Punishments have always been considered an integral part of the concept of justice. Indeed, a common man would find it hard to think of justice as something very different or separate from rewarding or punishing people according to how well or badly they observe the body of the mutual rights and obligations in their society. But if the concept of punishment is universal, the controversies surrounding it are nonetheless intense. We shall now look at some basic Islamic principles concerning punishments.

Each human being is responsible for his or her actions. This simple truth provides the whole basis for the justification of punishment; for to fulfill the purpose of this creation, mankind has been granted the freedom to choose and act and the moral sense to distinguish between right and wrong. Responsibility goes with knowledge and freedom. Punishment cannot, therefore, be meted out to one person for another person’s actions, for acts intended but not performed, or for acts done under duress or while not of sound mind. Everyone must be equal before the law and their guilt must be established by the due process of justice.

It is important to note that there is no concept in Islam of the punishment being exactly and justly proportional to the crime. Absolute and truly proportional justice would require the exact and complete evaluation of such complex factors as intentions and motives, the surrounding circumstances, and the causes and repercussions—factors which human judges must consider but cannot evaluate fully and which only God, in the new moral order to be set up in the life after death, can measure. Islamic punishments are not, therefore, to be judged on the scales of proportional and full retribution. They are, however, laid down by the One who is infinitely merciful and wise, and are, therefore, more suitable for the particular crimes than anything that can be prescribed by any human legislature or judge.

Most importantly, punishments are only a part of a vastly larger, integrated whole. They can neither be properly understood nor successfully or justifiably implemented in isolation. First, law is not the main, or even major, vehicle in the total framework for the reinforcement of morality; it is the individual’s belief, the individual’s God-consciousness and taqwa—that inherent and innate quality which makes one want to refrain from what displeases God and do what pleases Him. Second, justice is a positive ideal which permeates and dominates the entire life of the community—it is not merely an institutionalized means of inflicting punishment. Third, and consequently, a whole environment is established where to do right is encouraged, facilitated, and found easy, while to do wrong is discouraged, inhibited, and found difficult. All men and women are enjoined, as their foremost duty, to aid, exhort, and commend each other to do good and to avoid evil.

Penalties in Islam are more of a functional nature, to regulate and deter. God has laid down a body of mutual rights and obligations that are the true embodiment of justice. He has also laid down certain boundaries and limits to be observed and maintained for this very purpose. If people and nations desire to move in peace and safety on the highways of life, they must stick to the traffic lanes demarcated for them and observe all the signposts erected along their routes. If they do not, they not only put themselves in danger, but endanger others. They, therefore, naturally make themselves liable to penalties—not in vengeful retribution, but to regulate the orderly exchanges in a person’s life in accordance with justice.

It is a significant contribution of Islam that these penalties are called hudud (boundaries) and not punishments: they are liabilities incurred as a result of crossing the boundaries set by God. An important consequence of these hudud having been laid down by God and not by man, is that it is beyond human authority to reduce or supersede them out of a sense of mercy greater than that of God; nor can a tyrant or autocrat add to them out of a greater sense of strict justice. For no one can be more merciful or wiser or more just than God Himself.

Another important function that these punishments serve is educative, thus preventive and deterrent. The Qur’an alludes to this aspect when it describes them as exemplary punishment from God (Al-Ma’idah 5:38). Punishments are thus designed to keep the sense of justice alive in the community by a public repudiation of the acts violating the limits set by God. They are expected to build up in the society a deep feeling of abhorrence for transgression against fellow human beings, and therefore against God, a transgression which, according to the Qur’an, is the root cause of all disorders and corruption in human life.

Apart from punishments for transgressions like extramarital sex, theft, libel, and drinking, the Qur’an also provides for the principle of qisaas or retribution. When a person causes physical injury or harm to a fellow human being, Islam gives the injured party the right of equal requital—the well known principle of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” This procedure is persistently labeled by critics as primitive and uncivilized. In the Islamic view of history, it is worth pointing out, what is primitive has never been necessarily uncivilized. The first man was given all necessary knowledge and guidance, and though he may have been technologically backward compared to the twentieth century, he definitely was not humanly backward. Uncivilized is what a person thinks and does in deviating from the divine order.

The injured person, in turn, may forgo the right to retribution by forgiving, or may agree to accept a monetary or token recompense instead. The Qur’an, in fact, highly recommends the act of forgiving. Thus, under qisaas, punishment is avoidable without burdening the executive or judiciary with the dilemma of whether to exercise mercy. As against a court, which must act according to law once a case is brought before it, an individual is free to act as he or she wishes. Justice has to be blind, but an individual may take circumstances into account, and suspend judgment in the hope of being forgiven by God in the Hereafter. Very few realize that the principle of qisaas even allows capital punishment to be avoided.

Having prescribed punishments and imposed strict and meticulous, though not impossible, conditions of evidence, Islam has built in a whole range of principles and precepts which reflect not a frenzied desire to flog and stone but a compassionate urge to avoid and eschew. Islam does not allow either the state or individuals to spy upon people unless well founded suspicion exists that a crime is being committed or a fellow human being’s rights or interests are in jeopardy. Nor is it obligatory to report every crime. Where possible, settlements outside court are preferred. The punishment is swiftly over; the guilty person and his or her family do not have to live with the kind of lengthy public stigma that they would have had to endure in the case of a prison sentence at the end of a trial. The imposition of divinely prescribed hudud enhances, not diminishes, the individual’s dignity and stature in society and before God.

As to the alleged cruelty of physical penalties, one wonders if to deprive a person of his or her freedom (the most precious and valuable possession), the right to act and continue to make moral choices, the right to live with a family (to work for and support them) is not more cruel. Indeed, a prison term can inflict untold misery on innocent people whose lives are intertwined with the life of the prisoner. Prison becomes a school for hardening criminal behavior and a breeding ground for recidivism. Why should it be considered more cruel for a person found drug trafficking to be given ten lashes than to be sent to languish in prison for, say, ten years.

Why does Islam want to punish and not reform? The question is fallacious, for in Islam, every institution of society is value-oriented and owes a responsibility towards the moral development of every person from the cradle to the grave. Reform is, therefore, a pre-crime responsibility and not a post-crime syndrome and nightmare. Islam makes every effort to ensure that inducement to commit crime is minimal. Once the crime is committed, the best place for reform is in the family and in the society where a criminal is to live after punishment, not in a prison where every inmate is a criminal; unless, of course, a society considers itself to be more corrupt and less competent to effect reform than a jail! Against this, the “modern, enlightened” approach is to provide every inducement to crime by building a society based on conspicuous consumption; to make society, education, and every other institution “value free” and then to try to reform a criminal by segregating the person and keeping him or her in a prison.

Sentences in Islam are certainly harsh, but still more strict and severe are the procedures laid down to be observed before a person may be convicted. These procedures are modeled on the paradigm of the Day of Judgment, when even God, though He is All-knowing, and Just, will not punish a person unless He establishes that person’s guilt. “To let nine criminals go free is preferable to convicting one innocent man,” said the Prophet.