Justice, Punishment and the Medieval Muslim Imagination

Abstract

How was the use of violence against Muslims explained and justified in medieval Islam? What role did state punishment play in delineating the private from the public sphere? What strategies were deployed to cope with the suffering caused by punishment? These questions are explored in Christian Lange's in-depth study of the phenomenon of punishment, both divine and human, in eleventh-to-thirteenth-century Islamic society. The book examines the relationship between state and society in meting out justice, Muslim attitudes to hell and the punishments that were in store in the afterlife, and the legal dimensions of punishment. The cross-disciplinary approach embraced in this study, which is based on a wide variety of Persian and Arabic sources, sheds light on the interplay between theory and practice in Islamic criminal law, and between executive power and the religious imagination of medieval Muslim society at large.

Essentialism and Islamic Theology of Homosexuality: A Critical Reflection on an Essentialist Epistemology toward Same-Sex Desires and Acts in Islam

“…Most traditional Muslim jurists and theologians, whether writing in medieval and premodern periods (Al-Shāfiʿī, 1990;Al-Ṭūsī 2010;Ibn Hanbal, 1969;Mālik B. Anas, 1985) or more recent times (Kadivar, 2013a;Al-Khū'ī, 2007;Al-Qaraḍāwī, 2008;Al-Sīstānī, 2006), have categorized and condemned same-sex desires and acts, including homosexuality and bisexuality, as liwāṭ (i.e., anal intercourse between men) or siḥāq (between women) (Lange, 2008(Lange, , 2009. Revisionist Muslims, such as Scott Kugle (2007Kugle ( , 2010, Arash Naraghi (2015), and Samar Habib (2007Habib ( , 2010, have offered a more tolerant approach toward this issue over the last two decades.…”

Crime and Punishment in Islamic History (Early to Middle Period): A Framework for Analysis

“…The muhtasib has been called ‘the guardian of the public sphere’ as he was instrumental in drawing the socio‐cultural line that divided public from private matters in pre‐modern Islamic societies. Recent years have seen a renewed interest in hisba (Klein 2006; Lange 2006, 2008, forthcoming; Mottahedeh & Stilt 2003), although much work remains to be carried out, not least in regard to the muhtasib ’s power to prosecute and punish crime.…”

“…However, execution by the sword, a more honorable form of death, may have been just as common or even more widespread (Kraemer 1980, p. 44). Other ‘spectacular’ forms of public executions were trampling by elephants (as in the case of the vizier Ibn Baqiyya in 978 at Baghdad), a punishment that probably had its origin in Sassanian practice, burning or immolation, as method of execution that the jurists frowned upon but which the caliph ‘Ali was reported to have implemented on a number of occasions, and of which also later examples can be found in historiography up to the 19th century 5 ; stoning (though few examples are given in the chronicles); and throwing down from heights (for sodomites) (Lange 2008, pp. 61–71).…”

The Relationship Between Afterlife Beliefs and Mental Wellbeing Among Jordanian Muslim Youth

“…The journalofmuslimmentalhealth.org Qur'an's references to the afterlife describe precise details about the rewards of Heaven and the punishments of Hell (Lange, 2016;Murata & Chittick, 1994). Due to the importance that the Qur'an gives to the afterlife, the punishment of Hell and the reward of Heaven are an essential part of Islamic religious discourse (Lange, 2008). Muslims typically receive this discourse from their early childhood education, both formal and informal (McCleary, 2007).…”