Note: The following transcript was generated using AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wasalatu wasalamu ala Rasoolillahi salallahu alayhi wasalam Ustad Muhammad Ibn Hanbal, assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh Jazakallah khair once again for joining me on the HotSea podcast Wa alaikum, it's always a pleasure So as you know, it's a show where we usually discuss controversial topics within the religion of Islam And this, like many that we've discussed before previously, is one that has particularly been on the minds of a lot of Muslims and non-Muslims for that matter of fact in the last few years And that is related to the penal code of Islam, the Sharia law And we want to find out today and answer the question, Is the Sharia barbaric?
So as I often do, I normally give you the opportunity to have your introduction You can lay down some principles, some points that we can perhaps refer back to throughout the discussion Over to you Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wasalatu wasalamu ala Abdullahi wa Rasoolih Nabiyyina Muhammad wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma'in It's really interesting that in that introduction, the way the term Sharia is used So I want to start by just looking at this word Sharia Because I believe that the beginning of the problem here is actually the misunderstanding of the word Sharia and the misuse of the word Sharia Not say that there aren't, I'm sure we're going to come across many valid points during our discussion that need to be discussed But I believe the premise that we're beginning with that the Sharia is this Islamic penal code I think the word Sharia, we need to go right back Okay So Allah Azzawajal said Likullin ja'alna minkum shiraatan wa minhaaja To each of you, we prescribed a Sharia, a law and a method And Allah Azzawajal said Am lahum shuraaka shara'u lahum min ad-deen ma lam ya'than bihi Allah Do they have partners that have legislated for them from their religion, things which Allah has not given permission for In the Arabic language, the word Sharia is actually a watering place, a place of water And it's a place where the water is open and apparent Not like a well where you have to dig right down and find it But say like the bank of a river And when you go down to the bank of the river and you sort of descend down with your animals and you sit by the bank of the river and your animals drink from the water That's what the word Sharia means in the Arabic language So it is a word that is actually very positive in Arabic And some of the ulema, they mentioned the link between the linguistic and between the application of Sharia as a system of law a comprehensive system of law is that just like water is an essential element for life So the law of Allah Azzawajal and the rules and regulations that we live by are essential for our eternal life So it's a path that leads you to eternal life It's a path that leads you to eternal happiness That's the concept of the word Sharia The word itself is not a negative, harsh word There are words like that We talk about jinayat, you know, punishments And we talk about hudud, you know, prescribed penalties The word had is a very sharp, hard, rough word, you know But the word Sharia is a very soft, beautiful word that talks about, you know, you get this image of you know, sitting by the lake with your animals drinking from the water This is what the word Sharia means And the word Sharia in Islam was used in three ways Okay It was used for the religion as a whole The whole religion I mean, the whole of Islam would be called Sharia Because what is the feature of the whole of Islam?
That Allah is the one who revealed it Allah is the one who legislated it And that's why we don't say about the Prophet ﷺ that he is Sharia, that he's the legislator We actually, the Prophet ﷺ is Mubaligh His job is to convey the legislation from Allah But Allah is the legislator and everything that Allah legislated including birr al-walideen, is Sharia Being good to your parents Being kind to your neighbours Being just Being fair Saying a good word to people Saying nice things to people All of this is Sharia The whole of the Sharia From what Allah legislated for us to follow It's a very comprehensive A comprehensive term The second way they use the word Sharia is Aqeedah Okay Like Al-Imam Al-Ajurri Rahim Allah Ta'ala in Kitab al-Sharia He used the word Sharia to refer to your beliefs That was well known as a terminology Many of the scholars, they referred to beliefs as Sharia And some of them referred to the Furu'a Fiqhiyah The subsidiary matters of Fiqh Legislative matters like how to pray How to fast How to marry You know, all of these matters They referred to them as Sharia But nobody From the scholars of Islam To the best of my knowledge that I have found Has ever used the word Sharia To refer to punishments exclusively It just wasn't used This is something that Western newspapers People like that took on They put it in this thing This Islamic Sharia Sharia law And in reality This idea of Sharia Either refers to the whole religion Or it refers to all of the Ahkam Or it refers to a person's belief And it's not necessarily a negative word Instead what the scholars referred to In terms of the prescribed punishments Or penalties Or the sort of laws of things like retribution They refer to it either as Al-Hudud Which are prescribed punishments And the word Had is something which is Delimited It's been fixed, right It's been set by Allah So the set punishments that Allah has set And some of them refer to it as Al-Junayat The law of punishments and penalties And things like that Now I also want to point out Which a lot of people probably don't realize Is how small the penalties and punishments Actually are in terms of the amount of content Islam revealed Ayat, hadith, content within the books of filth The penalties and punishments of Islam Are a few pages In comparison to huge amounts About how to pray About how to fast So I want people to put it in context I don't think we should run away from And I don't want to run away So I came to a hot seat, you know We don't want to run away from Discussing the penalties and punishments in Islam But for someone to take something Which is a tiny part of Islam And to make the whole of Islam The only thing Muslims do Is cut off people's hands and heads That is why Islam was sent Then that is really a gross misrepresentation Of the religion of Islam And what Islam is about I also wanted to start by Talking about how Allah Azzawajal Sent the messenger Muhammad S.A.W As he said وَمَا أَرْسَلْنَاكَ إِلَّا رَحْمَةً لِّلْعَالَمِينَ We sent you as a mercy for mankind Islam was not sent to punish people And that was not the maqasid of Islam The purpose of Islam was not to punish people Allah Azzawajal when his punishment comes Like the punishment of Aad and Thamud and Firaun And the punishment of the people who came before That punishment when it comes There is nobody getting out Nobody comes out of that alive Nobody comes out of that You know the punishment of Allah Azzawajal Is severe when it comes Islam was not sent to punish people Islam was not sent to torture people Islam was sent to bring mercy to people And I think it's really important to look at What Islam generally from an overview came with It came to protect the people's religion And when we say to protect the people's religion And to preserve a tawheed The oneness of Allah To preserve and protect people's religion To protect people's lives To protect people's sanity and intellect To protect people's health And to protect people's wealth And to protect people's honor That's what Islam came with And that necessitates that there are punishments And I think that this idea That we shouldn't punish anyone for anything Is a wholly false idea Which leads to a loss of life It leads to a loss of safety It leads to a loss of people's religion And it causes great problems There has to be There have to be dissenters There have to be punishments And I think also When we talk about worldly punishments You have to also think that the punishment of Allah I mean the worldly punishments No matter what level they reach They will not reach the punishment of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala Yawmul Qiyamah And that is something that all Muslims We agree upon unanimously And indeed many many other religions Christianity, Judaism, etc Also agree about the severity of the punishment Of Allah Azzawajal And the fact that Allah Azzawajal Inna batasha rabbika la shadeed The punishment of your Lord is severe And so whatever happened from the worldly punishments You have to put that in context of the fact That in the hereafter The situation will be far worse So in terms of bringing things that stop people From falling into the greater punishment By giving them dissenters That dissentivize them From going into things that would lead them To that greater punishment Is in itself a rahmah And for example the statement of Allah Azzawajal Wa lakum fil qisasi hayatun Ya ulil albaabi la'allakum tattaqoon You have in the law of qisas Of retribution You have life That's really You know it's a really profound statement That we save people's lives through qisas That's what the ayah says People's lives are saved through qisas Qisas being retribution Retribution A life for a life How can you have a life for a life And save people's lives There are a number of ways And we can get into the details of it later But I just wanted to give that sort of overview That for example The fact that this as a deterrent Stops people from committing crimes And so it saves the lives of those people Who would have been victims And the lives of those people Who would have had punishments carried out upon them So in that sense And in the sense of the fact that It preserves the safety and security of the community And the life of the community in general And the life of the hereafter as well So I think all of those things need to be Need to be taken into account From the things that I want to begin with in the introduction Is I really want to emphasize That for us as Muslims Our job is to submit to what Allah Azzawajal has legislated There are times when we fully appreciate Or we feel that we fully appreciate I think it's probably incorrect to say we fully appreciate But we have a reasonable appreciation Of why we've been asked to do something And there are times where there may be people who are watching Some of us understand it And some of us don't And it's interesting in the ayah I mentioned about qisas Allah Azzawajal said People of intellect So that shows you that there are going to be people Who understand that there is That qisas saves lives And there are going to be people who don't understand But ultimately as Allah Azzawajal said فَلَا وَرَبِّكَ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ حَتَّى يُحَتِّمُوكَ فِي مَا شَجَرَ بَيْنَهُمْ ثُمَّ لَا يَجِدُوا فِي أَنفُسِهِمْ حَرَجًا مِمَّا قَضَيْتَ وَيُسَلِّمُوا تَسْلِيمًا Allah Azzawajal said in Surah An-Nisa By your Lord they do not believe until they make you the judge between them In that which they differ over And then they don't find any discomfort Any haraj They don't find any discomfort in what you have ruled for them And they submit with complete submission Now at this point it's interesting I normally I don't think I've ever done this on the hot seat I typically don't quote non-Muslim sources Because my job is to present the Islamic side But I think in this there's something that I really wanted to quote to you from non-Muslim sources I wanted to talk about how non-Muslims typically generally see the concept of punishment And this is something when I did law at A-level We looked at what the purpose of punishment And they call the purposes of sentencing Why do countries or why do legal systems punish people?
And I just thought it's interesting to quote Because it's interesting to think about that in the light of Islam Not as an evidence because it's not an Islamic statement But just to give some context as to typically why punishments are carried out So the primary purposes of punishment are deterrence both general and specific So that is deterring the individual from committing the crime again And deterring others from committing that crime Followed by retribution In other words payback on behalf of the victim On behalf of those people who have been affected They said that every punishment in every legal system is based upon this These two are unanimous in all legal systems That there is deterrence and there is retribution Then consideration is given to incapacitation Stopping the person from being able to do it Rehabilitation Facilitating the person to rehabilitate And restitution in other words giving back to the victim what was taken Depending on the crime But those last three are not features of every punishment in every legal system They are things that some crimes there is consideration for incapacitating the person In some there is more of an effort to rehabilitate In some there is restitution In some there isn't restitution But all punishments are based around deterrence Of the individual and of the society and retribution So that's I would argue that only Islamic law really achieves this in a fair and just way In reality I believe that modern laws in systems that we have outside of Islam Have generally failed to do these things broadly speaking They fail to deter people from committing crimes broadly speaking It's generally the case that the punishments are getting lighter and lighter And the amount of incarceration and things like that is increasing People are not being deterred from committing crimes Neither as individuals nor as a society Because the punishment just isn't enough to deter people from doing it There is not appropriate retribution Typically and that's why we see people committing crimes that are horrific crimes And getting 10 years in jail for which they serve five Right yeah You know that is you know there isn't that is not appropriate retribution It's not appropriate that somebody takes someone's life Or somebody severely harms another person And we're talking about some of the most horrific crimes And then literally has five years of relative comfort After which they walk out free And it said that is retribution for you know what they have done I think that you know that is something that typically now in modern legal systems Is a complete failure to be honest It doesn't incapacitate criminals typically It doesn't provide a means to rehabilitation And in Islam I want to think about rehabilitation not in the dunya But also in the akhirah How do I stand in front of Allah having committed this crime How do I purify myself And how do I come before Allah and make up for what I have done Nor is there appropriate restitution typically for you know for these kind of crimes And then add to that that typically we spend as let's say taxpayers in the west We spend billions and billions of pounds pampering these criminals Typically a criminal in jail in the UK costs 45,000 pounds That is what is that about 60,000 dollars or something like that Every single year So you have people who have taken the lives of other people Sometimes children in horrific ways Who have committed crimes that to be honest you can't If it wasn't for the retribution in the hereafter You would say there is nothing we can do to them in this dunya Whatever torture you can think of would not be equal to the crime that they did And yet we now pay 45,000 pounds a year to pamper those people And look after them and take care of them when their victims are left with nothing So to be honest I genuinely believe that the systems that are there in the west Are not serving either the people who committed the crimes Let alone the victims in terms of giving them a means to true rehabilitation And reconciliation and so on in terms of the hereafter as well as the worldly life They aren't deterring people from committing crimes They aren't providing suitable retribution And ultimately they are costing on top of that loads and loads of money And you just have to look at the state of prisons today And all the mental health issues The people who are you know suffering in there Who to be honest really you know You see actually even just looking at the historical pattern from their system That things have got worse as they have lightened these punishments not better And I believe that is a fairly general trend There isn't a lot if you look in the world today Which where you can find exceptions to that trend typically So I believe that's really important I'm not going to mention too many more things Okay Um sorry carry on Now let's get into a bit more discussion I think some people who might be watching this Might think that just the failure of one system For example the system that the west generally adopt Does not necessarily indicate that the other system is a successful one I actually agree with that as a initially I agree with that as we need to investigate Yes But I do believe that the people That people shouldn't be throwing stones from glass houses You know you have people in western systems Where to be honest the system is an utter and total failure in every regard It isn't serving anybody It's not serving the public It's not serving the victims It's not helping people to stop commit crimes And then those people stand in their glass houses Throwing stones and saying your sharia is barbaric Those people also say that these are man-made laws We're going to get there We're taking our time We're improving every century every decade But your laws are divine from God from Allah Surely that should be more criticized And that's what we're going to we're going to prove In short like this hot seat episode That these laws are the ones that are suitable And that it's actually this law the divine law That would actually bring about those objectives That those non-muslims have quoted Being deterrence both general and specific Retribution rehabilitation Both in this world and the hereafter And restitution and being incapacitated and so on That those would actually come from the religion of Islam I would also say on the issue of our system will get better I would say that sadly the trend is that The system is not getting better It's actually it's actually getting worse And there are reasons why That system has got worse over time And I understand that And I believe there are unique features of the Islamic legal system Which do not apply in the same way So for example And I don't want to get too much into details I'll share a few introductions But for example When it comes to capital punishment People the biggest reason people oppose capital punishment And I'm not saying this is the only reason But the reason that comes at the top of the surveys Is miscarriage of justice So if we can prove that Islam puts in a system That is strong enough to prevent miscarriage of justice That argument no longer stands as being a significant reason To abolish capital punishment What you mean by miscarriage of justice Someone who is falsely accused and then falsely And ends up losing their life For something that they didn't do And that is usually the number one In just surveys general Just look at surveys people have said Who oppose capital punishment Usually the reason why is not an ideological reason That we shouldn't be taking people's lives But typically it is What if there's a miscarriage of justice So that is something that I believe Islam provides A very strong answer to Which means that the reasoning is not the same But if you look at the general trend The general trend is across the world Is generally the lightening of punishments The lessening of punishments And sadly an increase in rates of crime I mean I my grandmother tells me Or told me about times When people used to leave the door open in the UK You know you used to leave your front door open And now people have three You know bolt the door three times And the alarm and CCTV cameras And you know what have you It hasn't improved It's actually gotten worse Despite the fact that their legal system And criminal justice system is supposedly improving So my argument would be Your system is improving And your situation is getting worse Something isn't quite right in that regard So I just wanted to mention a few points I think Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la's ruling We have to understand that there is no ruling As we're told in Islam There is no ruling better than the ruling of Allah Allah Azzawajal said أَفَحُكْمَ الْجَاهِرِيَّةِ يَبْهُ Is it the ruling of the pre-Islamic times that they want? Is it the law of pre-Islamic times that they want? وَمَنْ أَحْسَنُ مِنَ اللَّهِ حُكْمًا لِقَوْمٍ يُقِنُونَ Who is better than Allah in ruling, in law Than for a people who have certainty The Islamic system is a holistic system You know, I think when you just focus on Only the aspect of punishments You can skew the picture And I do think it's a valid topic I'm pleased that you've decided to raise this topic on the hot seat Because it is a valid topic But also, to make that Islam Is unfair on the religion of Islam Islam needs to be seen as a whole Not as focusing on one particular aspect Because that does give you a misunderstanding of the religion of Islam It doesn't give you the balance of all the things that Islam brings Islam is a religion for all people, all places, and all times It is a religion that works everywhere in the world And a lot of times when people criticize things They do tend to look with very, very narrow tunnel vision At what they believe to be their specific situation And I think it's important that people understand that Islamic law is for everyone, everywhere Including their specific situation And I think that that is something that people often neglect, to be honest They often neglect For example, if you live in a society that is relatively, shall we say, safe Or a relatively advanced society In terms of what people consider to be things like criminal justice and things like that People tend to look at that And then they tend to make criticisms Which, to be honest, if they were to go a few hundred miles in any one direction They would be able to clearly see the wisdom behind some of the things that are said But the point I was trying to make by saying include in their society Is that you might have people who, like you said, in their society It might not match It might not No, I do believe it matches I don't believe it's the case that it doesn't match I believe it's an issue of hikmah Because we believe there is no one better than Allah in hukm There is no one better than Allah in his law And that that law is wise in that country But sometimes to see the wisdom of that You know, for example, there are people who make very You know, they climb on the ivory tower And they make very, very sort of judgmental pronouncements Based on a very limited set of life experiences And, you know, for example, that person has not been victim to some of these crimes For example Yeah And they make pronouncements about things that, to be honest If they were to have a broader range of life experiences And to see life outside of the bubble they're in Sometimes you would say to them that Actually, you know, shall we go to some of the victims of these crimes And ask them about justice? You know, you have to see What I mean is you have to open your eyes to the wider world Yeah, and that's, I believe that is something to be mentioned Which is important I believe it's important And I have mentioned already Just to emphasize the issue of looking at the hereafter As well as the worldly life Both in terms of being saved from punishment in the hereafter And the issue of rehabilitation in terms of the akhira Not just in terms of the dunya In terms of being forgiven by Allah Being entered into Jannah And having your sins wiped out That is of value And a lot of, again, I saw people who criticized A lot of things in the Islamic legal system And they did so from an atheist perspective That there is nothing in the hereafter And I believe that that is, that skews your judgment about these issues So it's important to remember that Islam doesn't just look at the dunya It's not just about your life here It's also about, I mean, we talk about people who confessed to crimes And had punishments carried out While the Prophet ﷺ discouraged them from that And they still continue to confess What made that person wish to confess? And it is the fact that I want rehabilitation in the hereafter Now that's not to say that Islam encourages that We're going to talk about that inshaAllah in more detail But just to understand that people didn't see, you know The people living through that They weren't just looking at what's going to happen today and tomorrow and next week They were looking at what am I going to be like When I stand in front of Allah on the Day of Judgment I think it's really important to mention two or three core principles I think first of all that when we talk about punishments That punishments are the right of the Sultan They are the right of the person in authority Islam doesn't advocate vigilantism It doesn't advocate people taking the law into their own hands And this only creates chaos In reality it has to be done through the framework of authority And we can talk about that in more detail I'm sure we're going to come to that I think we will come to that But I just wanted to establish that as a I wanted to set that out as a principle For people who might catch the beginning of the video perhaps That it's really important to understand that the issue of punishments This is from the matters which are from the huqooq of the Sultan The right of the Sultan to carry them out They're from their responsibility The mas'uliyah of the Sultan The one who is in authority And that's important And finally this golden principle And this principle I think If Islam only came with this principle in hudud I think that we could have solved so many problems with people's You know the criminal systems and criminal justice systems Just with this one thing That severe prescribed punishments are not carried out In the case where there is any doubt over what happened When there is any shubha over what happened And I will give an example And I'm sure we'll come to more examples later But let's say for example A person is convicted of theft And they are going to have a punishment carried out for the Upon them The prescribed punishment for theft However in their mind In their eyes They don't believe that what they did was theft The court has ruled what you did was theft But he said when I believe that I had a debt to this person This person had a debt They owed me money There was a debt between us And I only took what was mine already Does not open the door to anyone just to claim that excuse No doubt the sharia has to put in some rules and regulations Now that doesn't mean they're not punished But the prescribed punishments The ones you're going to get out now And take out of your bag And start throwing at me now Those prescribed punishments are not carried out When there is doubt Let's take for example zina The court rules this person committed zina But he says I was under the understanding That I was I believe that this was a valid marriage That was their understanding Now that doesn't mean they might not be punished But the prescribed punishments are not carried out When there is doubt That's the high level of punishment is not carried out When there are shubuhat There are questions over it or concerns over it And the court has to examine those things So a person might be found guilty of a crime But might not have the punishment carried out Because it doesn't reach the standard of that punishment being carried out And instead we go back to ta'zeer Which is the concept we're going to talk about a lot Ta'zeer is the issue of what you would call It's the issue of punishments and penalties Which are not prescribed specifically by Allah Or by the Prophet ﷺ within the Qur'an and the Sunnah But instead the judge makes a discretionary decision We call it discretionary punishments So for example imprisonment for a year or a fine And the fines the scholars differ over it Whether fines can be discretionary punishments or not But this issue of discretionary punishment could still be carried out This could be said okay You have a fine of this and you have to go to jail for this many years That's a discretionary punishment But the punishments that are the headline punishments in Islam Are not carried out when there are doubts, confusion or misunderstandings Present within the case Okay let's go into some of those headline punishments And I think there are probably two extremes that people fall into One as you've outlined in the introduction is saying that The sharia is all about these kind of punishments and nothing else And it is restricted to that And another extreme on the other end is to avoid that completely And let's not even talk about them and pretend that they don't exist You're trying to say that you're representing a middle path here That acknowledges their existence but within a framework A wider framework that also needs to be acknowledged I want to say also not just that I acknowledge their existence I'm proud of them Yeah I became Muslim One of the major things that helped me to become Muslim is When I heard about the Islamic punishments that existed And I honestly looked at them and felt You know what it is? I really believe this would solve the problems in our society And I really saw the wisdom in it And I felt this is how it should be And it really encouraged me to look into Islam more You know when people say these type of things A lot of times people step back and say Whoa you know like this is really severe or this is really harsh But I actually thought you know I can see the wisdom Or I can see part of the wisdom in that And I was very very And until now I'm thoroughly proud of the Islamic legal system And I don't make any apologies for it at all I believe that it is what will bring about It will bring about reconciliation and peace within the society And safety and security for everybody And within that there's some advice to the people giving da'wah Whether the dua'at or even just the general layman Speaking to a non-Muslim colleague for example Not to hide anything from Islam Because you never know something like that Might be the thing that actually a non-Muslim hears Yeah and also I feel that's true A lot of people do hide things And they kind of try to sugarcoat things And sometimes the person later on finds out about them And then feels really betrayed Like I feel like well you know I wanted to go in with my eyes open And surprisingly people you would you know You would be surprised a lot of people The things you think that people might find difficult Because you perhaps found it difficult yourself When you first heard about it To understand the context of it Then you might be surprised that those things Might actually be what brings a person to Islam Okay this is turning into a cold seat So let's get let's make it a bit warmer So you hear things like stoning for example Let's start with this particular punishment Does this exist in the Sharia? Is this a prescribed punishment that you're proud of?
Yeah absolutely There is no doubt by the consensus of the Muslims That stoning exists within the Sharia of Islam And stoning is something that exists within the Torah as well And that is something that is also to the best of my knowledge Not disputed That stoning is explicitly mentioned in the Torah In fact it's mentioned in the Torah for crimes like For example a rebellious son Is stoned to death One who violates the Sabbath is stoned to death Falsely presenting a bride as a virgin Is stoned to death Cursing God Stoned to death And inviting people to other religions Also stoning to death in the Torah That's in what we have What they have of the Torah We do not know if that is what Allah revealed upon them Because this is the ruling of We don't have a proof for that one way Or the other About whether that was revealed by Allah But I wanted to show that This is something that clearly has a divine origin Because it is clearly present In the previous scriptures Without a shadow of a doubt And it is something which we know in the previous scriptures Was the punishment for adultery of a married person We know that because of what happened When the two Jewish people Were brought before the Prophet ﷺ Having committed zina And the Prophet ﷺ He asked them What do you find in the Torah for these people? And they said we blacken their faces And we parade them You know we parade them around the city So the Prophet ﷺ asked for the Torah to be brought And to be read And they covered Ayat al-Rajm They covered the part that's talked about stoning to death And when they lifted their finger They saw that they had concealed The fact that the punishment for them Was to be stoned to death So there's no doubt that this is something that existed before And there is no doubt that this is something that exists within Islam Now I want to describe this punishment a little bit Because I do think it's important to understand The proper way of carrying out a punishment Because I started looking into this And I started looking into different methods of execution It's a bit more than that But I did start looking into different methods of execution Lethal injection Electrocution Gas chambers And all that type of stuff And I also looked into how stoning is carried out in different countries And we want to be clear that what we were talking about is Islam here We're not talking about a particular implementation of this in a particular country So the man is buried in the ground to the waist The woman is buried in the ground to her chest height Okay For additional concealment The stones should not be so large that they cause death One stone causes instantaneous death Like dropping a boulder And that is actually I believe What certain people took from the Tawrah and the Talmud Is they actually What their practice was Was to push someone off the top of a building And drop a big boulder on them Would that not be better and quicker some people may argue?
That's not the rule I believe it is quicker But that's not the ruling that Allah revealed The ruling that Allah revealed was in the middle Not to use a big boulder that disfigures a person Or crushes a person in one go and the person dies Nor to use little stones that prolong their punishment And you know there's something in Islam Wallah I found it so amazing When I was reading the chapters around this And the fiqh around this Is how much the scholars of fiqh talk about Not excessively hurting a person It's surprising because we're talking about punishments But not excessively hurting the person They disliked and discouraged the use of Very small stones that prolong a person's suffering The purpose here is the person to suffer And this is the purpose But before that the purpose is to deter people from doing this Right?
Okay yeah So the purpose here is that Like Ibn al-Qayyim said and others This person has committed a crime Which affected their whole body And the person in that way The threat of pain The threat of the pain of this punishment Is what will stop a person from a punishment From a crime which is very easy to fall into Right? It's very desirable It's all about desires and shahawat And you know the person wants to do this And there's a very strong pull from the shaitan But thinking about the potential punishment from that That's a big deterrent in stopping people from doing it And I want to also So here we said Neither should it be small stones Unnecessary suffering Nor should it be a huge boulder that is dropped upon a person But it should be something of medium size That will get the matter over quickly But at the same time will serve as a strong deterrent And I'm going to show you why Stoning for adultery is intended to be a deterrent Before everything else And why it fulfills both deterrence and retribution properly In terms of deterrence For a person to be stoned to death We said that stoning to death is carried out for Adultery of a married person Who has had intimacy in an Islamically valid way So as for the young child Like young kid or young, you know Like teenager or whatever Who fell into an error and made a mistake and whatever This person is not stoned The one who is stoned is the one who has had a valid marriage Has had intimacy as part of a valid correct marriage And then has committed adultery And that's consistent with the Islamic goals and aims of Preserving honor and preserving people's religion and protecting them So here, what does it take for someone to be convicted of adultery in Islam? Okay, yeah, good question For someone to be convicted of adultery in Islam In reality, there are only three ways That a person can be convicted of adultery in Islam One is confession And when we see from the Prophet ﷺ He did not accept the confession immediately When people would come to the story of Ma'iz For example, RadhiAllahu Anni And the Qamidiyya And many stories of this that happened in Islam The Prophet ﷺ discouraged them He said, I think you need to just go away and think about it Ask Allah's forgiveness Go back, perhaps it didn't happen Perhaps this wasn't what happened Would discourage the person from confessing Sorry, you said at the start that he was not a sharia He wasn't So isn't he taking the law into his own hands? I mean, Allah has prescribed his punishment and he's trying to delay it So Allah has revealed that the job of the hakim This is exactly my point That the purpose that Allah legislated this for Has more to do with deterrence Than it does to do with retribution In the sense that the Prophet ﷺ is only mubaligh He's only doing what Allah told him to do Wa ma yantiqu AAani alhawa inhuwa illa wahyun yuha He doesn't speak from his own desire It's only a revelation that is revealed So he discouraged them Go and repent between you and Allah You know, if you haven't been caught doing this Don't take the cover that Allah has covered you with Don't go out and take that cover away from people He discouraged them several times Until he sent them away And in some of the situations, he sent them away Then when the situation persisted That they kept on confessing the message of Allah I want the punishment to be carried out upon me He established that the person is sane That the person is not suffering from mental illness That they are not a child They have reached the age of adulthood Because this can only be carried out upon an adult That there are no shubahat, no confusion And that's why the Prophet ﷺ in some of the narrations asked Perhaps you only did this Meaning perhaps you didn't reach the level Of what is Islamically considered adultery You know, perhaps you had a relationship That didn't reach that far Perhaps you don't know what adultery actually The level of what adultery actually is And so on And it's only when they persisted in confession That this punishment was carried out It's the first way The second way is pregnancy That could only have happened through adultery And that is the second way that adultery or fornication is established So in this, there are very clear rules There cannot be any shubha, any doubt For example, the person comes and says No, I actually had a premature birth or something like that It wasn't like that I was married I, you know, all of those things Stop the punishment from being carried out Yes, the judge may go to the level of ta'zeer Of discretionary punishment If he believes it happened But it doesn't go to the level of the punishment That we're talking about here of stoning to death And the third is for four adult male witnesses To witness the actual act of penetration In terms of intercourse And not for them to see only two people go in a room together Or to hear something Or to see, you know, something happening from a distance That is a virtual impossibility That that would ever happen Unless these people are out in the middle of the street So this is something that has You can see from these things That really this is something where the majority of the emphasis is on deterrence Is on deterrence And this punishment of stoning is one that truly deters a person It's one of the only things that actually deters the shahawat The strength of the shahawat that leads a person to do this This is one of the only things that actually genuinely deters it But on top of that Ibn Qayyim also mentioned or alluded to The fact that from the point of retribution This person enjoyed something which affected their whole body So they also, in terms of retribution Deserve a punishment which affects their whole body as well So the retribution is also in line with the crime And this is something which, let's be honest It breaks families apart And we're not talking about unmarried people here We're not talking about young guys and girls doing things they shouldn't So we're talking about something that breaks apart families We're talking about something that has huge effects upon Children, children that come out from that It's something that's really sad that in the world today People just don't recognize how serious this thing is But the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam mentioned Among the worst of the things that a person can do Is to commit adultery, for example, with the neighbor Or with the lady who is, say for example The wife of the neighbor or the daughter of the neighbor, for example Okay, let's What this does So you see what I'm now putting across to you? Yeah, I get the picture that you're trying to paint I think it requires some further probing And obviously this is the first punishment that we're discussing So there'll be some introductory questions For example, with the issue of miscarriage of justice, like you mentioned So we are basically And you've obviously laid out the three types of scenarios That this could be carried out And you're saying that this really gets rid of all shubahat And it can't be carried out if there's any shubahat, any doubt So for example, CCTV, DNA, all that stuff Is not considered to be Is not sufficient to establish this punishment Yeah, the problem that people have is that This is such an extreme punishment And yes, Ibn Qayyim might say that the whole body experienced pleasure But that's a temporary pleasure And now this is a permanent ending of someone's life That's such a strong punishment On a system that is dependent on human beings For example, four male witnesses could conspire Could conspire, come together and conspire And say, we saw this act This is something that is open to I disagree with that for a reason I think, first of all, that If there is any indication of a conspiracy Then that would surely be enough To prevent that punishment from being carried out Because al-hudud tuturat bi shubahat Hudud are not carried out in the presence of questions or confusion So that's one thing The second thing is, historically There just aren't any cases where these four witnesses Actually came out and witnessed this This is something that is so rare That it's virtually non-existent That four witnesses actually witnessed this happening Except the people who we're talking about In full public display Other than that, it really isn't conceivable And it hasn't really happened in history And that's why really All of the times this has happened Have really been through confession Not through witnesses What about the second one you mentioned? Like a pregnancy that could not have happened Unless it was outside of marriage No DNA test How does that come to pass then? And how could that not be a case of mistaken identity Or something that's gone wrong? I mean, the fact that she's pregnant is kind of But if she's married to someone And then she's pregnant with someone else's child, for example That's a shubhah then Oh, so that wouldn't lead to the end punishment We're talking about something there is no You're saying it's only if she's not married And she becomes pregnant That's what you're saying There's no conceivable way Or for example, her husband is Hasn't been in the country for two years How do you find out the man who Is the punishment just on her or is it also the man? That depends If we don't have a proof for who the man was Then we can't carry out the punishment Does that make sense?
Yeah, okay I mean, I think that all of the regulations And the restrictions here show That the emphasis on this is actually deterrence There is a greater emphasis upon deterrence Than there is upon And the fact that the Prophet ﷺ Discouraged people from confession If the purpose here was retribution Then the Prophet ﷺ would not have discouraged The person who came to confess Yeah, I think a lot of people would totally agree That it's a huge deterrent I think people generally accept that They're not going to argue with that But this punishment being carried out In certain circumstances Even though those circumstances require A lot of detail behind those circumstances The fact that it's carried out For a crime that many people see Is not harming anyone It's not murder It's not rape It's just two consenting adults It's a very, very strong punishment For a lot of people to digest I think this is because of the corruption in society today And the fact that we have We have lost the We have lost a lot of our values about what's wrong You know, what's actually wrong Like for example I'm sure we're going to talk about apostasy later on But people will also say that apostasy is a victimless crime And you know that this is not an issue I believe adultery absolutely destroys the fabric of society I really believe that adultery In terms of cheating on a spouse Absolutely destroys the fabric of society And I believe if the punishment is not severe Then the encouragement and the desire Overcomes the punishment There has to be a severe punishment for this And Islam is consistent about this by the way And I believe this is another issue Where perhaps we should have mentioned the principles That the consistency of the Islamic punishments That Islam is very consistent Adultery is regularly mentioned Among the most severe of crimes It's not the case that in Islam it's a minor sin But oh, you get stoned to death for it Right, I see This is a severe crime in Islam And honestly, I believe that we've just We've reached a time in our society Where there's such a breakdown of society That people no longer believe That to be something which is a major thing And we're not talking about two young people Who get into a relationship Who do something they shouldn't That's a different matter And the punishment for them is suited to them And we're also not talking about the slave And so on and so forth Which has its own rulings to it But we're talking about now Someone who goes and cheats on their spouse We're talking about the danger that brings to children The fact that children are brought up From broken families That has a huge impact on society And the purpose here is that you have a crime That there is a huge desire to commit I'm sorry, but murder There is not a huge desire to commit murder typically And you have to be pretty upset, you know what And angry to think about killing somebody But zina is something which Yes, there is a desire to do it There is a motivation to do it Shaytan's pull for you is strong So you need a deterrent Which is very, very strong And ultimately the fact And I really believe this also must be mentioned The very fact that this punishment is known To everyone in the society Makes it fair Because if it wasn't known If somebody just turned up on the shores one day You know, landed on the plane You know, got into a relationship with a married woman And then said I didn't even know this was wrong Fair enough There you can say now we have to discuss But this is something that is known It is announced in Islam So the person now has to take in responsibility The consequences for their actions If I go to a country And that country tells me If you do x, y, z We will do this to you Then I have to take responsibility for my actions in this That's my responsibility It's not unfair It's my responsibility to now Decide what I want to do To take on board the responsibility for the actions that I've done Yeah, so I want to almost flip your argument Where you're saying that this is something that is The desire is so strong Which I totally agree that many people would see that as Something part that Allah has put inside us Is this strong desire We have a hadith that says Everybody falls into sins Especially a sin where the desire is as strong as this Yet for that to happen A mistake A one-off mistake that someone's made They come to confess And at this Why do they come to confess? They just feel guilty Why do they come to confess? They feel guilty because they know they made a mistake Why don't we keep it between them and Allah And repent and nobody knows about it? They just feel like they can't show their face in society It might be multiple reasons I'm not sure But in that case then Should we not look at the forgiveness? So let us look at the stoning that was done For example to Let's look at Ma'iz for example In the hadith of Ma'iz The Prophet ﷺ said That he has made a repentance That if that repentance was shared among the whole ummah It would be enough for them Or a whole group of people It would be enough for them In some narrations it's mentioned regarding one of the women That she made tawbah With the tawbah that if it was divided among 70 people It would have been enough for them That is a person's personal choice to make that tawbah You're right they get in that situation I can't show my face in society I feel terrible They can't keep it between them and Allah And then the punishment is carried out to them They are completely forgiven for that sin In the sight of Allah More than that the Prophet ﷺ said It's a tawbah that if it was shared among 70 people Every one of them would be forgiven for the sins they did It's a very strong tawbah It's not encouraged in Islam to do The Prophet ﷺ discouraged it It's not encouraged in Islam But the fact that A person may make a personal choice For that to be carried out for them They will get the reward of that in the hereafter In the forgiveness of Allah And the rehabilitation As it relates to the rehabilitation Al-ukhrawi in the hereafter Perhaps confession was actually the wrong example Because you're right But let's talk about a woman Like you said the husband's traveling She's made one mistake now She's got pregnant as a result of it She's now gonna be stoned to death As a result from a desire that is so strong So obviously she's gonna have the baby first And she's gonna provide the baby with Feed the baby first Because we don't punish the baby at the end of the day And she's gonna The baby has to be at a stage Where it can be looked after by someone And so on and so forth And then she knew this punishment existed ultimately She's just falling into a mistake The way the desires are so strong And then she'll be forgiven then for what she has done She'll be forgiven by that At the end of the day The mistakes are mistakes But they have consequences Like one day somebody falls into a mistake And decides to do something that is an act of disbelief It's a mistake But they have consequences And you say We have to accept the consequences of our actions But there's also consequences to society Like you say Like the concept of zina And the thing that happens to society This baby now has to go out without a mother Do we know what we're saying? Absolutely This baby now has to be looked after The baby's not guilty of anything A person doesn't carry the burden of someone else But that baby now has to be looked after And taken care of Either by the processes that are put in place By the state By the Muslim treasury and so on Or by a family that adopts that child And that child should not be given anything That makes a disadvantage for them at the end of the day But we still have to punish the person who is guilty of the crime Otherwise there's no deterrence Yeah I think a lot of people would actually feel more comfortable If this was the punishment for example for murder And not for zina Because murder like you said Is not something that you really inherently want to do So if you've really gone to that extreme It's a big punishment for you But it's just I think some people feel uncomfortable With the concept of two consenting adults So I think we've kind of been around this before This idea that of first of all what zina And we're not talking about two consenting adults Let's be clear that we're talking about the ones who are married here We're not talking because their desire for them should be less They have a permissible alternative for this They've chosen to betray their spouse Unless the husband's traveling like you said Okay but they've chosen to betray their spouse Is that yeah? Yeah that's fair Yeah and they have done something Which causes a fundamental breakdown in the fabric of society And again the number of people Who've actually been punished for this in Islam Is actually very very small Because it requires either confession In which case that's a tawbah from the person And they'll be rehabilitated in the akhira Or it requires a level of proof Which really isn't It is very unlikely to happen Except in the most extreme of of cases I think that is that's a balance And I think that this idea that You know that people mention that love is not a crime I actually find that to be To be an emotional argument That doesn't really look at the reality of what happens And that's what people say This you know consent to consenting adults And they say the same thing about homosexuality And say the same thing about many other things That this is not This should not be something that is a crime But ultimately Allah is the one who should decide What is allowed and what is not allowed And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has legislated this ولا تقربوا الزنا Don't come near to zina إنه كان فاحشة It's a filthy thing to do It's an evil thing It's an evil way to go And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has consistently told us this And I suppose when you look at the sharia in the whole Like you said the importance of doing that The fact that the free mixing is not allowed And the niqab and the jilbab And there's so many steps that prevent it To get into even this stage Okay let's look at the punishment itself You described quite a gruesome picture I'm going to have to put a disclaimer At the start of this video I think Men being buried to the waist Women being buried to the chest Being stones People are...
Are people throwing these stones? People are throwing stones They're not allowed to curse the person The prophet has prohibited them from cursing the person Some of the scholars said the imam should be the first one To throw the stone or the qadi Or should be the first one Because the qadi is the one who made the pronouncement Some of them said this Okay did any of the scholars say Like how long this might take Is it half an hour an hour? I looked into this So I have some statistics on this In terms of methods of the death penalty So definitely beheading I know this is going to be a bit gruesome right? Yeah I'm sure you had an interesting evening The other night when you were looking into it Yeah I mean if anyone looks at my google history It's all like beheading, stoning to death, lethal injection So beheading typically If it's done mercifully and properly with a sharp sword Should take around about two seconds Before the person loses consciousness And around about eight to ten seconds Before the person is clinically dead In terms of electric shocks Typically the electric chair now is considered in most It was only really only used in the states And one other country I believe And it is in many places now Considered to be cruel and unusual punishment There have been people who have taken over half an hour to die Because of botched Not having it set up properly And things like that But normal circumstances? And normal circumstances It's supposed to be quite quick the issue of electrocution But it's not being consistent If you look at people The number of people who've been electrocuted And the number of times that it hasn't worked properly For one reason or another Is quite significant Gas chambers take roughly somewhere in the region of 11 minutes Which is why they're not really used very commonly And lethal injection again has had a mixed result If it's done properly It's supposed to be relatively quick within a couple of minutes or so But it's not unheard of to take between 30 to 45 minutes For a person to die from a lethal injection Particularly the feeling that they may be paralyzed And in pain for that period of time Short hanging was another one Short hanging 10 to 20 minutes of choking to death And long hanging is actually the closest one to beheading Which is where they measure the length of the rope And that one should be again If it's done properly and measured correctly It should be instantaneous Okay In terms of stoning to death I couldn't find a specific amount of time However, it takes a very long time If the stones are very small And it is relatively instantaneous If the stone is huge Oh, if it's massive, okay, yeah But of course, instant unconsciousness Yeah So a one that doesn't cause instant unconsciousness It shouldn't be And the Ulema of Fiqh mentioned this It shouldn't be a prolonged suffering That's not the purpose of it It should be something which is not prolonged I have seen reports of it taking several minutes But those reports were As far as we can see In countries where it's not properly regulated And it wasn't For example, people throwing like small stones And things like that So it shouldn't be something And this is something that all of the punishments The scholars mentioned That the purpose of the punishment is to punish It's a punishment But it's not to cause unnecessary Suffering beyond the punishment That is described in the Qur'an And it's not to cause someone to be Punished for this huge length of time Yeah So just like you want to look at the Khudud Within the context of the Sharia This particular punishment The context of the time 7th century Arabia No electrocution obviously at that time Why can't we update these punishments To make it quicker Like you said Islam and the Sharia is a mercy to mankind There were punishments that were quicker Beheading is the quickest one of all of them Yeah I mean beheading is the quickest And the most merciful of all of the punishments Two seconds for unconsciousness With a sharp sword And the person is immobilized And a single blow You're talking about two seconds It's the quickest of all of them It's quicker than lethal injection It's quicker than electrocution It's quicker than everything However the Sharia specifically legislated This punishment Even though beheading was available to them Yes electrocution wasn't available to them Lethal injection wasn't available to them But beheading was available to them And that was not chosen in this instance And that appears to be for the reasons That I presented And Allah knows best I don't have a Nus to bring to you That that is the specific reason But you do have to ask Why it is that this punishment Is carried out in that way With the availability of a punishment It's a valid point Which is much quicker And there has to be a hikmah and a reason for that Okay Are people watching this? Other people? Like from society? Yeah that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala commanded For there to be witnesses to this punishment And the purpose of the witnesses Is there are multiple purposes behind having witnesses The first is that the deterrence spreads among the society That's the first one Okay That people when it's witnessed When it's not witnessed There's no deterrence in it Yeah You know And ultimately a huge amount of what that person is going through Is for the Is in order to deter other people from doing the same The whole point is if one person goes through this The hope is that a hundred other people won't You know those hundred other people Who are on the edge of that Will not go through that now But that has to be witnessed That has to be known That's the first thing The second thing is to make sure that The punishment is actually carried out To ensure that this is being carried out And to witness that this is being carried out properly And the third thing is that this is a matter of the religion And it's a matter of establishing something Which is from the symbolic acts within the religion From the things which the religion is known by That the religion has punishments that are carried out And so the witness of them is not a bad thing It's not something which is considered to be done on the side Behind closed doors Rather it's something that is a part of our religion And it's a tawbah for that person Ultimately that person will be washed and shrouded And buried and prayed over As would any other Muslim that died Doesn't take them out of Islam In fact it's what brings them forgiveness And rehabilitation in the hereafter So in the hereafter just from an Islamic perspective Then the person who doesn't confess But who's caught of this crime That process of stoning actually expiates their entire sin Absolutely their sin is expiated completely The Prophet ﷺ said لَقَدْ تَعْبَى تَوْبَةً They've made a tawbah that if it was divided among Ummah, among an ummah It would be enough for them Or if it was divided among 70 people It would be enough for them As for the one who dies without that Then that person is in the Or under the mashia of Allah عز و جل If Allah عز و جل wills He will forgive them And if Allah عز و جل wills He will punish them And if they have made true repentance in their life Which is true تَوْبَةً نَصُوحًا They will be forgiven Because Allah مَنْ تَعْبَى تَعْبَى اللَّهُ عَلَيْه Whoever makes true tawbah Allah will accept their tawbah And that's why in Islam It is preferred for the one who is not caught It is preferred for them not to confess But it's preferred for them To keep their repentance between them and Allah But if they choose to confess Then that is something which is made available to them And it will inshallah have a huge effect on them And hereafter in terms of forgiveness And a huge effect on deterrence for the other people And that's really the essence of the issue of haya Of life in qisas, in retribution Is this idea that when one person undergoes this punishment There are hundreds or thousands of people Who otherwise would be on the verge of this Who step back and say No, you know what it is We've now learned our lesson from that And that is again from the person with that confession and so on Which is not encouraged in the first place in Islam I think all of these checks and balances come together To make a very balanced system Which genuinely achieves the goals of deterrence and retribution Okay, last question on this issue of adultery And just before we move on to some of the other punishments Or some of the other crimes Someone might say that Appreciated that in Islam or Islamic history That this hasn't been carried out very often But as you said at the start This is meant for all times, all places And if this was implemented in the West for example On an hourly basis you'd be getting these kind of punishments I actually think if this was implemented in the West You might have that the first day it was implemented And after that you probably wouldn't have it at all Because people would actually say no And you know what it is Marriage is not difficult Well, a marriage is not difficult Even if you're not happy with the person you're married to Both men and women have a recourse to leave the marriage They have talaq, khula, fasg A way of getting out of the marriage All Islam asks you to do is to If you're not happy in the marriage you're in Dissolve that marriage through one of the permitted means Wait your appropriate length of time that you're required to wait If you have a length of time you're required to wait And then marry the person that you want to marry Islam doesn't make marriage difficult You know, I think a lot of this as well Maybe it comes from the Certainly Catholic and other Christian sort of practices Where divorce is impossible Where people typically commit adultery Because they cannot physically get divorced or get remarried Islam did not make it difficult to divorce or difficult to remarry So it's really There is really no excuse for that level of betrayal And that level of damage to the fabric of the society And the children and the wider family And the loss of the naseb The loss of lineage and the loss of people's honor There really is no excuse for that when Islam made marriage so easy So people will see, okay It's easy for them to get married It's easy for people to get out of a marriage that they are unhappy in And that should be sufficient for a person Without needing to go into the haram And I also believe there's one further point that's really important about And I think it's a benefit as in all of the topics Which is that it's so important that you don't spread the Practice to others It's not just that one person So you might say, okay, let's just take the argument that it's, you know Two people in love and, you know, love is not a crime and all that type of That is fine in one person But what happens when that becomes a culture? Look now in the West Hasn't it become now a culture? Everybody cheats on everyone And it's become like cheating is normal And all these kids being grown up without proper, you know, stable parenting And all these kind of problems that brings out in the society And really it's become something that spreads among people So one of the purposes of the hudud is also to stop this spread of And this is something we'll talk about inshallah when we come to apostasy as well This issue of spreading this problem to large numbers of people in society Versus it being something that rarity that somebody falls into Okay, on the issue of stoning then just before we move on Is there any other crimes in Islam where stoning is the prescribed punishment other than adultery? This is something which there is a difference of opinion about For example, the issue of homosexuality Homosexuality is forbidden in Islam It's considered to be a subset of adultery in reality So as a subset of adultery Because you can't legally marry someone of the same gender Islamically legally Islamically, you can't marry someone of the same gender So that's consistent Again, I think sometimes when Islam gets a hard time over this kind of thing It's actually quite unfair Because to be honest, Islamic rules are very, very consistent Some of the scholars considered it to be a separate punishment A separate category that it has its own system of punishment And others considered it to be a subset of adultery And as a subset of adultery, it comes under the same ruling Other than that, I don't recall of something at the moment I mean, if you have something you can bring it inshallah I do think we should talk though about what about the people who are unmarried What is their punishment?
So the punishment for them is considerably lighter The punishment for them is 100 lashes And to be what they call Taghrib To be expelled from their place of living for a year Some of the scholars said that in terms of expelling someone to a different city That imprisonment That that's effectively imprisonment Or that that is equal to imprisonment But the 100 lashes I want to also describe how the lashes I'm sorry I want to I really want to describe how the lashes take place Okay So the first thing is that the lashing should not be strong enough to cause severe damage It should not be weak enough that it doesn't hurt It shouldn't cause any broken bones And it shouldn't cause any blood to pour out from the person And the health and the age of the person being lashed should be taken into account So an old person who's infirm, who's very weak Shouldn't Especially if they believe that the lashing is going to cause them severe health issues After that it can't be done It has to go to a different kind of punishment So again I personally find this idea of lashing That you know you have these ideas of this person You know sort of bare back just being lashed until their back is just a mess of blood And or you know that's not what Islam said The lashing is meant to hurt It's not meant to be you know it's meant to be painful But it's not meant to It's not meant to cause lasting injury to a person So how do you reconcile that with images people have seen from countries Implementing this and they do see images like that Absolutely I think that is down to the people not implementing the religion of Islam properly I don't know whether those are Muslim countries or non-Muslim countries If they're Muslim countries then a person needs to look at how that is carried out Because this is from what I looked into the statements of the Fuqaha When they talked about this Scholars of Fiqh They said that it should be strong enough That it is a deterrent and it does hurt But it should not be so strong that it causes broken bones And severe bleeding and things like that It should not be something that causes long-term health problems for the person And you know honestly Wallah honestly I'm going to say something and you might be surprised Go ahead But honestly if you offered me the choice between Imprisonment in a prison in the west today and lashes Wallahi I would rather be lashed Wouldn't it depend on the length of time you're going to be imprisoned? Wallah to be honest I can't think of a situation I mean okay they said just a day Yeah you described it earlier as relative comfort You said five years relative comfort when you're talking about the Five years relative comfort Five years in a prison I would rather be lashed to be honest It's painful It's not a nice thing to happen But it is a fitting punishment for these kind of things At the end of the day this is two people who've had a relationship Outside of marriage but they haven't been married before They didn't have a halal outlet for it They fell into a mistake And so a hundred lashes is a very fitting balanced punishment Knowing that when you put people in jail There's a lot of criminality develops in jail When you're putting people unnecessarily in jail Because they don't have anything else to do with them And they're just networking with other criminals I actually know Wallah it's really sad And I really believe this That I know of brothers who ended up going to prison Good kids you know who to be honest They made mistakes and they went to prison And they ended up coming out as criminals And ultimately we have to have an alternative for that kind of system It's not that the system is not just to incarcerate everybody Just keep locking people up Lashes are painful they give a deterrent But they don't cause long-term health issues for people It's something nobody wants to be lashed a hundred times People are going to really I do not want that I would never want that to happen to me But ultimately I think that sometimes There are people in prison who say that death would be preferable to me I mean there are quotes from inmates who say I would rather die than be in this place And I think that the answer of just imprisoning people constantly Is something that is actually in a way more harmful to those people And less beneficial to society Sometimes then an issue of lashes Which is obviously also a punishment for For example substance abuse alcohol and so on And it can also be used as a ta'zeer As a discretionary punishment Sort of something which is available to the judge to carry out Should there be a crime that doesn't reach this level So I think it's actually something I really don't see what the fuss is about to be honest About it except when it's done inappropriately Or it's not carried out as it should be It's actually something which the person can move on with their life After having that done And they can actually go on But it's a deterrent that makes them think Okay I have suffered for what I've done It wasn't nice to have done to me I don't want to ever do it again It does stop other people from wanting to do it again But I don't have to pay 45,000 pounds a year To put this person per person in prison Yeah okay let's move on to the Another quite commonly quoted issue in this topic And that is the issue of chopping people's hands off for theft Right chopping off the hand huh So first of all I again I was really impressed with this punishment When I first heard about it When I was first looking into Islam I think that there have to be two things present For this to be a just and fitting punishment The first thing is it can't apply to all theft Because there is opportunistic theft You know someone's mobile phone on the table And just picks it up and runs off It's impulsive Yeah it's not what we want to see That somebody who does an impulsive theft Has a lifelong disfigurement for that It has to be of something of So there has to be certain conditions In the way the theft is carried out I'm going to talk about those in Islam But I'm just talking about from a logical point of view That I felt that there has It can't be every theft And the second thing is that there can't be any doubt over it Because it would be horrific For somebody to lose their hand Which is so essential to their life For them to lose their hand Because of something which they were not They were not clear that this was theft Or there was a doubt over it Islam provides both of those two things As we said Al-Hudud Tudra'u bish-shubuhat If there are any doubts over the validity of what happened If there's any doubts in the mind of the criminal Then this is something that is not carried out And I want to talk to you a little bit about Some of the conditions of this punishment To be carried out So the first condition is that It must be stolen What in which the scholars they call Khifyatan Ya'ni ala wajh al-khifya It has to be done secretly Ya'ni this is There are different punishments for For example highway robbery Where someone comes in There are different punishments for someone Swiping a phone off a desk Or pulling a card out of someone's hand and running off Or pulling the handbag and running off There are different things on that It has to be wealth that is of That is considered to be valuable That is considered to be valuable It has to reach a certain monetary value The monetary value is a quarter of a dinar Which or the equivalent currency value So it has to have a particular value Now some people mentioned in this What about the hadith about the one who steals an egg? So they lose their hand for it The meaning is not that they lose their hand for stealing an egg But the meaning is that their theft Petty theft leads them to serious crime And ultimately leads to this to be carried out It's a condition that it should be taken from It hails from a place of security So it's a premeditated theft That is taken from a place of security Not just you know like Or I left my laptop on the table in the coffee shop And I came back and it's not there anymore And somewhere for example it's in a safe at home Or it's in its proper place It's in the cupboard It's put away It has to be a theft that is taken from A place of you know It's proper place It's proper where it belongs Not something that was left accidentally somewhere And taken again And it has to be proven beyond any doubt If there are any doubt then the judge Yes the judge can apply discretionary punishment But the chopping of the hand cannot be done When there is a doubt or shubha around it And finally it has to be the case That the one who was stolen from Actually reports the crime And wants there to be a retribution for this crime And not the case that they say okay They can choose to forgive Let it go And they can say I don't They can say that I don't want this wealth I'm not worried it was taken from me And I'm not bothered about it That's one thing And also if there are mitigating factors Mitigating circumstances They call it in legal terminology Something like for example There is a famine There is a problem And people are desperate for food And somebody you know Stole something like that Then this again is not a state of the had Is not carried out here As in the prescribed punishment There may be ta'zieh There may be discretionary punishments Minor punishments But the major punishments are not carried out So really we're talking about Serious premeditated deliberate theft And again this is something you know I actually want just to reflect upon What's happening in a lot of countries now Where theft is not being investigated It's not being taken seriously And it's got to the point Even in the UK right You know it's time to make this video Where burglaries of people Break into people's houses Stealing their life possessions You know leaving them feeling You know to be honest Violated I mean someone's come into your house And broken into your house And stolen things And it's got to the point In many cases the police say Well you know just fill in the insurance form You know like that's all we can do for you And there needs to be a deterrence There is just no deterrent for this In current legal systems People are just stealing with impunity And this is a premeditated deliberate theft Of things of you know significant value And I think that needs to have a deterrence And I think losing your hand Is a pretty fitting deterrent for that It's very appropriate Because the person is losing Exactly what they used to steal with Especially with those conditions And I think that's something that's coming through In this discussion That all of these issues They have a number of conditions That many people might not be aware of It's a nuanced discussion It's not just like I saw him do it chop of his hand You've lived in Muslim countries before A couple of different Muslim countries Regardless of whether they're implementing this correctly or not Have you seen the issue of theft for example Like you said in the UK So common So like downplayed Is it different in the Muslim country? I think it is different And I think the more the countries implement this The less you have in the way of theft Because theft Really the motivation for theft Typically is greed, right? Usually There are cases like mitigating circumstances Where it's extreme poverty and things like that But those would not be typically situations Where you would look at the person to lose their hand You're talking about theft Which is primarily motivated by greed And it really is To see societies where this is clamped down on To be honest I really felt very strongly But I actually felt more strongly about this When I was looking into it Than I did about for example Punishments for adultery and apostasy I recognize the wisdom in all of those Those are from Allah And Allah's ruling is the best of rulings But I really felt this one was one That really resonated with me Because it's a really horrible thing To have something stolen from you like that In a premeditated, deliberate way And I think that it needs a deterrent And the purpose Islam does not want people walking around On the street without hands That's not the purpose of the rule But you have to have something That genuinely stops people from stealing And right now you have such a breakdown of the law That people Burglaries are not even being investigated People are committing crimes all over People are coming in gangs Just to steal things And they know that there's no real consequences To what they're going to do And I think that the whole thing here Is that the greater emphasis in Islam Is deterrence over retribution Although retribution is also fair Again, if you've stolen something And you've taken it from someone In that private place And you've, in a premeditated way You've broken in And you've taken it out of its private place And it's amassed something of value And you've really, you know Caused that hurt to the person What's a fitting retribution? What should you lose? And should you lose your tongue? And you should, sorry But you know, you should lose your hand That's a fitting retribution for that And again, we come back to this golden rule That this is applied more in theft Than probably in anything Because there are shubahat about it I thought it was mine I didn't, I thought this person owed it to me I had an agreement with them There are a lot of shubahat around theft So those shubahat don't cause this to be carried out I think just to go back to the discussion On the difference between Some of the Western countries And Muslim countries I think it's often the case that Certainly for myself I can only speak from my personal experience When I was living in the UK I generally felt like it was like this All over the world I didn't realise it was any different And then you hear stories of Muslim countries And you mentioned that When we were talking about in the introduction That the punishment system in the West And how it's failed And one of the proofs for that Is that people actually used to leave Their front doors open, for example Even in 2021 I know of stories of people in Muslim countries Leaving jewellery shops with gold Just open, go for the prayer Come back, the doors open And because of this deterrent And it just wouldn't happen And I think that's something that Many people living in the West They don't realise And they haven't heard these kind of stories And I think it's profound If you think about that And you think about We're so much emphasis on looking after these criminals It's so unfair what we do to these poor Robbers and thieves And it's so unfair what we do to them But if you look at what one person goes through that And the effect on the whole city Is nobody steals anything And the whole city undergoes safety and security The person who went through that Did they commit a crime or not? They committed a crime And they fulfilled the rules of committing the crime So to be honest I'm not going to shed tears over that I'm actually going to look at the overall picture and say Wow, honestly This person also was forgiven by the way For the theft they committed You know the issue of forgiveness? What if the person doesn't regret what they did? Are they still forgiven? Well, that's a good question If a person doesn't regret what they did But the punishment is carried out Perhaps we can say And Allah Azawajal knows best It's something worth looking into Maybe dealing with the Q&A Questions and answers But there are two aspects to it The actual sin itself Yes Also, you mentioned one of the conditions And I think this will be on the minds of a lot of people You said that it has to be of a certain amount Quarter of dinar, I think you said Any idea of the rough conversion to nowadays? It's about 1.4 grams of gold, I believe So it is I mean a gold price today It's something in the region of $85, $90 Something like that It's something of significant value We're not talking about Okay, I don't know You obviously have high expectations of value I don't know That's enough to really hurt someone Like if you look at the whole world If you look at the whole world And we're not just talking about like Salaries that people get Say for example in the UAE or in the UK Or something like that But if you look at the world That's a significant amount of money Across the whole spectrum Because you can't have one price for one And one price for another Of course That's it That's not a small amount of money Even now for example If someone stole from you 20 pounds Or something like that Or let's say you know $30 or whatever It's not hugely A huge amount that it's It's you know incredibly painful for you Or that you never get over it Or never be able to replace it But I think that once you get up to a Significant amount like that It does for people Depending on their income It does make a big difference to people Do you reckon it justifies a hand being lost For the rest of the person's life?
It justifies Yeah But the point of this is not to put a value It's not that your hand is worth a hundred dollars But the point of this is to say that Small amounts that are insignificant Are definitely not suitable for that Like someone steals Let's say for example a bag of sugar Or someone steals an egg Or someone steals you know That is something that it shouldn't A person shouldn't have such a severe Punishment carried out upon them Until it reaches a level where you can say They stole something of significant value Yeah okay And what happens to people who engage in theft But it doesn't reach those conditions For example they steal something smaller than that So then it comes to ta'zeer isn't it? Discretionary punishment So discretionary punishment is a wide topic The scholars differed over some aspects of it Like is it allowed for there to be A financial punishment The jumhur of the ulema The jamahir from the former dahib They said it's not allowed to be financial They said that financial punishments Are not part of ta'zeer But some of the scholars Like Shaykh al-Islam bin Taymiyyah and others They allowed financial discretionary punishments Like a fine Or from the discretionary punishments is imprisonment From the discretionary punishments And by the way imprisonment In the time of the prophet says You know you should be in the masjid right? Really They used to imprison someone And they had That was one of the Options they had available to them To tie them to a pillar in the masjid That's a beautiful way of Bringing a person back to the And giving a da'wah Back to the deen And also the likes of lashes But less than And some of the many of the scholars They put a limit They said it can't reach the had It can't reach the same as a had Like 50 or 100 It has to be a small It has to be a number that is less than that And some of them put this condition So a discretionary punishment The judge has to look at the situation And what is needed to bring about deterrence Rehabilitation Retribution Incapacitation and so on In context of what happened So that's why you have this discretionary level Which again the scholars differed Is that discretionary punishment allowed To reach such a severe level as a had Or must it be within Smaller punishments That's a matter which the scholars differed over And some of them allowed Severe discretionary punishments And some of them They only allow discretionary punishments In those things which are not Which have not reached We're not as severe as what we've been talking about Okay you've talked a lot about deterrence We've talked about retribution Rehabilitation So we've covered two punishments so far Stoning to death Rehabilitation in the dunya Non-existent Absolutely 100% Capital punishment There is no rehabilitation in the dunya But we did establish by the way When we said this in the beginning That rehabilitation is not a universal Objective of sentencing It's present in some things and not others That's why you have whole life tariffs in jail There's no rehabilitation We're not looking to rehabilitate this person at all However rehabilitation in Islam is wider than just I mean how do you bring a person back to righteousness right How do you bring a person back To being an upstanding member of society That's Iman That rehabilitation is rehabilitation And that's why Niklas Shuaib has a wide comprehensive It's not at the end of the day You know giving them a job And you know teaching them that you don't have to steal from people And you can actually you know You can actually do xyz That's a very small part of rehabilitation And what a greater part of rehabilitation is actually Iman And if Allah Azawajal forgives a person by punishments being carried out Then that is a huge rehabilitation in terms of their Iman There are some things for which we do not want to rehabilitate people And that's you know clear in Islam For example the person who took someone else's life We're not looking to bring that person back into society As an upstanding member of society You know if you made that decision to do that And you fulfill the conditions of that Then ultimately you have to lose your own life in return for that And that is where the retribution takes precedence Because they say retribution always exists in sentencing As opposed to rehabilitation Which is a secondary factor of sentencing Not a primary factor According to you know Because we're talking about this from the angle of the non-Muslims Who have issues with Islam So in their own system Rehabilitation is a secondary level consideration It's not primary level It's not always there in every situation And it's often the criticism of their own system When they talk about rehabilitation A lot of people say that actually If you've got a criminal record to come out It's impossible to find a job And a lot of these people then turn back to crime Aren't you doing the same thing with chopping someone's hand off They're going to come back And everyone's going to know They can't trust this guy But one of the most beautiful things is You talked about criminal record So let's talk about criminal record in Islam Okay The criminal record in Islam Is what the angel on your left hand side writes down Yeah That's your criminal record in Islam For that to be wiped out People in the society recognize That this is a person who has been rehabilitated The prophets I said forbade them to be cursed Forbade them to be mistreated Because this is a person who Allah has rehabilitated Wow I mean Allah has brought this person From the point of view of their Iman From the point of view of their practicing And yes it is a huge stigma for a person But there has to be that deterrence Because if it isn't there That person is going to walk out tomorrow And they're going to see something someone has And covet it and think I could go for that just one time But that is a constant reminder And ultimately there has to be a balance And that's why if you only look at rehabilitation As a sole goal of legislation Yeah You actually find that you'll never find a balance There has to be a balance There has to be times where we say no Retribution here is more important than rehabilitation But we provide a means for rehabilitation I think Islam provides the greatest means Because it provides a means that relates to the person's Iman Rather than to the person's job prospects or whatever That is something which is a risk It's from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala And that's something which is And there's no reason why the Muslim treasury Doesn't support a person in that regard Because a person is considered to be clean You know they've been purified But it has to be We have to take all of those things into account And I would argue that no human being Is actually able to get that balance right There is no human being is able to balance Between the different needs of sentencing Instead that has to come from From the one who knows everything And has infinite wisdom and the best judgment That's the only He's the only one who can find the balance Which is truly appropriate for the society Otherwise we keep trying to find it And you know on one side We're shedding tears over hardened criminals And on the other side We're just you know Imprisoning people who are turning into criminals And then we've got people who've committed crimes That wallahi they are like You couldn't find a punishment suitable for it And it's all just upside down So then why did Islam leave the door open to ta'zeer Discretionary punishment Up to a human being the qadi the judge Yeah I think because in discretionary punishments Here the matter is lighter Because it hasn't reached a level Of the most severe level of the crime It hasn't reached that level And so the discretionary punishment That is available to the judge The judge has guidelines now Because the purpose here is now achievable Within the framework of the law Sent down by Allah Now it's not that the judge Doesn't just sit there and pick a punishment Like well what have we got today We haven't we haven't lashed anyone for a few hours All right go on let's lash him You know like it's not like that The judge has a framework and guidelines In which to act But at the end of the day They are looking at these things They are looking at How do we deter people from doing it How do we rehabilitate this person This discretionary punishment Typically not always But typically is there is rehabilitation after it Typically there are some cases The scholars differed about Whether a person can be killed In discretionary punishment or not And so on And the judge has more It's something which hasn't reached That high level of severity Or commonality that's so common And so normal in society Like these things Which Allah has given us prescribed And specific punishments for وَلَا يُكَلِّفُ اللَّهُ نَفْسًا إِلَى وُسْعَهَا Allah doesn't burden a person With what they can't bear So it must be within the ability of the judge To give out these discretionary punishments Under the concept of jihad and so on Okay let's move on to something Which I would hope everybody agrees with This is a crime And it deserves to be punished Which is the issue of murder Which no doubt probably featured In your search history the other night What is the punishment in Islam for murder Okay so typically In terms of murder in Islam The concept that we have in Islam Is the concept of qisas Okay which is a life for a life And that is something which is Well established in again in the Torah Just before we go into some of those things Doesn't that sound a bit mafia-ish Like you kill one of ours We're going to kill yours And then you see this in gang culture Just constant killing back and forth Yeah I think if you are talking about vigilantism Then I think that's a valid point But I think when you're talking about a legal system It's not because here it's carried This is a punishment which is revealed by Allah Which is carried out by the state Not by the other person Now that could be said And some people do misunderstand that In the ayah in surah al-isra In which Allah azawajal said وَلَا تَقَتُلُ النَّفْسَ الَّتِي حَرَّمَ اللَّهُ إِلَّا بِالْحَقِّ وَمَنْ قُتِلَ مَظْلُومًا فَقَدْ جَعَلْنَا لِوَلِيِّهِ سُلْطَانًا فَلَا يُسْرِفْ فِي الْقَاتِلِ إِنَّهُ كَانَ مَنْصُورًا That do not kill the soul that Allah has prohibited Except with right I for example The person who committed adultery Who you know Who is married Truth discussed And whoever is killed in oppression We have certainly given for his wali I mean his close relative We have given them a sultan We've given them authority فَلَا يُسْرِفْ فِي الْقَاتِلِ So don't let that person exceed in the killing By killing more than the person who killed Like as in retribution and vigilantism and so on This person will certainly be aided This doesn't mean that the sultan that is given here That the wali of the person who is killed Just takes his sword out and goes and finds the killer and kills them This is actually the law of either carrying the punishment Or forgiving the punishment Because we know that the wali of the person who is killed Is given a choice of three things In a case of murder Now bear in mind Islam distinguishes between murder And what is typically called manslaughter Or what in America they call first degree murder And second degree murder and so on Like accidental murder Yeah, murder where it's not And Islam actually puts very stringent description and rules As to what constitutes murder For which a person can lose their life And what constitutes You know what is called second degree murder Or accidental killing or manslaughter Where a person has taken actions Which resulted in the loss of life of a person But doesn't reach the level of murder So in the second degree one Where it doesn't reach the level of murder The punishment is blood money And it is that blood money is taken And the person doesn't lose their life for that There are actually three degrees of killing in Islam There is accidental killing There is probably what I would term A good word for it is manslaughter Or sort of something which sits between murder And accidental killing It's not completely accidental Nor is it Nor does it match the standards of murder And that one there is a higher amount of blood money in it The one for which a person loses their life Is what we typically call first degree murder Or sort of the deliberate And sort of conscious killing of the person That is the one where the person Now the wali has three choices right The first choice is to demand a life for a life Which is not the life of anyone by the way It's not the life of your gang member or your tribe The life of the person who killed And in terms of how that life is taken There are two opinions among the scholars One is that it is simply taken by the sword And it's beheading Which proves what you were saying earlier That existed at the time The other is that it's taken by mu'mathala In other words that what they did to kill the other person Is done to them unless it would be haram So obviously there are things that are outright prohibited That could not be It would never be islamically allowed to do Those cannot be done by mu'mathala As in you did it to them we do it to you But for example if they Let's say for example shot the person Then they would be shot If they stabbed the person then they would be stabbed If they you know beheaded the person They would be beheaded and so on That's one opinion And one opinion is that they are simply killed by the sword Now the second choice they have is to take blood money Even for murder So this is the family Because ultimately that person who died That person who died has passed on Their matter now is with Allah For Allah to reward them And for Allah to replace for them What was taken away from them But what is left the grieving family Who've lost somebody Who've had someone taken away prematurely Taken away from them by this act of murder So they can choose to take blood money So it's their choice not the government It's their choice And they can also choose to forgive completely And there are instances where they I've personally seen with my own eyes People wait until almost the moment of execution And forgive the person And say that I wanted the person to really appreciate the I wanted the lesson to be learnt But ultimately I don't feel that I don't want that person to lose their life So that is down to the wali And that's the sultan which is mentioned in the ayah That's what is meant Not the sultan of taking your sword out And going looking for the guy to cut off his head You've said that a couple of times now You mentioned the hadith earlier about stealing an egg And you said what's meant here is not this But it's this According to whose understanding Like where are you getting?
So we have to take this from the hadith Okay We have to take this from the hadith We have to take it from the adillah So for example in the stealing of the egg We know that an egg And that's a gold egg Doesn't reach ruba dinar It doesn't reach the minimum amount So here it's not possible That a person could steal an egg on its own And lose their hand Because it doesn't reach the hadith And we have to reconcile all the hadith together All the ayah together It doesn't reach ruba dinar It doesn't reach a quarter of a golden dinar So now there has to be another reason So now we go to the statements of the scholars And we ask how did they understand this hadith How did they reconcile between this And between the fact that it is a matter of Which is clearly understood in Islam That a person cannot have this punishment carried out For something which is less than that value And generally what I believe to be the proper Or the stronger opinion in this Is that it talks about the consequences That somebody steals an egg And then tomorrow they steal something else And then the next day and the next day Until it reaches a point Where they start stealing things of value And then the consequence of stealing that egg Is that they ended up With the punishment carried out upon them In terms of here the sultan that is mentioned here Again the principle that we have That the hudud are the job of the wali al-amr That's the wali al-amr's job And if we look at just the example of the sahaba The khalifat al-rashideen If we look at the example of the Prophet ﷺ We see that the wali al-amr Either himself or either appointing someone To carry out that But it's not the case that we have vigilantism In the religion of sultan You have statements of like At the time of the Prophet ﷺ Amr ibn al-Khattab When something happened he said Let me chop his head off He's not the government Okay who is he asking? He's asking the Prophet ﷺ He's asking the one who is in responsibility The wali al-amr Oh messenger of Allah You are the ruler here Give me permission to carry out this punishment Upon this person Do you think that there's any kind of justification For people who might be Muslims They read these ayats and ahadith They come across these punishments And obviously with your knowledge You know that this is not in their hands It's not meant for them to carry out But they come across these ayats and ahadith And they just carry out like acts of terrorism For example on the street Based on these misunderstandings of these ayats Like do you see how people can fall into this? I think that whenever Islam is not implemented properly And whenever people don't take Islam from its proper sources There is a danger of the rulings of Islam Being misinterpreted and misunderstood And I think that's just as true in Christianity And it's just as true in Judaism And there are plenty of examples of that throughout history The act of committing acts of terror Is in itself something for which There is a prescribed punishment in Islam Allah, as we just said The punishment of those people Who wage war against Allah and his messenger And they cause corruption in the earth This includes like the highway robber It includes the banditry It includes people who commit huge acts of terror And so on and so forth And yuqattalu, that they be killed Or yusallabu, or crucified Or tuqatta'a aydihim wa arjuluhum min khilaf Or their hands and feet cut off from opposite sides Or yunfamila'at, or expelled from the earth The scholars mentioned that each one Is according to the severity of the crime And with the right to the crucifixion They differed over whether it's done before The person is killed Or whether it's done after In a way of showing people the severity of this Because this is one of the worst kinds of crimes The crimes that sort of tear at the fabric Of the safety of the society Like banditry people Kidnapping people from the streets Robbing armed robberies Where people, you know Stop people who are traveling on a road And rob them or try to kill them And likewise terrorism Anywhere people, you know Really tear at the fabric of the safety of society And destroy, you know, the lives of many people Those people, that's one of the most severe punishments That exists in Islam So I think ultimately everything can be misused You know, we see even, you know Things that are sort of considered to be Basic sort of, you know, teachings in western countries And so on We see groups, extreme groups Come and misuse those teachings We see in Christianity, extreme groups Come and misuse the teaching of Christianity And use it for violence Islam, every time Islam mentions For example, jihad Or Islam mentions fighting of any kind Islam typically, always you find A clear instruction in the same ayah Or the following ayah Not to go to extremes وَقَاتِلُوا فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ الَّذِينَ يُقَاتِلُونَكُمْ وَلَا تَعْتَدُوا إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يُحِبُّ مُعْتَدِينَ Fight those people who fought against you Not fight innocent men and women and children on the streets Fight the people who fought against you وَلَا تَعْتَدُوا Don't go over the limits Don't go over the limits that are set by Allah And that's a standard feature of Whenever verses mention fighting Mention killing And bear in mind this fight and killing is That which is done under the banner of the ruler i.e. an organized army that takes That is organized and that is given their instructions From the Wali-ul-Amr Not vigilantism again They are told don't go to extremes The Prophet ﷺ said told them not to kill the child Not to kill the woman Not to break down the monasteries and the churches And the synagogues where people are worshiping Allah To leave the people alone Not to cut down the trees and so on and so forth Islam came with regulations for this That supersede and are better than Any existing regulations right now Look at the you know all this thing about The Geneva Convention and the rules of war and so Islam established fair and just rules of fighting And strongly tells everybody That when you fight you don't go to extremes You don't go over the limits Allah does not love the people who go over The limits that they've been set And I think that again you know The fact that Islam contains these things Is problematic for some people But they have to understand that Islam is a complete way of life Have you ever seen a government And apart from we're talking about Maybe the government of a tiny little island somewhere But a significantly sized government That doesn't have an army At the end of the day we're talking about governments here We're talking about a country that has a legitimate army The difference being that that army Is given religious instruction Not political instruction Political instruction I'll go and do what you want You kill these people do you know I want you to make an example of them There's no political instruction for fighting Instructions religiously You are not allowed to do this Religiously you're not allowed to do that Your purpose for fighting is a religious purpose Not a political purpose Not because I want to have double the land That I have right now It is a purpose of making the word of Allah the highest And the word of those who disbelieve the lowest Stop it for a whole podcast inshallah But it is really important to understand That the concept of fighting existing within Islam Is actually something which provides safeguards that don't exist And honestly if you were to look at armies around the world today And I want you to look at professional armies Like the likes of the United States, UK, Australia These are countries that have professional armies With laws that govern what their soldiers do The abuses from those soldiers have been significant and consistent Not one-off They have been regular and consistent Time and time again in war after war They've been convicted in their own courts of doing so So this is something really that ultimately People who are fighting need religious guidance It's not barbaric It's that you say to people That you say to somebody When you go out and fight First of all that this is done as part of a legitimate army That is organized and that is given its instruction From the government of that Muslim country Secondly that you under no circumstances Whether your commander tells you Or your governor tells you Or the ruler tells you Are you to kill innocent men, women and children Who are not people who are not fighting against you You are not to attack people who are worshipping Allah In their private places of worship And so on and so forth That to me is something which we should be proud of Not something that we should be running away from And hiding behind The fact that people may abuse that I think to be honest People will look for any justification to do something And anytime Islam is not implemented properly It's open to It's never the fault of Islam It's the implementation of the people Absolutely And it's our job to educate people about that And to stop that from happening And that's, I believe it's important You know I'm not a person who thinks That we should shy away from the problems That are existing in our Ummah today With young kids who fall into extremism and so on We need to go out and tackle that We need to show them that this is wrong And we need to show them the evidences from the Qur'an And the Sunnah And the actions of the companions Which prove to us that this is not a part of Islam And when we do that And we publicize it And we say so openly That will naturally decrease the number of people Who go down that route Okay let's go back to the issue of murder What kind of conditions are in place here To make sure there's no miscarriage of justice Or any of those other things So again we go back to the same principle That any kind of shubha So you've mentioned this a few times That this doubt, this issue of doubt Any kind of doubt Means that the prescribed punishment is Who's in charge of identifying whether this is a doubt Or this is not a doubt So there are two things First of all you have the Sharia as a whole As a legislation With the Islamic law Which gives us a framework and principles Within which to work And you have a judge Who is responsible for looking at this case And who is responsible for taking submissions from people So for example the person comes and says I did not, you know, I did not do this Or I don't believe this happened Or I was not sane at the time Or you know anything like that For example someone claims insanity Of course the judge is going to look into the reality of that They're going to take medical testimony They're going to look into the reality Of whether that person was sane or insane But that is a shubha at the end of the day That's a It needs to be investigated It needs to be investigated Because if it is true that the person was not in possession Of their full faculties Then we can't carry out the had upon them There can be the potential of ta'zeer Of discretionary punishment But there can't be it There can't be the, you know, the prescribed punishment Can't be carried out I think one of the limits that we have The limiting factors we have in cases of murder Is that we have the three levels The fact that not everyone who is killed Is considered to be of this high level of murder That entails qisas That entails retribution But instead it depends on what was intended So let's give an example You have accidental killing So accidental killing is something where the person Didn't take any steps to kill that person But the end result was that the person died You know, so it could be for example You're driving your car And someone runs over Driving your car But you're not driving your car I mean this issue of driving the car Dangerously is one that needs some looking into But you're driving the car in, you know, fairly normal way And you hit somebody And at the end of the day you result You caused them to die But you didn't murder them Accidental killing is one level But the next level up is this kind of I don't know how to frame it In between that and murder You know, semi-accidental Is where a person might, for example To give an example Someone goes to actually hurt somebody But they aim to hurt someone With something that Usually it would not be expected to cause them to die You know, it wouldn't be expected that they cause them to die For example, let's just say they You know, they punched them a few times You know, they wanted to hurt them But they didn't do so in a way that you would expect that person to die But the person died Okay So now this is the next level up This is the next level up Murder, even if a person was to say I didn't intend to kill them But they took steps that would be expected to result in someone's death For example, they stabbed someone to death And he said, well, I didn't intend to kill him I just intend to hurt him I wanted to stab him just a couple of times And hurting me died Sorry, but when you pulled a knife out And you stabbed that person You did something that is expected typically To result in someone's death That is quite conceivable That is considered to be murder in Islam Of the highest degree Even if the person's final intention was not to actually kill that person But it was to cause them severe harm But they did so with something which is expected to kill somebody Like they shot them And they said I was only trying to shoot him in the leg or in the arm or something But ultimately you pull the gun out You pull the trigger You know what typically happens when you shoot a person Is that there is a high chance of that person That person is going to die Then that is considered to be That makes sense That's considered to be murder What about the issue of witnesses? Does that play a part in murder? Absolutely Witnesses are a part of all of the Islamic punishments And the Islamic legal system Is you have to have witnesses And we said that Zina is extremely high standard of witness To the point where it's almost has no existence As for the others Then it requires typically Even in the issue of stealing and others It requires two witnesses That are considered to be of sound mind Of suitable level of religious practice People who are known to be truthful People who have no ulterior motives And so on and so forth So yeah there are witnesses are also required And again if there aren't any witnesses And this is really interesting Because how does Islam see things like CCTV and DNA And forensics and things like that Typically this is considered not to be of the level of a witness But it's considered to be a supporting evidence for something And that you know people sometimes turn around And say that that is you know such a Why you know why we've got these scientific methods Why are these not primary?
That poor victim that they've gone through this clearly You can see it on TV Why are they not primary? We are now starting to see in our time The dangers of relying upon those as primary evidences Miscarriages of justice where DNA was contaminated Deep fake videos where videos are not done properly Or where they're misrepresented Or where it didn't show the person A lot of miscarriages of justice are coming from that So Islam doesn't say the person will not be punished But they will not have the had carried out What they will have is if the judge believes There is a sufficient amount of evidence around that In terms of things like CCTV and DNA and so on Then the judge may carry out a discretionary punishment But the had will not be done And I think that if you were to look at Even though in the beginning when these things came out People believed they were the answer to everything I think if you look now We've seen significant numbers of miscarriages of justice Around these areas which do make sense That they should fall under discretionary punishment Rather than the had And the had really has a very high standard of proof But isn't there an argument that the same thing could occur With two human beings The eye could be flawed They could be seeing something That they thought they genuinely did see Their two witnesses But they didn't see it quite right And I suppose that would be the doubt That would be the doubt And also it's the judge's job to make sure that This is investigated properly The point is that Islam put a very, very high standard Higher typically than what I would say Exists in modern legal systems The standard of proof or the burden of proof in Islam Is typically higher than most modern legal systems And the reason for that is again Because the emphasis is on deterrence And to reduce the number of miscarriages of justice Because that is a major argument Many of the people who have concerns over these punishments Their biggest concern are miscarriages of justice And if we can reduce the number of miscarriages of justice Obviously Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will Allah azzawajal will recompense a person On the day of resurrection There's no doubt about that But we want to make it a system whereby There are extremely small numbers of miscarriages of justice You know as minimal as possible To make it such that people have confidence in The wisdom behind these punishments Okay let's move on to another topic where It's considered to be not a crime for many, many people And that is the issue of apostasy Someone being a Muslim, changing their mind effectively And leaving the religion What's the ruling on this? So there's no doubt that the punishment for apostasy is death It's capital, it's a crime that is considered to be Worthy of capital punishment And I think there are a couple of things that you need to bear in mind I think it's what really interests me about apostasy And the punishment for apostasy is Who would actually have this punishment carried out upon them? Okay So let's say a person decides that I no longer want to be a Muslim Okay First of all, what is the punishment that person is going to get on the day of resurrection? It's huge Eternal punishment hellfire Yeah we all agree on that I would say having a severe punishment in this world Is a significant blessing and mercy In comparison to what the punishment is in the hereafter In terms of discouraging people from going down this road But let's keep on this topic Individual makes that decision personally What are they going to do? They decide I'm going to leave this Muslim country I can't live here anymore They decide to leave They privately get on a plane They go to a non-Muslim country And they live happily ever after Until the punishment of Allah comes upon them And that's their issue What if they've got family in a Muslim country? They want to remain there They want to live their life like a normal citizen So they live their life like a normal citizen But they don't publicize their beliefs You're going to see what I'm coming to in a second Yeah Okay but they're eating during Ramadan And people are saying why? You know it's a difficult life to live You have to pretend to be a Muslim Yeah difficult life to live The other person publicizes it Invites other people to it Says publicly that I have renounced my religion Like the Munafiqun used to do as well In the time of the Prophet S.A.W Where one of the phases they went through Was they went through a phase of Telling people that they were Muslim And then at the end of the day They would say to the people We've renounced our religion In order to make other people renounce their religion This is the one who you expect The punishment of apostasy will be carried out upon Okay I want to go into two questions there First of all you mentioned which Me and you would both agree That the punishment from Allah After death on the day of judgment Is eternal hellfire for this person How would you approach this conversation With a non-Muslim who doesn't necessarily believe in that Yet you're still advocating for This huge punishment for apostasy in this world I think that ultimately you have to Take this discussion in the context Of the whole of the religion of Islam I don't think you can take this discussion Out of the religion of Islam And the existence of God And the right of Allah to legislate I don't think you can just take this out of there And keep it on its own You have to have Muqaddimat You have to make the person The person has to understand The existence of God The law of God The right of God to be worshipped alone The crime of making a partner with God And that has to be there Otherwise you're trying to have a discussion Based on no foundation There is nothing you agree upon Because I don't believe God exists So why is there a punishment for apostasy? That's like saying I don't believe that murder is wrong Why is there a punishment for murder? Like at the end of the day We have to have some kind of common ground That we stand upon Okay the second question I have Is that you mentioned that the person Who makes a private personal decision That I no longer believe in this religion As long as they don't go out publicizing it I don't see how the punishment would be How would they be discovered? My point in this is not actually that They shouldn't be deserving of the punishment I believe they're deserving of it It's actually that I believe that the really the person This is being That this is really targeted towards Is to stop the spread of apostasy in society This is a bit narrow That you're a fever yourself And you were previously a Christian Okay And you were living in a non-Muslim country And then you decided that Islam is the truth And you've gone on to publicize that And even call people towards it And imagine if that was the rule in Christianity Yeah Where would you be? Where would I be? I wouldn't be I've announced my Islam in that country I would have quietly made my way out To a nice Muslim country And then stood you know on the minbar Yawm al-jumu'ah And said to everyone I've become a Muslim And I'm not going back to that country Because those people are going to Execute me for choosing the truth I mean I don't think you can compare Islam To anything else But I do see where you're coming from But I just personally hear in this issue of apostasy I really think that when you see the wisdom Of what this does to the whole society And the severity of this crime And the severity of what it leads to And the need for deterrence The need for retribution And the safeguard The fact that this guy is caught And then just the punishment is carried out You know that opens up to some questions But the fact that they're given an option to recant To repent And they still persist with it I think you know a person If it was the other way around in Christianity You've got two choices Either you die as a martyr Or either you keep it quiet And get out of the country And what did the sahaba do in Mecca When they were in under threat of being killed For choosing their religion Some of them sacrificed themselves And some of them concealed their Islam Until they could leave I think that is reasonable When this law is publicized and known about So how do you reconcile You say it's publicized and known about How do you reconcile this With the various ayat in the Qur'an That seem to go against this Like for example لا اكره في الدين من شاء فليؤمن ومن شاء فليكفر If whoever wants to believe Then let them believe لكم دينكم ليدين All of these ayat that suggest that It's okay to have different belief systems So that's not what those ayat suggest But let's take them one by one This statement of Allah عز و جل فمن شاء فليؤمن ومن شاء فليكفر This statement is a statement of tawbeekh It's a rebuke That whoever wants to believe Let them believe And let them have the consequences of their belief And whoever wants to disbelieve Let them disbelieve And let them have the consequences of their disbelief في الدنيا والآخرة It's not approval Okay how do you know that it's not approval Because Allah عز و جل لا يرضى لعباده الكفر Allah عز و جل is not content for his slaves to disbelieve He's not pleased for his slaves to disbelieve Is there a clear cut ayah in the Qur'an That says Islam is the only religion إِنَّ الدِّينَ عِنْدَ اللَّهِ الْإِسْلَامُ وَمَنْ يَبَتَ غِيْرَ الْإِسْلَامِ دِينًا فَلَيُقْبَلَ مِنْ وَهُوَ فِي الْآخِرَةِ مِنَ الْخَاسِرِينَ So you have to understand those verses in light of the cliques As for لا اكرارها في الدين This is actually something which again is completely true Some of the ulema said this ayah is mansooka It's been abrogated by the ayat of jihad and so on However the correct opinion is that it's not abrogated here This ayah لا اكرارها في الدين There is no compulsion in religion Is that not that there will not be consequences for the religion that you choose Or the choices that you make But that ultimately nobody can Or if you were compelled to accept a religion That wouldn't be accepted by Allah Ikhlas is a condition of لا إله إلا الله right So it's compelled And that's why people are not compelled There is no compelling And that's why the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ أُمِرْتُ وَأُقَاتِلَ النَّاسِ It doesn't say أُمِرْتُ وَأَقْتُلَ النَّاسِ I was commanded to slaughter the people I was commanded to fight against the people They're given an option Either you accept Islam If they are from the Jews, the Christians and some other groups They're given the option to pay the jizya To live under the Muslim army's protection And to have their religion as it is Or they're given the option to fight That is an option that's given to them Nobody is saying to them become Muslim Yani a person is forced into Islam like that Rather a person has consequences That's a different aspect A person chooses not to be Muslim There are consequences to that In the dunya and in the akhira But that isn't a compulsion Ultimately if a person was compelled to accept a religion That wouldn't be accepted from them You have to accept Islam freely You have to choose And the last ayah لَكُمْ دِينُكُمْ وَلَيَ دِينُ The popular ayah What is this meaning? To your religion and to us our religion This is explaining the difference Or the distinguishing or the baraa The freedom of the Muslim The disassociation of the Muslim from other religions It's not permitting them like that It's okay to have your religion That's not what it says You have your religion I have my religion It's distinct from your religion And then simply just look at the first ayat قُلْ يَا أَيُّهَا الْكَافِرُونَ لَا أَعْبُدُ مَا تَعْبُدُونَ وَلَأَنْتُمْ أَعْبِدُونَ مَا أَعْبُدُ وَلَأَنَا أَعْبِدُمْ مَا أَعْبَدْتُمْ وَلَأَنْتُمْ أَعْبِدُونَ مَا أَعْبُدُ All of the tafsir of the ayah is found in the first ayat I'm not going to worship what you worship You don't worship what I worship You and me, we're not on the same page when it comes to religion لَكُمْ دِينُكُمْ وَلِيَدِينُ And not that you are permitted to have your religion There's a difference between what Allah Azzawajal Allowed qadaran in terms of his qadar Iradah kawniyah, qadariyah That Allah Azzawajal decreed And what Allah Azzawajal loves Allah Azzawajal does not love for his servants to disbelieve Does that make sense? Yeah, okay I want to move the discussion to a topic that is linked closely to the issue of apostasy And that is blasphemy What does the sharia say about people who insult the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam For example, or Allah or the religion of Islam So insulting the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam Is a hajj from the hudud of Allah Azzawajal And it is like apostasy It is an example of capital punishment But here the scholars distinguish between two things They say that in apostasy There is a mas'alat The tawbah of the murtad Is it accepted or not? Is a person given a chance to repent or not? When they apostasize, they leave Islam Are they given a chance to repent or not? The person who commits insulting the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam And blaspheming and insulting the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam This person has done two things First of all, they have committed riddah If they were in apostasy If they were Muslim But there is a second aspect to it which is different Which is the haqq of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam The right of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam Now we know the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam What he sacrificed personally for the religion of Islam And that his right is higher than the right of anyone else And we also know that Islam gave rights to individuals So for example, Islam gave the right of For example, punishments to be carried out against people Who insult other people for example For example, as an example Accusing someone falsely, accusing someone of adultery Islam has a system of preventing these things from taking place But the right of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam Is greater than anyone else's right And typically the system of Islam, generally speaking Is that forgiveness has to come from Sahibul Haqq Forgiveness has to come from the person who was insulted Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam has passed away His honor has to be preserved and protected for a religious benefit Let alone for a personal benefit Not just him and himself and what he did for this ummah But also in terms of the religious danger behind that And the leading spreading to apostasy All the things we said about apostasy How it spreads in the society and so on and so forth But the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam has that right personally That Allah Azawajal gave him that personal right So now without having a means to forgiveness for Sahibul Haqq It's not possible now for the person who the crime was committed against Is not able now to forgive that person So in this case the punishment has a different aspect to apostasy That's why the scholars differed over the issue of the tawbah Of the person who insults the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam They insult him and then they make tawbah from that I think it's a very public statement of defiance It's not something which is again done privately And that we've discussed that in apostasy We'll not go back around that discussion again But we had discussed the issue of the fact It's a very public statement And it's a very deliberate attempt to personally attack the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam He has a right that is given to him by Allah Azawajal That right is more than deserving If we look at his position in terms of what he's done for this religion And his position in terms of the best of mankind And the fact that Islam gives similar rights In terms of the right for your honor to be protected The right for you not to be ridiculed and insulted Is given to everybody in society Muslim, non-Muslim who are living within that Muslim society anyway The fact that his right is a level above that Is again fairly consistent in terms of that It does have an aspect of rida in it It does overlap with apostasy But it is different because at the end of the day It's not only an act of disbelief Whether it's done by Muslim or non-Muslim It's not only an act of disbelief and an open act of defiance But it's also a crime against an individual Not just against Allah And a crime against an individual typically has to be forgiven by the individual So that's the reason why there's a difference here Between apostasy of someone entering into Islam And then leaving it Whereas this blasphemous act could occur from a non-Muslim I really want to emphasize in blasphemy That we have seen cases where the accusation is That blasphemy laws are misused In particular countries in order to punish minorities And this is something that Islam If it is true and I don't make any judgment about it It's not for me to sit here and make a judgment About whether that's actually true or not But Islam does not in itself approve of Or allow for the misuse of blasphemy law Like in other words for someone to just say Oh I heard my neighbor say this or something like that And we mentioned that several times The issue of tawbah is an issue which the scholars differed over Is it allowed? And they differed over the murtad as well The problem is if we go into too many differences We might be here a long time There are differences of opinion About whether this person's tawbah is accepted or not As for the likes of Ka'b ibn Ashraf for example And the Prophet ﷺ commanding for him to be killed This is something where the Sahaba took permission from the Prophet ﷺ So I want to be clear there's no vigilantism here They took permission The Prophet ﷺ said who will take care of Ka'b ibn Ashraf Now bear in mind as the leader of the country And I really I want to put this in context As a leader of a country aside from religion As a leader of a country For him to put a bounty on the head of someone Is not something which is unfamiliar to us in even in modern times In terms of the leaders of countries and the heads of government saying This person there is a bounty placed on their head This person we as a government are seeking to find this person And to carry out an act of capital punishment upon this individual That is something that is not actually strange to be honest It's something which pick your country And the United States and all the others Many of them do on a fairly regular basis The difference in Islam is that there is a reason for it And there is a framework It's not just for someone to get up one morning and say Get rid of this guy because he's my political opponent Get rid of this guy This is something which is a religious It has a religious framework to it and a religious reasoning And that is actually a safeguard rather than a cause for abuse Yeah and I think that safeguard is definitely in place there When the Prophet ﷺ himself is the leader of the country Or the Muslims for example As you go down the generations And you have people like Khadijah ibn Yusuf for example Do you think that Islam places too much control in the leader of a country And just allows him to do whatever he wants? I don't think that Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf is a good example of a Muslim leader I think that the statement of some of the Tabi'een That Al-Hajjaj is the punishment of Allah upon you Is sufficient in order to prove that Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf was not a good example People fled from his rulership into the governorship of Umar ibn Abdulaziz At the same time some of the people of his time believed that Al-Hajjaj was not a Muslim They believed that he had left Islam But we believe that the correct opinion is that Al-Hajjaj was a Muslim He was a person who was zalim He was very oppressive and he killed a lot of people without right And ultimately he will have to answer to Allah SWT for that I don't believe that Islam is responsible for that I think that Islam itself has all of the relevant rules and restrictions But I think that this is a nature of Bani Adam You know that human beings, when they oppress others No doubt those in power typically have a greater ability to oppress others And that's why from the seven who will be shaded under the throne of Allah on the day When there is no shade of it But here's the first one mentioned is Imam al-Adil A just Imam Because when you have that degree of power You have an army Look at the world today Look at democratic, you know, liberal countries And the oppression that they do And the killing that has been done in their name Extrajudicial killings and so on and so forth This shows us that the most liberal of societies are not free of this I believe that what Islam gives us ultimately is It gives us justice It gives us a framework how we should live If we don't live according to that framework And we transgress that framework We will be responsible Not for dunya Either in the dunya or either and more importantly in the akhira So I think why not Why don't we take Umar bin Abdulaziz as our example of You know, how a Muslim ruler should behave Of course, there are better examples among the Sahaba The likes of the Khulafa al-Rashideen and Muawiyah RadhiAllahu ta'ala Anhu Ardahu RadhiAllahu anhum These are better examples than Umar bin Abdulaziz But just to take someone at the same time as Hajjaj bin Yusuf We have Umar bin Abdulaziz And the fact that in the time of Umar bin Abdulaziz Who implemented Islam We believe implemented Islam as it should have been implemented As the ruler is supposed to behave Do you see people walking around without hands And people being stoned to death every five minutes And people, you know, this guy lost his head To be honest, what you actually see is a time of such safety Such safety that It's just, when you read the descriptions and the historical reports Of how safe and happy people were in that time You actually see the value of the Islamic system of punishments And the Islamic system of justice But when it's implemented properly The deterrent is so great that people just don't commit the crime And they said in the time of Umar bin Abdulaziz People would come with sadaqa To the extent that they couldn't find anyone to take I mean, forget about theft They couldn't find anyone who would be willing to take their sadaqa And that is what happens when you implement Islam properly And no doubt in the time of al-Hajjaj bin Yusuf There was a great amount of tyranny And a great amount of killing And that was the result of not implementing the religion properly As the likes of al-Hassan al-Basri and others, rahimullah ta'ala said Okay, we're coming towards the latter part of our specific issues That I wanted to discuss I do want to just talk generally As people have a general perception of Islam being quite a bloodthirsty religion And since we're on the topic of killing There is a hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari That I would like to read out to you inshallah Allah's Messenger ﷺ sent us on a mission And said if you find so-and-so and so-and-so Burn both of them with fire When we intended to depart Allah's Messenger ﷺ said I have ordered you to burn so-and-so and so-and-so And it is none but Allah who punishes with fire So if you find them, kill them Don't burn them but kill them So here again, I think we can just answer this all in the context of what we said We said that now burning with fire is not permissible It's not a permissible method of execution for the Muslim ruler And there are some situations in which there are matters Where there is a difference of opinion in certain limited situations But typically we're going to say that from this hadith we've taken That's not an option The option is for the Muslim ruler That they are not allowed to take the life of a person Illa bil haqq Except with right So the Prophet ﷺ, he has a right We know for certain the Prophet ﷺ doesn't The person who is sent rahmatan lil alameen As a mercy to all mankind Doesn't command something like that illa bil haqq Except that there is a right which Allah has given him to do that As the ruler, as the one in authority As the Prophet with religious and political authority at that time He has commanded that these two people have committed a crime But that they must be punished in a way that is Appropriate and allowed in Islam So we've discussed in detail those crimes that result in capital punishment Okay, final thing I want to move on to Is and I really just want to touch on this Because I think this probably warrants a podcast on its own And it's the issue of slavery You've come to this podcast saying I'm so proud of the Sharia It's like the perfect ideal system If that's the case, then why did it not abolish slavery? I think there are two things to look at here Two very separate things or three The first thing I want to get out of people's mind Is slavery as we know it today In western terms In what we have learned in history, recent history So that's slavery based on kidnapping people Based on race, based on color That has no place in Islam and never had any place in Islam That is from the slavery of Jahiliyyah that was practiced before Islam Where people would be kidnapped and sold into slavery This is something which is from the major sins in Islam And is worthy of severe punishment Slavery in Islam is a replacement or an alternative To the system of prisoners of war That's what it is So you are fighting against the people They're fighting against you Sword to sword, gun to gun The fighting takes place between the two armies And when one army overcomes the other Allah Azawajal gave a right to enslave those that remain All of those that remain That is a choice now of the Muslim commander Has three choices Is that not what happened at the time of the Prophet ﷺ With the issue of Bani Qurayza When the companion said We kill all the men and enslave all of the women So let's come to Bani Qurayza We'll come to Bani Qurayza I want to come to Bani Qurayza I think that's important That's an important topic But that is actually not a war There was no war between the Muslims and Bani Qurayza We're talking about now slavery as a result of war Okay Okay This is effectively what we would call today Being a prisoner of war The first thing is the Muslim commander has three choices The first choice is to free them All of them Let them all go The second choice is to ransom them That is to imprison them And to ransom each individual As was done in the Battle of Badr And the third is to enslave them When they are enslaved I want to understand What I wanted to show you is that People have this idea of slavery Abu Huraira radiallahu anhu He said If it wasn't for jihad and being good to my mother I would have wished to die as a slave The slave is clothed from the clothing that the person The owner has They're fed They're not burdened with what they can't bear Now I want you to see treatment of prisoners of war today Yeah Okay I'm reluctant to give examples Okay But let's just take And maybe it's not a great example But let's just take Guantanamo As an example of prisoners You know Ala khilaf in between them Whether they're prisoners of war or whatever But people who are imprisoned As a result of some sort of fighting That's going between And the treatment that is given Let's look at Japanese prisoners of war In the second world war And how they were treated Wallahi the Islamic system of slavery Is far far more merciful Especially when you add a final element And that is the encouragement of freeing a slave How many sins are there in Islam That the expiation for that sin is Fatahreeru raqaba Free a slave Islam didn't come to enslave people Islam came to bring people out of slavery To other people And into the slavery of Allah That's what Islam came for However You have to have a system for prisoners of war What do we do?
We just lock them all up We lock them all up And then mistreat them You know As I'm around the world And I gave the example of America Not because we're talking about Muslims But because we're talking about A country that prides itself on human rights And how you know Force feedings And all that type of stuff that takes place Or you bring them into your house They work for you You clothe them You feed them You look after them And then you free them Whenever you mess up To be honest No comparison really It really is a system But the problem is that this word slavery Has been tainted by slavery That was based on kidnapping people That was based on color That was based on race That slavery was practiced by who? Not by the Muslims The Muslims were the ones being enslaved You know How many of those people were taken from Africa And brought over to the States In the time of slavery Were ulama of Islam Some of them Scholars of Islam People who were People of knowledge Who were kidnapped For no other crime Than the color of their skin And they were kidnapped And brought to the United States That's the slavery of the West Not the slavery of Islam I think that's fine When you're talking about Prisoners of war Like you have done But when I mentioned Bani Qurayza You actually said that This wasn't a situation of prisoners of war No Bani Qurayza was much worse Okay So you have a situation where The Muslim army Or the Muslims came to people And Sa'ad ibn Mu'adh said He said Enslave their women and children Kill everyone with pubic hair And take their wealth And share it amongst the Muslims Yes And you're right that In a context of the Muslim leader He'd have to go for approval And that's exactly what he did And the Prophet s.a.w. said He has ruled by what Allah has sent down By what Allah judged over Above the seven heavens How do you justify that? Okay First of all Let's understand what Bani Qurayza did Because it wasn't a war Between Bani Qurayza And between the Mustaqs What Bani Qurayza did Is they betrayed the Muslims In the battle of the Khandaq Okay So the battle of the Khandaq Was one of the worst situations The Muslims had to endure They had all the armies Of the Arabian Peninsula Came against them And they had agreements of Oaths and agreements and treaties With various tribes That promised that they would They would defend the Muslims Not only did Bani Qurayza Break their promise And go back But they also put the Muslim Women and children under threat And they opened the option To attack the Muslim women and children Who were protected in Medina Through their treachery Now this was an act of treachery It was not a war situation This was an act of treachery And an act of betrayal An act of treason A treason traditionally Is one of the strongest punishments Even today In countries which have abolished The death penalty typically They haven't abolished it for treason There remains on the legal statutes That treason to that extent Utter betrayal And treason and breaking Of your treaties and agreements Especially when it endangers The life of innocent people Is something which deserves A very severe punishment Now I'm going to come To the whole story now Now when the punishment Was going to be carried out upon them These were people who followed The Jewish law And the Jewish law Was more severe than what Islam put upon them And they knew that They knew that if they were to be judged By the law of the Torah That they would actually suffer Worse and more horrific punishment Than what they suffered At the hands of the Muslims So what they decided Is that they were not happy For the Prophet ﷺ To decide what happened to them So the Prophet ﷺ As the leader of the Muslims Agreed on something He said, I want you to Appoint your own judge You choose from among the people Someone who is going to Judge what should be done For this treason And this betrayal that you've done And I will agree I will not intervene Okay So they chose One of their close friends in Jahiliyyah Sa'ad Ibn Mu'adh He was their close confidant A close ally of them in Jahiliyyah They said, Sa'ad is not going to Let us down here Sa'ad is not going to give us Any of this The punishments of the Torah Sa'ad here is going to go easy on us So Sa'ad had been wounded In the battle of the Khandaq R.A And he was on the verge of death They brought him Because of this treachery And they wanted him And the Prophet ﷺ said, okay I will not intervene I'm not going to intervene in this judgment Whatever Sa'ad is going to judge for you As the Muslim ruler I am going to agree to his judgment It's his choice And they said, Sa'ad You know what was between us in Jahiliyyah And Sa'ad ruled That the males Adult males among them Not children The adult males among them be killed They're the ones who fought in the war They're the ones who betrayed All of the adult males were required To fight in the war That's how wars work, right? All the adult males They were the ones who were killed Because they were the ones Who deliberately peddled that treachery Now they have been considered To be at war with us Because they committed an act of war Against the Muslims They opened the Muslim women And children to attack They opened the Muslims to be attacked By the confederate army from behind They betrayed the Muslims in a way That was nothing short of treason Now their property becomes War booty for the Muslims Because now there is This is an act of war now So we are going to now treat The innocent among you Or the ones who are not participating In the war as prisoners of war Under the normal rules of prisoners of war Which we discussed Which we discussed Under the normal rules of prisoners of war And those who committed the treachery Are going to have to pay The price of treason Which the way that they were killed Is far far less than what was They were expecting from The law of the Torah When the Prophet ﷺ heard Of the judgment of Sa'ad Remember he's put his hands up and said Whatever Sa'ad says I'm going to go with it I'm not going to intervene He said you have judged By what Allah judged with Above the seven heavens And this was a judgment That Allah was pleased with It was a judgment that was In accordance with Islam And it's very important that That remains as a penalty That is visible for people In terms of treason And it was a big lesson For the other tribes around In the Arabian Peninsula That you cannot make a promise Of an oath that you will defend A people and then break your oath And be treacherous in your oath Because that is something which Put the lives of really All of the Muslims in danger And it was an act of treason So it was dealt with as such I'm coming towards the end of the questions That I've got for you But I do want to touch on something That we briefly mentioned before We spoke about the different methods Of capital punishment And we talked about why not Modernize them when they were And you said that rightly So that there were quicker punishments At the time but we Allah still chose to issue This particular punishment Or this particular method However there is a wider discussion That needs to be had about We've mentioned so much about Murder and killing and And stoning and things like that Perhaps that was the culture at the time Perhaps that was the culture at the time For the people at the time However now the world has become What many people say Much more civilized Is there maybe a push To change some of these punishments Into more modern punishments And modernize the sharia? So I think there's a couple of answers to that I think first of all If you look at the Islamic punishments We'll set aside stoning As something we've discussed earlier But primarily the punishment Being carried out by the sword That is actually something That is relatively In fact out of all of the punishments That are available today In modern times It's actually one of the most humane And the most Sort of in terms of the way it's carried out It's easy to carry out It doesn't have very much room for error It's relatively quick and You know painless to the person It's carried out Perhaps I'm not talking about So I'm coming to the point You're talking about I'm just sort of saying that I don't, in that sense I don't see there to be any Even any reasonable grounds For talking about If you look at the situation With lethal injection right now If you look at the situation With electrocution and so on None of those are any better than In fact all of them are worse Than what Islam puts forward That's one point Now on this topic of modernizing sharia I think that the first of all One of the things we have to start with Is we have to start with The statement of Allah اليوم أكملت لكم دينكم و أتممت عليكم نعمتي و رضيت لكم الإسلام دينا Today I have completed my favour upon you Today I have completed your religion for you Completed my favour upon you And chosen for you Islam as your religion What Allah Azawajal chose for us on that day Is for us today It's not for us to modify it It's not for us to need to modernize it It is the perfect system From Al-Hakeem, Al-Aleem, Al-Khabir It doesn't need to be updated It doesn't need to be modernized It doesn't need to be changed And I would provide an evidence for that Not only from the sharia point of view But even from the illogical point of view Is what I alluded to at the beginning Of the failure of modern legal systems To address the problems in the society It's quite clear that these modern systems Are not doing the job They're just not effective They're not doing the job And I think that when you bring Islam as a whole And I keep emphasizing this We really have shone a light A very strong light on the Islamic Sort of punishments Legal punishments Things like that Criminal law and things like that That doesn't show the whole picture of Islam Islam is not a society Where there's just a row of people With swords raised above their heads Waiting to chop things off You know that's not what Islam is about And that's never been what Islam is about You have to put that in context As a necessary deterrent To ensure safety, security and peace For everyone in the society That doesn't need to change It doesn't need to be updated In fact we need to go back to that We need to go back to punishments That actually make a difference Punishments that actually provide Some kind of retribution On behalf of the victim Punishments that more than anything Stop other people from going into it You have life in the law of retribution You actually stop people From going down this route And also punishments that are Not a burden upon regular people Where we have to pay for keeping Some really horrific and evil people Behind bars And we have to kind of pay for that So I don't see any logical reason And I certainly don't see any sharia reason To change what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala Has given us If anything we need to go back To that implemented properly When it's not implemented properly Then that's not representative Of what Islam has Speaking of going back Do we not go back to the scholars That preceded us For example there's the 8th century Maliki scholar Abu al-Qasim al-Burzuli Who actually called for the replacement Of the khudud as we described them today With things like financial penalties What do you have to say about that? I don't think that's actually a correct quote From Abu al-Qasim al-Burzuli May Allah have mercy on him Maliki scholar I believe what the discussion is Is what I alluded to earlier About the... Not about the financial penalties As a replacement for the khudud But as financial penalties In terms of ta'zeer Is it allowed for a judge To implement a financial penalty And I did allude earlier to the fact That the jumhur of the ulama The majority from the Hanafiya The Malikiya, the Shafi'iya And the Hanabila They held the opinion that is not permissible That financial penalties Are not a tool that is available To the qadi in that sense Except where there is a clear evidence in Islam for that And Sheikh al-Islam bin Taymiyyah and others And among them others from those we've quoted They held the opinion that it is permissible To introduce financial penalties In the aspect of discretionary punishment That is what I have understood from what I have read I did go through the book today And I did look at some of the quotes earlier on And from what I can see And again we can look at this in more research We can bring it in the Q&A If there are further things to look at But what I can see from this is This discussion is about the use of Discretionary financial punishment And nothing to do with replacing the hudud What about the argument that the world has changed Which is evident I don't think either of us would disagree with that The world has changed since then It has become more cosmopolitan It has become more multicultural That inevitably will have an impact On things like apostasy Crime has increased And yeah crime has increased People are less safe So these kind of things that have Even aside from those facts Which I agree they are facts But aside from those Even the fact that the technology Has just changed the way we live And the day-to-day transactions That are taking place nowadays Are just so different How can we refer to laws That were based around 7th century Arabia And still believe that Despite the world changing so much That they are still applicable today So I think there are two things here I think first of all The fundamentals of human interaction Haven't changed Murder is murder Murder today is murder We haven't got to the level where Murder is like someone deleting Your social media account Or something like that You know like murder is murder Zina is zina And so on Those fundamentals haven't changed And those are fundamental human They are crimes against humanity On a human On a level of humanity And it's generally in every society They are considered to be Really terrible horrific crimes Things like murder You know adultery Fornication and so on That is one aspect The second aspect is that As we've mentioned in several times Islam provides a framework For dealing with what we call Nawazil and Mustajidat Now murder is not a nazila I'm sorry murder is not something new That turned up yesterday Neither is fornication something new Neither is apostasy something new That turned up last week We also talked about The Jewish law of stoning to death For the one who invites someone To another religion and so on This is not something that turned up last week These are not Nawazil They're not Mustajidat They're not new issues that need To be looked at in the concept of Or in the framework of Islam They're just simply Things that were there before They're there now And they have their rulings However if there are Nawazil Like financial crimes And says we talked about theft Being theft from a place of safety A hirz A place of safety and security What does that represent in terms of bitcoin?
That is a nazila It's a new issue That needs to be looked at In light of the Islamic evidences Through things like Qawa'id Principles Qiyas Analogy Other tools that are available to the Mujtahid In order to determine where this sits Or what the conditions sit In terms of the laws Under punishments for theft When is it a discretionary punishment And when is it a Had min hududillahi azzawajal That is something which is looked at In the framework of what Islam Is giving some things Plenty of guidelines For example the use of the word hirz Hirz here in theft Is a place of safety and security That could be potentially Considered to be as digital As well as physical Because the word used is broad But that's for the scholars And the Mujtahidun to look at And to analyze And then to apply the rulings of Islam to them Islam adapts to changes in the world Changes in the world are Nawazil Allah azawajal adapts The religion of Islam to them Through principles And through the tools That are available in each jihad As for things that have always existed And still exist today Those don't need reform Okay you mentioned in there The principles And you mentioned something like Al-qawa'id al-fiqh for example Is it not one of those principles Al-'adam al-hakamah That the customs can play an impact On a ruling For example when we talk about The ruling of a woman Not being allowed to travel Many scholars say that There isn't a set distance It's rather what the Urf Like the customs of the people Define as traveling So this has a This has an important principle That comes before it Okay And that is that When you have a Nas You have an evidence A textual evidence There is no room For any of the aspects of ijtihad There is no aspect of Looking at the Urf Because the Urf is Muhakamah in that In that which the Shari'ah Did not provide a definition for Or a limit for Or a particular ruling for In this case The Urf is Muhakamah No doubt So we have the principle There is no right to have To exercise legal judgment In the face of textual evidence So there are things in which Islam left it to Urf And there are things in which Islam did not leave it to Urf And no doubt These hudud I mean the very word had This something delimited And chosen and fixed Okay perfect I'm going to just move on To some closing questions now And then I'll give you the chance If you'd like to take it To summarize what we've discussed On this podcast today inshallah So the first question I have is that These punishments that we've spoken about That apply in a Muslim country With a Muslim government I'm not talking about Necessarily blasphemy Or things like that But I'm talking about Theft for example Do they apply to non-Muslims Living in that land as well? Yes the rules of Islam Apply to all those people Who live within that system I mean who live in that system So yes it applies to the Ahl al-Dhimma And so on They may have some specific things That are unique to them We mentioned the issue of When we go outside of countries We talk about Jizya and things like that But broadly speaking The people of Ahl al-Dhimma They live within the rules of Islam And they have the safety That the Muslims are entitled to In terms of safety, security, protection and so on Okay would you advocate For Sharia law in the UK? I believe that the Islam Against Sharia law Is a very negative It's a very term That has a very negative connotation I believe that the religion of Islam Being implemented in the UK Would bring nothing but good To the people of the UK It would bring an increase in people's Safety and security It would bring happiness to people It would make people's hearts Have tranquility Because the Sharia is all of that It's all it's the remembrance of Allah It's the prayer It's fasting It's also about having strong punishments That deter people from crimes I believe that it would bring nothing But good to any place In anywhere in the world Okay I want to thank you for your time First of all And give you the opportunity If you'd like to summarize what we discussed Feel free Inshallah Yeah I think there are just a few things That I would like to sort of Just bring people's attention back to I think first of all That the Sharia is more than just punishments I think that when we use the word Sharia For punishments We really give the impression That there isn't anything in Islam Apart from punishing people for crimes And really it's a tiny tiny part Of the religion of Islam And it's an important part But it's a tiny tiny part And to look at that alone Is really to give To make an imbalance And it makes it seem like Muslims have no other concern Except this Really the goal here As we've mentioned many times Is deterrence first of all Deterrence and stopping people One person goes through it A hundred people are saved because of it The second thing is That there has to be Appropriate retribution for crimes There has to be a means of Rehabilitation through Iman Rehabilitation in this dunya And in the akhirah through Iman Yes there are times When someone has to be incapacitated They have to be taken away from The ability to commit crimes again And there are also issues of restoration Like things like blood money Whereby the family of the victim Actually receives some kind of compensation And restoration for the crime That has been committed against them These are all things that are recognised In western legal systems as being important But I believe that only Islam Brings those things together And balances between them With the wisdom That is the infinite wisdom That Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la has I would say that it's a big topic I would say that It's difficult to cover everything in one topic So I would say that If there are areas where we need to expand upon We should do so If there are things people would like to look into more about They should do so Because this is my best ability To sort of just explain and clarify But ultimately That whatever I say that is correct Is a blessing from Allah Azawajal And whatever I said that's wrong Then Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la And His Messenger S.A.W And the religion of Islam Has nothing to do with that So it is important that we give that disclaimer And otherwise I think that The more people look into this With a balanced sort of approach And an open mind They'll actually find that this Like every part of Islam Is from the mahasin of Islam The beautiful qualities of Islam By which Islam is distinct from others By which Islam brings to society What nothing else can bring
