The politics inherent in the enactment of draconian punishments are meant to persecute, intimidate and appropriate authoritarian control. They are motivated not by religious faith but by a deep disrespect for the sanctity of human life
On April 2, 2008, the bodies of a couple that had been stoned to death were found in Mohmand Agency. Shano and Daulat Khan were found guilty of adultery by a “qazi” court which sentenced them to death by stoning. The couple had initially tried to run away but was captured by the Taliban as they boarded a bus for Karachi. According to reports, locals buried Shano while the body of Daulat Khan was given to his relatives for burial.
For the Taliban, the exercise in mandating morality, both in the apprehension of the hapless couple and the swift execution of the punishment was a political success. The cruel and draconian punishment made a clear statement publicly illustrating both the perverted piety of the Taliban and the haplessness of the Pakistani state in preventing the deaths of two of its citizens. The capture, prosecution and execution of the couple all within a mere twenty-four hours was undoubtedly designed not merely as an illustration of the Taliban’s intolerance of moral indiscretion but also as an unabashed statement of territorial, legal and moral control over the area.
If the report of the stoning of Shano and Daulat Khan was an expression of insurgent power, another imminent “stoning” report emerging this week represented an execution of state power. In reports from Iran, human rights activists are being urged to campaign against the imminent stoning of Zohreh and Azar Kabiri. The two Iranian sisters were arrested in February of last year due to allegations of adultery filed by Zohreh’s husband. A court sentenced them to 99 lashes and the punishment was carried out. Yet owing to unknown reasons, the two were arrested again and re-prosecuted for the same crime and this time they were sentenced to death by stoning. The Iranian Supreme Court has affirmed the punishment and the two are currently awaiting execution by stoning.
The politics of stoning, whether it be carried out by the extra-state Taliban insurgents or the Iranian state represents the vexing and convoluted ways in which Islam has been appropriated into political discourse. Whether it is Pakistan, Iran or Saudi Arabia, public stonings, grotesquely repugnant in their unflinching barbarity, are presented as an enactment of religious faith.
Cleverly capitalising on the ignorance of many millions of Muslims, the perpetrators of such barbarities term opposition to the enactment of “hadd” punishments as opposition to the sanctity of Islamic religious texts. Indeed it is this very move that lies at the core of why the perpetuation of these punishments continues amid Muslim silence. Many Muslims are duped into believing that calling for an end to “hadd” punishments is not permissible within Islam imposing a nearly impenetrable web of complicity and silence on the very people who can be most instrumental in opposing the practice.
It is precisely this central and devastating misconception that scholar Tariq Ramadan attacked three years ago when he penned his essay entitled “An international call for Moratorium on corporal punishment, stoning and death penalty in the Islamic world”. Ramadan argues that the perpetuation of public cruelty such as stoning gives the perpetrators an instantly “Islamic” character built on the backs of literalist interpretation of religious texts.
This false sense of Islamic legitimacy is heightened even more by the intense outcry that emerges from the West in condemning these actions. Indeed both Iran and the Tehreek-e Taliban are whetted by Western condemnations of their barbarity: in a perverse calculus the more virulent the criticism from the West, the more pious and “Islamic” the enactors of the punishments are considered in local contexts.
In a bizarre travesty of logic and reason, the barbarity and utter cruelty of their actions is presented as the only truly Islamic form of opposition to the decadence of Western society. The tragic injustice of the enactments, the fact that they routinely target the poor, the weak and women, and the perversion of Islamic principles of justice are conveniently left out of the discourse.
It is integral to recognise the operation of this dynamic in understanding how the politics of stoning and the enactment of hadd punishments has thus become a political tool at the hands of those who know little or nothing about Islamic legal doctrine itself.
As Ramadan points out, the chaos that allows the appropriation of Hadd punishment within political strategy is heightened by the fact that the vast plurality of Islamic legal interpretations offer little clue to what Islamic law really is. By and large, ulema in the Muslim world offer rote-learned variations that do not go to the core of these issues for fear of denouncing acts such as the enactment of “hadd” for fear of losing their legitimacy with publics that have been reared to believe that the very barbarity of these punishments somehow a signifies their religious authenticity.
In light of this debilitating dynamic which has gripped so much of the Muslim world in its midst, it is necessary for Muslims to understand that their own faith gives them reasons to oppose hadd punishments.
First, all Islamic legal texts must be read in light of the objectives intended to justify them, and among these objectives the protection of the integrity of the person (an-nafs) and the promotion of justice (al-adl) are central. Second, the conditions for application of hadd punishments specified in legal texts are impossible to create in the real world thus designating the punishments themselves as inapplicable in present times.
The need for disassociating Islam from the perverse barbarity of stoning is an urgent and pressing need for which Islam itself provides numerous intellectual and legal tools. The politics inherent in the enactment of draconian punishments are meant to persecute, intimidate and appropriate authoritarian control. They are motivated not by religious faith but by a deep disrespect for the sanctity of human life that tries to cloak itself in the guise of religious piety. Given the deep scourge the pandering of cruelty in the name of Islam has already exerted over the Muslim world, it is time that it is exposed as such.
Rafia Zakaria is an attorney living in the United States where she teaches courses on Constitutional Law and Political Philosophy. She can be contacted at rafia.zakaria@gmail.com
Courtesy: Daily Times, 5/4/2008
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