids pretending to act tough and which of them are psychopaths…:)

Salaam Yusuf, I made a post whilst out in the far east a couple of days ago, but it never made it on to the blog…I do have two aliases I use - Whatever and Irony of Life along with two email addresses. perhaps thats the reason… I use the email addresses differentially when I travel as one or the other sometimes doesnt work from outlook in hotels due to the SMTP port settings or something weird like that.

Opinion on article and posts:

I smell sect-ual self praise in some of the above posts. It is sad that the sects are out with their daggers, convincing each other of their better understandings of Islam than their “less spiritual”, “rigid” or “moronic” fellow Muslims.

In my opinion it is clear from the Quran that the concept of this justice IS valid. Those who care to question this and the citation of this as evidence must have innovation in their minds.

What seems to be clear from the article on Indigo’s page, is that there are clearly two aspects here. One is the validity of the Quranic concept of justice for the victim (with the importance of restraint and forgiveness); and the other the fact that the injury from the crime cannot easily or ethically be exacted. Nevertheless, it is a valid discussion to see if the injury can be exacted, just as if it had been an eye that was damaged. With regard to replicating an injury though, it would be impossible to “replicate” any sort of injury as the individual physiological/genetic response would be different in each case. Also, inorder to introduce a similar injury one would have to use medical advice as well as medical skills or at least use a similar mechanism for the injury.

This all sounds very unpleasant but as we Muslims “hide” fast behind our glorious Quran, we must find a way of implementing the entire Word to the best of our knowledge without listening to the disturbing rantings of secular or sectual Muslims. Having said all this, these are all opinions and the real discussion is for the scholars - not internet scholars but the real scholars of Islamic jurisprudence. Finally, in this case, I actually feel the most pain for the victim’s rage and obsession to commit the physical justice rather than forgive and accept compensation. I also wonder, perhaps provokingly, if the victim should be put to death for his punishment in these cases if the suffering is too great to inflict or endure (yes I believe in the death penalty for violent/fatal crimes). But then again not one of us knows all the details of this particular case, and these are our opinions.

Aside from these points is the fact that the vast majority of the Muslim world feels shame from association with corrupt leaders of Arabs and those of other Muslim countries - especially those in Saudi Arabia. The reason for the shame is real but to blame those poor mindless violent selfish egoistic leaders for all things that the sects and secularists dont agree with in Islam is plain wrong.

You make a point about every injury giving different results. I’d like to expand on that idea a bit.

I had a spinal cord injury in 2004. I’ve been a C6 complete quadriplegic ever since. I think your right about the different results and not being able to replicate exact results (I know people with the same level injury as mine who are far less independent for example) but I also wanted to add a bit of a different perspective to things.

No one seems to take the attitude of the individual into consideration. After the spinal cord injury is “performed” on the individual will he go into a deep depression and loose his quality of life, or will he be strong enough to accept it, shed his guilty conscience of the crime he committed (because he got payback, if you will) and have a higher quality of life than he once did because of the injury?

I know this is going to sound odd to many people, but if I had a chance to go back and cause my spinal cord injury not to happen, I honestly don’t think I would. In fact, I wouldn’t. I have grown as a person, and my life has benefited from it. I wouldn’t be where I am today if things were any different, and I really like the direction my life is going. WildKat´s last [type] ..Dating and Disabilities- My Experiences