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Prescribed Punishments (Hudud / Hudood)

Freedom of religion does not exist in Saudi Arabia. All citizens are required to be Muslims. Public worship by non-Muslims is prohibited, though thankfully it is largely tolerated. There is great discrimination against Shia Muslims and there are a number who are in prison and this can lead to arrest and even torture.

Only about a dozen of the world’s forty-four Muslim-majority countries formally practice Islamic criminal law. In most of those countries that practice began only recently as part of state “Islamization” programs undertaken over the past thirty to forty years; but criminal law has been a central aspect of those programs.

The list of crimes and punishments that shape the modern-day practice of Islamic criminal law—the framework of a sharia penal code—was established over a thousand years ago. This framework consists of categories of forbidden acts and accompanying penalties that early Muslim scholars derived from Islam’s sacred texts and primary sources of law—the Quran and the Sunna (Traditions) — through standard jurisprudential methods.

Crimes that fall under the category of Prescribed Punishments - Hudud [also spelled Hadood, Hadud - an Islamic legal term literally meaning “limits” or “restriction”) can be defined as legally prohibited acts that Allah forcibly prevents by way of fixed, predetermined punishments, the execution of which is considered the right of Allah.

The handful of “fixed” crimes (hudud) call for the harsh physical punishments for which Islamic criminal law is best known. These punishments have certain peculiarities that set them apart from others. Among these are the following:

1. These punishments can neither be increased nor decreased.
2. These punishments cannot be waived by the judge, the political authority, or the victim after their associated crimes have been brought to the attention of the governing body. Before these crimes are brought before the state, it may be possible for the victim to pardon the criminal if the damage done was only personal.
3. These punishments are the ‘right of Allah’, meaning that the legal right involved is of a general nature where the greater welfare of society is considered.

Hudud punishments prescribed under Sharia law for criminal offenses are carried out by the state. Offenses subject to hudud punishments are theft, robbery, illicit sexual relations, false accusation of illicit sexual relations, drinking of alcohol, and apostasy. Specific punishments include flogging, amputation of limbs, beheading, and death by stoning. In recent years, authorities have not carried out death by stoning sentences. However, the UN Committee Against Torture has expressed concern about “the sentencing to, and imposition of, corporal punishments by judicial and administrative authorities, including, in particular, flogging and amputation of limbs, that are not in conformity with the Convention [Against Torture].”