13 Islamic criminal jurisprudence

Islamic criminal law is criminal law in accordance with Sharia. Strictly speaking, Islamic law does not have a distinct corpus of "criminal law". It divides crimes into three different categories depending on the offense – Hudud, Qisas, and Tazir. Some add the fourth category of Siyasah, while others consider it as part of either Hadd or Tazir crimes.

Apostasy in Islam is commonly defined as the abandonment of Islam by a Muslim, in thought, word, or through deed. It includes not only explicit renunciations of the Islamic faith by converting to another religion, but also blasphemy or heresy, through any action or utterance implying unbelief, including those denying a "fundamental tenet or creed" of Islam.

The situation for apostates from Islam varies markedly between Muslim-minority and Muslim-majority regions. In Muslim-minority countries "any violence against those who abandon Islam is already illegal". But in some Muslim-majority countries, religious violence is "institutionalised", and "hundreds and thousands of closet apostates" live in fear of violence and are compelled to live lives of "extreme duplicity and mental stress."

Diya in Islamic law, is the financial compensation paid to the victim or heirs of a victim in the cases of murder, bodily harm or property damage. It is an alternative punishment to qisas. In Arabic, the word means both blood money and ransom, and it is spelled sometimes as diyah or diyeh.

Sol Hachuel was a Jewish heroine who was publicly decapitated when she was 17 years old. She was executed in 1834 for alleged apostasy from Islam—apparently without ever having converted to Islam. According to The Jewish Encyclopedia Hachuel "was a martyr to her faith, preferring death to becoming the bride of the sultan." She is considered a tzadeket (saint) by some Jews and is also revered by some Muslims. Jews call her Sol HaTzaddikah, while Arabs call her Lalla Suleika.

Hudud is an Arabic word meaning "borders, boundaries, limits". In the religion of Islam it refers to punishments that under Islamic law (shariah) are mandated and fixed by God. These punishments were rarely applied in pre-modern Islam, and their use in some modern states has been a source of controversy.

The province of Aceh in Indonesia enforces some provisions of Islamic criminal law, the sole Indonesian province to do so. In Aceh, Islamic criminal law is called jinayat. The laws that implement it are called Qanun Jinayat or Hukum Jinayat, roughly meaning "Islamic criminal code". Although the largely-secular laws of Indonesia apply in Aceh, the provincial government passed additional regulations, some derived from Islamic criminal law, after Indonesia authorized its provinces to enact regional regulations (perda) and granted Aceh special autonomy to implement Islamic law. Offences under the provisions include alcohol consumption, production and distribution, gambling, adultery, rape, sexual harassment, certain intimacies outside marriage, and certain homosexual acts. Punishments include caning, fines, and imprisonment. There is no provision for stoning; an attempt to introduce it in 2009 was vetoed by Governor Irwandi Yusuf. In 2016 Aceh processed 324 first instance court cases under Islamic criminal law, and carried out at least 100 caning sentences.

In Islam, gambling, is absolutely forbidden. Maisir is prohibited by Islamic law (shari'a) on the grounds that "the agreement between participants is based on immoral inducement provided by entirely wishful hopes in the participants' minds that they will gain by mere chance, with no consideration for the possibility of loss".

Qisas or Qiṣāṣ is an Islamic term interpreted to mean "retaliation in kind", "eye for an eye", or retributive justice. In traditional Islamic law (sharia), the doctrine of qisas provides for a punishment analogous to the crime. Qisas is available to the victim or victim's heirs against a convicted perpetrator of murder or intentional bodily injury. In the case of murder, qisas gives the right to take the life of the killer, if the latter is convicted and the court approves. Those who are entitled to qisas have the option of receiving monetary compensation (diyya) or granting pardon to the perpetrator instead.

Rajm in Islam refers to the Hudud punishment wherein an organized group throws stones at a convicted individual until that person dies. Under some versions of Islamic law (Sharia), it is the prescribed punishment in cases of adultery committed by a married man or married woman. The conviction requires a confession from either the adulterer/adulteress, or the testimony of four witnesses, or pregnancy outside of marriage under certain circumstances in Maliki school.

In Islam, human sexuality is governed by Islamic law (Sharia). Accordingly, sexual violation is regarded as a violation of moral and divine law. Islam divided claims of sexual violation into 'divine rights' and 'interpersonal rights' : the former requiring divine punishment and the latter belonging to the more flexible human realm.

In Islamic Law, tazir refers to punishment for offenses at the discretion of the judge (Qadi) or ruler of the state. It is one of three major types of punishments or sanctions under Sharia Islamic law — hadd, qisas and ta'zir. The punishments for the Hadd offenses are fixed by the Qur'an or Hadith, qisas allow equal retaliation in cases of intentional bodily harm, while ta'zir refers to punishments applied to the other offenses for which no punishment is specified in the Qur'an or the Hadith or is not punishable under either qisas or hudud.

Zināʾ (زِنَاء) or zinah is an Islamic legal term referring to unlawful sexual intercourse. According to traditional jurisprudence, zina can include adultery, fornication, prostitution, rape, sodomy, homosexuality, incest, and bestiality. Although classification of homosexual intercourse as zina differs according to legal school, the majority apply the rules of zinā to homosexuality, mostly male homosexuality, since the Islamic marital law disallows same-sex marriage.