Tag: amputation

New penal code will ‘bury’ Islamic sharia

A religious NGO has said the new penal code will “bury” the principles of Islamic sharia in the Maldives, as it does not criminalise apostasy or include punishments of stoning for adultery and amputation for theft.

“We note with regret that this law has been formulated on a secular, liberal basis that is alien to the purposes of Islamic sharia, after changing the whole shape of the Islamic sharia that should be enforced upon Muslims in an Islamic country,” the conservative Jamiyyathul Salaf said in a statement on Sunday.

Salaf’s statement was released shortly before the pro-government majority in parliament delayed implementation of the penal code by three months, a day before it was due to come into force.

Ruling party MP Ahmed Nihan said more time is needed to raise awareness among the public and address concerns of religious scholars.

The law was ratified on April 13 last year, nine years after it was first submitted to parliament.

The current penal code was adopted in 1968 and has been widely criticised as outdated, draconian and unsuited to the 2008 constitution. The new law has meanwhile been touted as the first time Islamic sharia has been codified while upholding minimum international human rights standards.

However, Salaf claimed attempts to portray the law as sharia-compliant were intended to “deceive the citizens of a 100 percent Islamic nation”.

As the law currently states that shariah punishments must be meted out only for crimes with a punishment fixed in the Quran, Salaf argued that it “completely does away with” the Sunnah (Prophetic traditions) under a “secular philosophy”.

The Sunnah is one of the “fundamental sources” of sharia law and specifies how punishments prescribed in the Quran must be enforced, Salaf said.

The law will also make it easier for criminals to escape punishment and encourage youth to offend, Salaf contended, claiming it was drafted by lawyers with a view to increasing their income.

The language of the law and criteria for constituting a crime are “alien to the principles of Islamic criminal jurisprudence,” Salaf argued.

The mandatory punishment for wrongfully accusing a chaste Muslim of adultery or homosexuality in the law is a jail term of no more than four years, Salaf noted, while meting out the sharia punishment of 80 lashes is left to the discretion of judges.

The offences of ‘murder and reckless manslaughter,’ ‘involuntary manslaughter,’ and ‘negligent manslaughter’ are based on English common law and is contrary to the degrees of murder in sharia, Salaf said.

Several punishments fixed in the Quran and Sunnah such as amputation of the hand for theft, death by stoning for adultery, death for highway robbery, and death or banishment for apostasy are not enforced in the Maldives.

However, flogging for pre-marital sex is implemented while the current administration has ended a six-decade moratorium on the death penalty.

Codifying sharia

In an op-ed published on newspaper Haveeru on April 7, former deputy prosecutor general Hussain Shameem stated that the Maldives is the first Islamic country to pass a criminal law in accordance with sharia and international standards.

While sharia punishments are specified in laws of other Islamic nations, Shameem said the Maldives’ penal code was drafted on the basis of codifying sharia.

“Therefore, the law will not include parts of principles contrary to Islam,” he wrote.

The law criminalises fornication, eating during daylight hours in Ramadan, consumption of alcohol and pork, and anti-Islamic activities, he added.

All crimes with punishments prescribed in the Quran are included, he continued, including the death penalty for murder.

“Therefore, the new penal code of the Maldives is in line with Islamic sharia and a victory for Islamic sharia,” Shameem asserted.

As a senior legal consultant at the Legal Sector Resource Centre established by the attorney general’s office with assistance from the UNDP, Shameem has been involved in training more than 1,100 individuals, including state prosecutors, lawyers, staff and members of independent commissions, customs officers, and 98 percent of police investigators.

Likes(0)Dislikes(0)

Amputation for theft added to draft penal code

The draft penal code bill has been amended to include punishments as prescribed in the Quran, such as amputation for theft.

The new article added during a parliamentary committee meeting Thursday (March 28) states that if someone convicted of a crime requires legal punishment, as specified in the penal code, that person will face punishment as stated in the Quran.

MP Imthiyaz Fahmy clarified the amendment to the draft penal code is about hadd punishments only and “not at all” about all Sharia offences, speaking with Minivan News today.

“Hadd offenses are already crimes in the draft penal code. However the prescribed punishments in Sharia for those particular crimes are not codified in the draft penal code, but instead they are left up to the interpretation of Sharia,” stated Fahmy.

“But to completely evade making a reference to hadd punishments or to mention that no hadd punishment at all should be imposed is impossible to the the fact that Sharia shall be one of the basis of all the laws of the Maldives,” he added.

Criminal punishments are detailed for murder, fornication, thievery and drinking alcohol.

The committee’s chairperson, MP Ahmed Hamza, told Sun Online the new draft penal code will require amputating persons convicted of theft, while a person convicted of apostasy (renouncing Islam) will also face punishment.

The bill does not include apostasy as a crime, therefore someone found guilty of this offense cannot be subjected to Quranic punishment, committee member MP Ahmed Mohamed clarified.

Gambling is also not criminalised, according to committee member MP Abdul Azeez Jamaal Aboobakuru. He told local media that the bill does not “state a manner in which such crimes can be convicted”.

Fahmy explained that Sharia law does not prescribe a hadd punishment for gambling.

The penal code draft bill does include factors that must be considered before convicting a person of murder; for example, any contradictory evidence would prevent such a conviction.

Imposing the death penalty cannot be subject only to the confession of the accused.

“Sharia does not run headlong into death penalties, amputation or stoning to death. Therefore depending on the circumstances, Sharia may avoid capital punishments,” said Fahmy.

He further clarified that Sharia punishments may be interpreted according to any of the schools of Sunni Muslims.

While interpretation of Sharia law punishments are within the purview of Maldivian judges, Fahmy believes that the current judicial system is incapable of providing Maldivian people justice, even with the new penal code.

“I do not believe the judiciary and the criminal justice system in the Maldives is capable of doing justice or able to take care of the new penal code. The judiciary is unable to ‘keep up with the Jonses’,” Fahmy stated.

The parliamentary committee’s additions to the bill follow its rejection of all but one amendment suggested by the Fiqh Academy of the Maldives.

Speaking to local media on Monday (March 25), Hamza said the committee had decided to accept only a suggestion concerning the offence of theft. Other amendments, he said, were merely changes to the wordings of the bill and carried little legal weight.

“They have submitted amendments to abolish certain sections. These include certain legal defences. When we looked into removing those defences, we found this impacted fundamental principles embedded to the draft penal code. So we decided to reject their suggestions,” he stated.

Following the decision, Vice President of the Fiqh Academy Sheikh Iyas Abdul Latheef told local newspaper Haveeru that the academy had informed parliament that current draft penal code should not be enforced in the country.

“The current draft does not include the Hadds established under Islamic Sharia. There is no mention of the death penalty for murder, the punishment of stoning for fornication, the punishment of amputation for theft and the punishment for apostasy. We proposed amendments to include these punishments,” Latheef stated.

Comments submitted by the United Nation agencies in the Maldives, Human Rights Commission of the Maldives (HRCM), and Attorney General are being considered and incorporated into the draft text.

The initial draft of the penal code was prepared by legal expert Professor Paul H Robinson and the University of Pennsylvania Law School of the United States, upon the request of the Attorney General in January, 2006. The project was supported by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

Professor Robinson’s team have published two volumes (Volume 1 and Volume 2) consisting of commentaries on sections of the draft bill.

The bill was first sent to the Majlis (parliament) in 2006 and will replace the 1961 penal code.

The penal code bill is being forwarded to the parliament floor this upcoming week, according to local media.

False preaching regarding rape and fornication

The parliamentary committee slammed the “false preaching” of the Chair of Adhaalath Party’s Scholars Council Sheikh Ilyas Hussain over the bill earlier this week.

Sheikh Ilyas declared that the new penal code does not recognise fornication with mutual consent as an offence.

MP Nazim Rashaad contended that whether sheikh or not, nobody could misinterpret the clause and claim that the bill did not recognise “mutually consented sexual intercourse” as an offence, and accused the Sheikh of lying to discredit the bill and parliament.

Briefing committee members on the sections concerning sexual offenses, Rashaad stated that under the draft penal code, both fornication and rape are offences under section 411 of the draft bill.

The existing penal code does not explicitly recognise “rape” as a crime, and cases are handled under provisions for sexual offences.

Likes(0)Dislikes(0)