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Islam and the Death
Penalty
By Rabia Terri Harris, Coordinator, Muslim Peace Fellowship
An Islamic opposition to the death penalty must begin by acknowledging that
the Qur'an may clearly be read as giving special exemption (from the
general prohibition
on killing) to the taking of a murderer's life. Here is one such reading, from
the translation of Yusuf `Ali:
..Nor take life, which Allah has made sacred, except for just cause. And
if anyone is slain wrongfully, We have given his heir authority, (to
demand qisas*
or to forgive); but let him not exceed bounds in the matter of taking life: for
he is helped (by the Law). (Surah Isra', 33)
Those who favor the death penalty therefore cannot be considered as beyond
the pale: we must accept the faithfulness and validity of their
opinion. If there
did not exist times and circumstances when "life for life"
was the best
available option, Revelation would never have allowed it to be
specified and excused.
The question for us, though, is whether those times and circumstances are ours.
Is the Qur'an uncompromising on this issue?
If we look at the translation quoted above, even a reader with no knowledge
of Arabic will notice the substantial amount of material in parentheses; these
are in fact interpretations made by the translator in the effort to
make his material
comprehensible. May Allah be pleased with the soul of Yusuf `Ali: he
had no other
way to proceed. It is impossible to read the Qur'an without
encountering a thousand
questions, for which each reader must labor to uncover answers. Who
is the "heir"
in Isra' 33? What is the mysterious authority this heir is given? Just how much
killing represents "exceeding bounds"-perhaps any killing? How is the
heir "helped?" What does illa bil-haqq, "except with just
cause," actually mean?
The Qur'anic text is deep, and close reading of it can produce quite a range
of results. Comparing two translations of Baqarah 178-179, the only
other direct
Qur'anic ruling on the institution of the death penalty, illustrates this well.
Yusuf `Ali renders the text thus:
O ye who believe! The law of equality is prescribed to you in
cases of murder:
the free for the free, the slave for the slave, the woman for the woman. But if
any remission is made by the brother of the slain then grant any
reasonable demand
and compensate him with handsome gratitude: this is a concession and mercy from
your Lord. After this whoever exceeds the limits shall be in grave penalty. In
the law of equality there is (saving of) life for you, O ye men of
understanding!
that you may restrain yourselves.
And Muhammad Pickthall, the other widely-read English translator, renders it
thus:
O ye who believe! Retaliation is prescribed for you in the matter of the
murdered: the freeman for the freeman, and the slave for the slave,
and the female
for the female. As for him who is forgiven somewhat by his (injured) brother,
prosecution according to usage and payment unto him in kindness. This
is an alleviation
and a mercy from your Lord. He who transgresseth after this will have a painful
doom. And there is life for you in retaliation, O men of
understanding, that you
may ward off (evil).
Despite the surface congruity of these two readings, we quickly notice that
they contain major differences at both the "hard" and
"soft"
levels of meaning.
"Hard" meanings: Should the "brother" in the
ayat be understood
to be the biological brother of the person slain (Yusuf `Ali) or the
Muslim spiritual
brother of the slayer (Pickthall)? The Arabic words will support
either reading.
(They might even support a reading that the "brother" referred to is
the one to be forgiven, rather than the forgiver.) Does ittiba`
al-ma`ruf
require us to call for "prosecution according to usage" (Pickthall)
or for the granting of "any reasonable demand" (Yusuf `Ali)? There'
could be big procedural differences involved!
"Soft" meanings: simply assigning
"retaliation" or "the
law of equality" as alternate translations for qisas bestows upon
the term, and so upon the ayat, two very different sets of implications. Does
la`allakum tattakun warn us against the evil of unpunished killers out
there (that through qisas is "warded off"), or
against the evil
of our own brutal inclinations (that through the threat of qisas may be
"restrained")? Or does the "life" bestowed by qisas
have to do with a breathing space established in a chaos of violence,
a breathing
space in which "perhaps you may become responsible?" Tattakun
is related to the central Islamic virtue of taqwa, or respect
for the presence
of God-and the concept of taqwa is extremely rich.
The "alleviation and mercy from your Lord" in this verse
might mean
the concession of forgiveness, which is offered to people who properly ought to
be killed. Or the alleviation and mercy might be the qisas itself, a
concession to human outrage, which is offered to people who properly ought to
forgive.
It is not necessary that we try to establish that any one reading is right
and the others are wrong. We cannot in fact establish that. We may be able to
establish which readings have the most precedent and are most commonly adopted,
and this is very useful in community. But it is not any kind of
guarantee of abstract
perfection. Consensus can change...and often should, for human situations are
very various. Nothing that lives can be contained by an abstraction.
If Allah did not wish to offer us many possibilities, He could easily have
removed the living ambiguities from His revelation. That He did not
do so teaches
us something about reality.
We know that some possibilities are greater than others, some possibilities
are higher than others, because both Allah and His Messenger have
preferred certain
attitudes over others. They both, for instance, prefer forgiveness
over punishment-and
that in a wholly unambiguous way. We ourselves may prefer punishment:
it is open
to us to do so. Sometimes we cannot help ourselves. And if that is our state,
the Revelation will speak to us of how we should proceed. But we will have set
priorities other than those of Allah and His Messenger.
Baqarah 178 suggests that the fate of a murderer is left in the hands of a
brother-Isra' 33 speaks of an heir-who has the choice to forgive or to specify
compensation if he will. If we follow the view that this means the brother (or
the family) of the deceased, and the family chooses mercy, the State
has no business
to choose otherwise. And yet it regularly does. In the United States,
Murder Victims'
Families for Reconciliation campaigns passionately against capital punishment.
Almost nobody listens.
Or if we follow an alternative view and read the heir/brother as being any
Muslim brother (or sister), any community member, then the responsibility of a
Muslim is justice. Will the killing of a murderer produce justice? It
is theoretically
possible; we can easily imagine that it might. But we can measure
whether it does
or not by examining the state of public trust. In the US, the following facts
have been established:
- Nearly 90% of persons executed for murder were convicted of
killing whites,
although people of color make up over half of all homicide victims
nationally.
- In Illinois, Oklahoma, and North Carolina killers of white
victims are four
times more likely to receive the death penalty than the killers of
black victims.
In Mississippi they are five times more likely; in Maryland, they are
seven times
more likely.
- Historically two out of three persons executed in the US for crimes they
committed as children have been African-American. Since 1900, as the problem of
lynching has declined, this ratio has jumped to three out of four.
- 90% of the people US government prosecutors currently seek to execute are
black or Latino. (numbers courtesy of the National Coalition to
Abolish the Death
Penalty)
This state of affairs has not mended public trust. Racial relations in this
country are an open wound. Many people of color live shattered lives
full of frustration
and rage, wholly alienated, without hope of restitution. And "white"
people do not sleep one bit better at night.
Illa bil-haqq: "Except justly." There is no justice here.
No needs are met, no fear is alleviated. This idea does not work. The hallmark
of truth is that it works.
The caliph `Umar, who is admired by many Muslims as the greatest examplar of
justice after the Prophet, suspended the punishment of undoubted thieves caught
during a famine, when the public storehouses were empty. He judged
that if a community
cannot adequately provide for its members, it has no right to impose sanctions
upon them. His taqwa preserved him from the sort of moral
error into which
many proponents of "law and order"-Islamic or otherwise-all
too easily
fall.
It is a far more serious error of Islamic ethics to demand a human death in
circumstances when there are doubts about guilt or innocence, where
the bereaved
are not consulted about their wishes, and when the penalty is
selectively applied
based on the pernicious fantasy that some lives have more value than
others.
Islamic law, and Islamic taqwa, demand that we dissent from
such a travesty
of justice.
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* qisas is the Qur'anic terminology for lex talionis.
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Activists
demonstrate
against the execution of Gary Graham in Huntsville, Texas, June 22, 2000.
(© Scott Langley) |
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