U-1: ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY IN THE LIGHT OF SHARI’AH TEXTS: A CRITICAL AND ANALYTICAL STUDY

سزائے موت کے خاتمے کی تجویز اور اس کے حق میں پیش کیے جانے والے استدلال کا نصوصِ شریعت کی روشنی میں تجزیاتی وتنقیدی مطالعہ

Abstract

October 10th is celebrated worldwide as the International Day for the Abolition of the Death Penalty. Amnesty International has been calling for the legal abolition of the death penalty from all countries around the world for the last forty-five years, declaring it as the cruelest, most inhuman, and degrading punishment. In 1977, the movement to abolish the death penalty was launched by Amnesty International, as a result, there were sixteen countries where the death penalty was legally abolished which eventually rose to 112 countries as of the annual report for 2022 published in May 2023. According to this annual report, in 2016 people were sentenced to death in fifty-two countries, with 20 countries amongst them alone contributing a total of 883 people, with most of these executions reported in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and America. When we discuss law in the context of religion: Islam it is to be noted that on one hand; if the preservation of life (حفظ النفس) and preservation of the human race (حفظ النسل) is unanimously considered two of the five main purposes of the Shari'ah (مقاصد الشريعة) by almost all jurists, scholars from both traditional and modern schools of thought, on the other hand, there is a large consensus, that for various crimes such as murder, robbery, habitual thieves, adulterers, etc. it is not only permissible to give the death penalty to the perpetrators as had (حد) or ta’zir (تعزير) rather, in some crimes, the death penalty has been declared absolutely irrevocable and unforgivable. This consensus among scholars is the most important reason for the majority of Muslim countries to retain the death penalty. The purpose of this paper is to give an in-depth analysis of the proposal to abolish the death penalty and the arguments given for it in the light of Shari’ah texts (النصوص الشرعية).

Through this analysis The author of the paper is looking for answers to the following questions;

1. What are the reasons for Shari’ah's stance on the death penalty given that Islam is a religion of mercy and grace?
2. Is the death penalty permanent and unequivocal, or is it temporary and modifiable/adjournable?
3. Are the arguments presented for retaining the death penalty and for abolishing it sustainable and which of them carry more weight based on rational reasoning?