Is there an Islamic-Iranian Criminology?

Today, July 24, I gave a talk on the idea of Islamization of criminology in post revolutionary Iran. This session was organized within the framework of Brown Bag Talk Series of the Department of Criminology, the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law. Ms Dr. Gunda Woßner, the head of the research projects Sexual Delinquents in Social-Therapeutic Institutions of the Free State of Saxony and Juvenile Sexual Offenders in the Correctional Treatment Facilities of the Free State of Saxony, is the coordinator of this innovative program.

Below is an abstract of my today's talk:

For at least 27 years, Muslim Shia jurists and scholars in Iran, who have domination over criminal policy centers, are seriously talking about an Islamic criminology. But in reality it seems they have failed to realize these aspirations. What do Muslim scholars who advocate this project mean by Islamic criminology in Iran? Is that a new science different than existing criminology? What, then, are the sources of these aspirations in Islamic criminal jurisprudence? And what factors and forces have worked to turn it into a failed project?

 

In this session, based on the post revolutionary developments in crime studies in Iran and the realities of criminal policies, I am going to argue that there exists no coherent scientific discipline under the title of Islamic criminology. What is called Islamic criminology in Iran is mere some theologically oriented references to textual narratives and ideological assumptions that serve the traditional views of Muslim jurisprudents on the question of criminality and criminal justice in the context of a tribal and a pre-modern clientalist society. It does not give any sense of a scientific discipline with a deliberate methodology and consistency that aims to explain crime in the contemporary society of Iran. Departing from this critical analysis, and at the end, I try to outline some aspect of a reasonable and coherent reading of the question concerning relationship between Islamic religious texts and criminology in the context of current society of Iran.

 

Comments

[thesis paper]

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