Last week it was reported by DAWN, a leading Pakistani daily, that the ruling party (the PPP) are working on an unprecedented initiative on Abolishment of Capital Punishment in Pakistan. As DAWN points out, this movement might have been inspired by the account of the execution of its founder, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, after which the PPP has never stopped opposing the death penalty. In April, heading the new coalition government, the PPP came out strongly against capital punishment, saying that the party intended to commute all death sentences to life imprisonment. More recently, Finance Minister Naveed Qamar revealed that the government was working on proposals abolish this severest of all penalties.
From an Islamic-Iranian perspective, however, this is the second unknown liberal-democratic development in Pakistan in a year, following democratic developments in regard to last year’s presidential election in which, all cynical interpretations notwithstanding, Parviz Mosharraf and the army in power acknowledged the election result and accepted failure. Many in Iran have thought that the whole region is worse than Iran when it comes to democratic processes. The legal and political developments in Muslim majority countries like Pakistan and Turkey, in which many clerical staff oppose the abolition of this cruel and inhuman practice (citing religious texts and arguing that the death penalty in the form of Qesas and Hodud) are essentials of Sharia criminal law, are very attractive for the Iranian people that made the last great non-violent revolution of the century in 1979. This news from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a fascinating counter-narrative to the repressive judicial and criminal policies in the Islamic Republic of Iran. One should not forget that Iran, after China, has the second highest number of executions per year. As Amnesty International recently reported, numbers increased dramatically increased in 2007. The Islamic Judiciary of Iran executed at least 317 people, Saudi Arabia 143 and Pakistan 135 – in comparison to 177, 39 and 82 executions respectively in 2006. I recall that when Turkey suspended the death penalty some years ago under an Islamically-inspired party, it was so provocative for Iranian audiences that some reformist newspapers asked Mr. Khatami, then president, to visit Turkey in order to get the idea of real reform. Now the case of Pakistan is again inspiring for us in Iran.
I would like to add that in January 2007, I, together with Dr. Abolahassan Banisadr, published a comprehensive study on the death penalty from a jurisprudential, political-philosophical and Islamic perspective. In this article, we argued for the abolition of the death penalty. The full text of this article is available here for Download!
Banisadr, who has lived in exile in Paris since 1981, was the first president of Iran and is critical of current Sharia discourses in Iran and the Muslim world. Unlike Mr. Khatami’s record in defending human rights, one can see the Dr. Banisadr’s record, which can be considered avant-garde. Departing from fundamental rethinking in Islamic traditions and texts, which he calls Islam beh Masabeh Bayan Azady (Islam either as discourse of Freedom, or non-Islam), he has intensively published work in defence of human rights and dignity and worked against theories of violence in Islam and Iran more specifically, including the use of the death penalty. Because of the significance of Banisadr’s thought with regard to rivalling Islamic discourses, I will introduce a very short outline of his arguments here.
In an article on human_dignity, for example, he writes:
“We must liberate both life and death from the domination of human subjectivity and accept their reality. This can be done by recognizing that they belong to God, according to the guiding principle that purposeful action is the domain of the human and destiny is from God. Human action should be nothing but right and the exercise of right. To stand for the right to life is to stand for actions that help preserve life and avoid actions that endanger it. Any action leads to certain results and will change the quality of life. For example, swallowing poison will kill a person, while organizing one’s quality of food, sleeping patterns and other ways of life to increase happiness will prolong life. In addition, if the environment becomes compatible with all forms of life, life itself will increase. From this point of view, the right to life not only becomes independent from human subjectivity, but also becomes a guiding principle. It is impossible to terminate or damage life without harm, and harm or destruction are signs of the negligence of freedom. Standing for the right to life reflects human freedom in thought, word, and deed. In order to make any fundamental change, the mentality must first change to a belief that self, life, and rights are intrinsic in life; that rights are not things that can be given or taken away. The only thing that should be taken into consideration when deciding whether to terminate the life of a person is how to exercise a right. Expediencies that stand outside right (such as those of the patient, parents, husband, church or state) should not be a consideration.”
The most concrete and obvious expression of the Islamic state in post-revolutionary Iran under Veleyat-e Faghih, however, is done through criminal law. It was not by chance that the clerical establishment started its political agenda with a new draft of the Islamic Penal Codes in 1980. The theory of punishment and criminal law has significant connections to political theory in the post-revolutionary Iran. Therefore, it was not surprising to observe that the number one agenda item of clerical rule was changing the criminal punishment system.
Finally, from the standpoint of international human rights and comparative criminal justice, it is important that the causes of crime in a society are addressed so that cruel methods of punishment like the death penalty lose their justification. One can also argue that the debate on abolishing the death penalty in Pakistan proves that there are democratic forces in that country that want to do away with uncivilized and inhuman ways of dealing with crimes. Iran can learn a lesson from the initiatives taken by some political parties in Pakistan for bolishing the death penalty, because as Islamic countries, both Iran and Pakistan must remember that political options, rather than resorting to inhuman and cruel methods such as the death penalty, are the best way to deal with crimes and violence.
For me death penalty is the best way to eliminate crimes which makes the people to feel more safety.
Posted by: Records search | March 03, 2011 at 05:28 PM