1. Is it important to you that our laws protect “religion, life, intellect, offspring, and property”? How do our laws protect these values? Explain.
2. Do any of our laws “rest upon” religious principles found in Judaism or Christianity? Explain.
3. Another law over which countries have profound differences of opinion is capital punishment. At the time of this writing, a 56-year-old British woman was facing death by firing squad for smuggling about 10 pounds of cocaine into Bali. Nearly 100 countries have abolished capital punishment. According to Amnesty International, 682 confirmed executions were carried out worldwide in 2012 (excluding thousands in China, however, because accurate information is unavailable). The five countries with the highest numbers are China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Develop brief arguments both for and against capital punishment.
In order to protect the five important indispensables in Islam (religion, life, intellect, offspring, and property), Islamic Law has provided a worldly punishment in addition to that in the hereafter. Islam has, in fact, adopted two courses for the preservation of these five indispensables: the first is through cultivating religious consciousness in the human soul and the awakening of human awareness through moral education; the second is by inflicting deterrent punishment, which is the basis of the Islamic criminal system. Therefore “Hudoud,” Retaliation (Qesas), and Discretionary (Tazir) punishments have been prescribed according to the type of the crime committed.