4 - The eclipse of Islamic criminal law

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter I will discuss the reform and subsequent eclipse of Islamic criminal law as a result of the modernisation and Westernisation of the Muslim world. From the late eighteenth century, Western powers extended their influence into the Islamic world. This resulted in the colonial conquest of Indonesia, India, North Africa and Central Asia, accompanied by a sharp increase in Western political and economic influence in countries that did not lose their independence. A few regions, such as the Arabian Peninsula, escaped Western expansion, because Western powers regarded them as devoid of economic or strategic interests. In those countries where Western dominance, political or otherwise, did establish itself, state and society were affected in many ways. One of the areas to change was that of the law. The nineteenth century was a period of drastic law reform in the Muslim world, due to two global factors. One was the aforementioned Westernisation of state and society, which entailed the adoption of Western laws. The other was indigenous: the emergence of modernising states with centralised bureaucracies, both in the colonies and in the countries that had kept their independence. Such states needed new legal systems, and especially new systems of criminal law.

A centralising and modernising state requires effective and rational tools for disciplining its subjects, tools that are applied by a rational bureaucracy (in the Weberian sense) through impersonal procedures.