Torture and Islamic Law
![handle is hein.journals/cjil8 and id is 25 raw text is: Torture and Islamic Law
Sadiq Reza*
One day in the seventh century CE, Muslim sources tell us, some residents
of Kila, a region in what is today southern Lebanon, came to suspect a group of
weavers of theft. They took the weavers to one of the Prophet Muhammad's
Companions-a select and authoritative group of the Prophet's
contemporaries-for adjudication and punishment. The Companion detained
the weavers for investigation but released them after a few days, presumably
because they denied the charge and there was insufficient evidence of their guilt.
The accusers promptly protested the Companion's freeing the suspected thieves
without flogging or interrogating them. The Companion's reply, the sources
tell us, was this: 'What did you want? Had I flogged them and your goods
turned up [from their confession], that would have been fine. But if not, I would
have had to take [as much skin] off of your backs as I took off theirs. This is
your ruling? the accusers asked. It is the ruling of God and His Messenger
[that is, the prophet Muhammad], replied the Companion.I
This story and others like it are regularly cited to support the assertion that
torture is forbidden in Islamic law. But there are just as many reports in the
same sources-the Traditions (sunna), which record the statements and actions
of Muhammad and his Companions and are the most authoritative source of
Islamic law after the Qur'an-that suggest that flogging or otherwise beating
Professor, New York Law School. This Article draws in part on a talk the author gave at the Fifth
International Conference on Islamic Legal Studies: Lawful and Unlawful Violence in Islamic
Law and History, at Harvard University in September 2006. Research on the topic began at the
Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School, where the author was a Visiting
Researcher in 2004-05. The author thanks Asifa Quraishi and Frank Vogel for comments, and
Madiha Zuberi for research assistance.
6 Mukhtasar Sunan Abi Dawud 218 (Beirut: Dar al-Ma'rifah 1980) (author translation). For other
English translations, see Mohammad Hashim Kamali, The Right to Personal Safe i (Haqq al-Amn) and
the Pincple of Legalio in Islamic Shai'a, in Muhammad Abdel Haleem, Adel Omar Sherif, and Kate
Daniels, eds, CriminalJusice in Islam: Judidal Procedure in the Shan'a 57, 80 (IB Tauris 2003); Ill Sunan
Abu Dawud 1221-22 (Ashraf 1984) (Ahmad Hassan, trans).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/cjil8&div=6&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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