Review

"Professor Peter's book on crime and punishment in conformity with Islamic Law is a welcome addition to the shelves of common law jurists interested in multi-disciplinary approaches to the regulations of conduct and the selection of sanctions to enforce compliance with these standards of behaviour. Comparatively little attention has been paid to this area of the law in Enlighs language publications and the appearance of a comprehensive review of present-day theory and practice is most welcome, especially in regard to the much misunderstood system of sentencing." - Gilles Renaud, Criminal Law Quarterly

"Peter's study of Islamic criminal law from the sixteenth century to the present provides the reader with a solid grounding in Islamic legal doctrines, the practice of the Ottoman empire, and the changes resulting from colonization and modern day political movements in the Muslim world...With this background, the reader should be able to understand more fully the historical and legal implications of various movements around the Muslim world to reintroduce Islamic criminal law and how these movements deviate from the classical tradition they often hearken back to." - Lubna A. Alam, Michigan Law Review

"Scholars interested in Islamic law and its application should definitely read Peters's Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law. We still have much work to do in this field, and this book gives us precious material to think about when formulating methodologies for future law in action studies." - International Journal of Middle East Studies

Book Description

This is the first single-authored account of both the theory and practice of Islamic criminal law. In recent years some of the more fundamentalist regimes, such as those of Iran, Pakistan, Sudan and the Northern states of Nigeria have reintroduced Islamic law. Rudolf Peters gives a detailed account of the classical doctrine and traces the enforcement of criminal law from the Ottoman period to the present day. The accounts of actual cases which range from theft, banditry, murder, fornication and apostasy shed light on the complexities of the law.