Governmental Penalties from the Viewpoint of Islamic Jurisprudential Denominations (Focusing on the role of

Fattahi, Sayyid Mohsen

doi:10.22059/jorr.2013.35773

Governmental Penalties from the Viewpoint of Islamic Jurisprudential Denominations (Focusing on the role of "Sin" in the Essence of Ta'zir)

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Sayyid Mohsen Fattahi

Assistant Professor of University of Religions and Denominations

10.22059/jorr.2013.35773

Abstract

There are some activities which have not been forbidden in Shari'a, but they are considered as guilt by government and penalties are also imposed for them. What is the nature of these governmental penalties? There are two main views. Some state that penalties fall under Ta'zir, which is kind of penalty defined by Shari'a. Others declare that penalties are governmental legitimized by Supreme Leader. Regarding documents of Shari'a in the field of Ta'zir we can argue that Ta'zir is restricted to those activities considered as "sin" by Shari'a and does not go further. Therefore, as the sentences legislated by the government lacks the main element of Ta'zir, i.e. "to be a sin", this kind of penalties can not be categorized under Ta'zir naturally. Hence, we should classify this sort of punishments under some other names such as governmental or legislative penalties and so on; and subsequently, the rules that apply to them will differ from the rules of Ta'zir.

Keywords

criminalization

element of sin

governmental penalties

legislative penalties

nature of Ta'zir