Wa`alykum As-Salaamu Warahmatullahi Wabarakaatuh.
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
Dear questioner, we would like to thank you for the great confidence you place in us, and we implore Allah Almighty to help us serve His cause and render our work for His Sake.
Death penalty cannot be cancelled either by the Shari`ah or by law. Even those who call for canceling it see it necessary in some urgent cases. Moreover, death penalty is a legal penalty that has been ordained by Almighty Allah, Who knows what is good for His servants.
Also, instead of caring for the murderer, people should rather care for the murdered. Scholars of positive law liken one who defends himself against a crime to a whole society that fights to fend off enemy.
It is proved by anthropological studies that death penalty is a decisive deterrent for a lot of people against brutal violent behavior and a protection for the life of innocent people. That is to say, hudud or prescribed penalties have been ordained under Islam as a deterrent for the criminals and protection for the innocent, not as a method of shedding blood. However, the hudud in general must not be implemented in case there is any doubt regarding the commitment of the crime.
In this regard, we would like to cite for you the following fatwa issued by the late Sheikh Ahmad Ash-Sharabasi, a professor at Al-Azhar University, in which he states the following:
Death penalty is not a recent legislation, so it should not be subject to different views on whether to impose, lift or cancel it. It has been ordained along time ago, and has attracted vigorous debate among legislators, Muslims and non-Muslims. Even those who call for canceling death penalty see it necessary in some urgent cases. Some of them call for it at times of political disorders and wars; others see it urgent in deterring dangerous criminals.
Those who call for the abolition of death penalty have many pretexts. For example, their main objection is that death penalty causes irreparable harm. They mention some rare cases in which innocent people were sent to death penalty.
Reply to this argument is found in guarantees set by Islamic legislation against errors or miscalculation in executing penalties. It stipulates that this punishment must be based on tangible and well-established evidence; justice must be made to run its course, confession must be genuine, the testimony must be from trustworthy witnesses; the punishment must not based on circumstantial evidence.
All these restrictions guarantee that death penalty will not shake the scale of justice, and the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), said: “Fend off the hudud for the mere occurrence of suspicion.”(Reported by As-Siyuti in his Al-Jami` As-Saghir)
As for irreparable harms, this is not peculiar to death penalty, it stigmatizes other forms of punishment, especially when inflicted on innocent people. For example, nothing can remove the harmful effect of imprisonment and slashing; there is no compensation whatsoever for the insult which befalls an innocent person if subject to injustice.
Another objection is that human life is so honorable and sanctified to be violated by anyone. For them, one owns one’s life and no one else has any authority over that life.
In this concern we say that human life is not man’s property; it is the gift of Allah, the Creator of the whole universe. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is reported to have said: “Man is a creature of Allah. Curse be upon that who violates Allah’s creature.”
This Hadith shows us that human life is not man’s property, because man is created by Allah, Who has full authority and power over His creatures. It is Allah who breathed life in man and He protected it against any violation. Hence, He, Exalted be He, legislated penalties to deter man from oppressing his brothers in humanity.
So, those who oppose death penalty are contradicting themselves. They claim to be merciful toward the murderer, while they should rather be so toward the soul which left the ghost by his virtue; the soul which Allah has prohibited violating it.
Here we remember the Qur’anic verse which reads, (The guerdon of an ill deed is an ill the like thereof.) (Ash-Shura 42: 40). There is also a common saying that as a person behaves with others, others would behave with him, and a reward equals the action.
All lawmakers legalize self-defense, and they say it is permissible for one to kill a person who attacks him, if there is no other way. So in resisting the attack, man is compared to the society as it fends off aggression. That is, a murderer deserves death penalty because he has trespassed against the whole society by killing one of its members. So, when the society calls for death penalty for such a criminal, it is really in a state of self-defense.
Finally, as we see, death penalty is the best deterrent for criminals. In this regard, we’d like to quote Mr. Hafiz Sabiq, the former general attorney, who mentions that due to the defeat of China at the hands of the English army, Britain imposed on China a treaty called “Opium Treaty”. It stipulated that all the Chinese people, men and women, must be addicted to opium, so that addiction would become a characteristic of the Chinese, and this entailed great disasters. But, after the 1949 Chinese Revolution, the Chinese government passed a law stipulating death penalty to curb this crime. This led all the Chinese, men and women to give up addiction. Death penalty was the real deterrent for them, as the general attorney confirms.
This proves that death penalty is the best way to deter the criminals and protect the innocent. There is neither exaggeration nor injustice in implementing this penalty. Rather, it is a fair penalty.
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