Crime or Punishment?

As for the thief, both male and female, cut off their hands. It is the reward of their own deeds, an exemplary punishment from Allah. Allah is mighty, wise.

--The Koran

This stern injunction was enunciated by the Prophet Muhammad some 1,300 years ago to his followers in a primitive desert society. Now, after centuries of being superseded by Western law, the exacting code of the Koran is once more gaining strength and support in a number of countries.

Five Arab states in the Middle East--Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Libya, North Yemen--base their laws on the Koran. In Egypt, which prides itself on its Western-style sophistication, a parliamentary commission is at work on a new code, based on Islamic law, that would make apostasy, among other crimes, punishable by death. A rider to the proposed bill provides that if a Muslim becomes a Communist he would be considered apostate and therefore subject to beheading.

Last week the new military regime in Pakistan announced that it was imposing Koranic law in that country. Whipping, amputation and death, along with prison terms, were prescribed for a long list of crimes, ranging from theft, armed robbery and insulting the modesty of a woman to political activities, labor organizing and striking. General Zia ul-Haq, the new chief administrator of martial law, decreed that there would be no amputations without his approval and that anesthesia would be used. Nonetheless, the threat was apparently sufficient to cause a sharp drop in crime.

Islamic law is based on the Koran and Muhammad's teachings as well as on clarifications made by later scholars. The law differs from country to country, depending on which of the four major schools of interpretation (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafei and Hanbali) is followed. Islamic justice can be harsh in an eye-for-an-eye manner. Judges tend to opt for severity rather than leniency if there is any doubt. An American couple in Saudi Arabia caught their Pakistani houseboy stealing one day and ordered him to report to the police. They were astonished when he returned home minus one hand. It had been chopped off and the stub of his arm plunged into boiling tallow to disinfect it.

Victims Pay. This spring four men were convicted of rape in Saudi Arabia's Al-Hasa province and sentenced to death. One, a bachelor, was beheaded. The other three were married and guilty of adultery as well as rape. They were buried up to their waists in sand and stoned to death by a mob that used small rocks instead of boulders to prolong their agony. Sometimes the victims pay too. When a German girl was raped by two men a couple of months ago, the judge ordered her flogged "as an accomplice to immorality."

In North Yemen, a convicted thief is required to pick up his chopped-off hand and raise it to his forehead in a salute to the presiding judge. That sort of thing is not done in more liberalized Muslim societies like Libya. Although Strongman Muammar Gaddafi imposed Koranic law in 1973, thieves are usually jailed instead of having their hands amputated. "We want these people to work," says a Libyan police official. "How can they work if we cut off their hands?"

Is Islamic law a deterrent? The Saudis think so, and point to their crime rate, one of the lowest in the world. But recently an influx of low-income foreign workers--most of them Muslim--has caused an upsurge in crime, suggesting that knowing the laws of the Koran and that they are enforced is not necessarily a deterrent. When a Jeddah merchant left a crate of gold unguarded on the airport tarmac for two weeks, a Somali airport employee found the temptation too much. He began filching gold bars and selling them in the bazaar. Police caught him in the act and he was sent back to Somalia--minus one hand.

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