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Stealing more is better? An economic analysis of Islamic law of theft

European Journal of Law and Economics volume 42, pages 103–128 (2016)Cite this article

Abstract

This study is the first attempt (in the field of Law and Economics) to apply economic analysis to shari’a or Islamic criminal law, in particular, that aspect of the law pertaining to theft. Shari’a imposes two main punishments for theft; hadd, a fixed penalty of amputation of the offender’s right hand under certain conditions and ta’zir, a discretionary punishment, less severe than hadd. From the viewpoint of marginal deterrence and multiplier principles, lesser crimes with low social harm are punished more severely with hadd whereas crimes with high social harm are punished with ta’zir. Moreover, as the probability of detection and sanction is less in those crimes of high social harm, criminals would have more incentive to commit them. Consequently, if Islamic criminal law is to be applied in its current form, crimes of high social cost are likely to become more frequent.

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Notes

  1. Peters (2006, pp. 174–181) extensively investigates the incompatibility of Islamic law with Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

  2. For a comprehensive examination of the reasons for and consequences of the prevalence of Ash’arite theology, see Reilly (2011).

  3. Conceptualizing constitutionalism from an Islamic perspective, Iqbal (2000, p. 13) states, ‘‘The Islamic constitution has only two important organs, the executive and the judiciary. The third organ i.e., the legislature is not an important feature for the reason that all legislation has already been made by Allah in the qur’an.”

  4. Al-Maktaba Al-Waqfeya, one of the largest online sources of Islamic books, contains only five fiqh books that are not based on the four famous madhahib, see http://www.waqfeya.com/category.php?cid=67 (date of retrieval; 2 December 2014).

  5. Gold-US Dollars conversion was calculated on December 8, 2014 using the goldprice.org website, http://goldprice.org/Calculators/Gold-Price-Calculators.html.

  6. According to Ebert (2011, p. 204), since the time of early Muslims and until the nineteenth century, criminal law in the Islamic world was characterized by the coexistence of Islamic legal rules as interpreted by the different madhahib, on the one hand, and regionally valid norms with an urban, rural, or Bedouin background, on the other. Hadd punishments were legitimized and constantly practiced. Structured according to the Napoleonic code of 1810, the Ottoman criminal code of 1858, which was also applied in Egypt starting in 1863, put aside Islamic criminal punishments (Yilmaz 2005, p. 90).

  7. It should be noted that this study does not project any ethical predisposition or judgments on Islamic criminal law. We also do not intend to normatively compare between the “modern-humane” western legal institutions and the “archaic-brutal” Islamic laws.

  8. Both the assumptions and the behavioral predictions of Becker’s rational choice theory have sparked considerable criticism (see, for example, Green and Shapiro 1994; Parisi and Smith 2005). However, our analysis is based on the assumption of rationality of actors. Islamic penal code is applied only in the case of rationality and sanity of offenders, thus no hadd is applied where the offender is insane or suffering from mental disorders de jure. As Kleptomania, for example, is considered a type of impulse control disorder, a kleptomaniac should not be punished under Islamic criminal law. Nevertheless, according to the Roshdy (2013), such a disorder is not considered a breach of sanity under Islamic criminal law, de facto. Consequently, hadd is applied even in the case of irrationality.

  9. Although there are some Islamic legal views arguing that pick pocketing is a ta’zir crime, Majority of Islamic scholars consider pick pocketing a hadd crime. Some Muslim-majority countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, punish pick pocketing by hadd punishment.

  10. Islamweb.net is one of the most popular Islamic websites, with 70 million visitors in 2011. In 2007, the site was recognized by a World Summit Award, a prize recognizing the best in e-content from around the world, as issued by the United Nations' World Summit on the Information Society. In 2014, Islamweb.net library amounted to 140,970 fatwas, 37,143 consultations, and 203,352 Islamic audio files (Qatari Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs 2014).

  11. Although prohibition of slavery is currently an international norm to which most, if not all, states in the world are committed, slavery continues to be lawful under Islamic law. For more on this, see An-Na’im (1990).

  12. Apps (2011) states that the insurance sector worldwide began writing ‘Kidnap & Ransom’ policies in the late 1970s. Such insurance policies currently generate yearly premiums of nearly $500 million.

  13. The setup of Islamic criminal law resembles to a great extent that of Roman law. Consequently, this line of economic analysis is similar to that offered by Garoupa and Gomez (2008).

  14. Based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Islamic Fiqh Academy is an international body of Muslim experts on subjects of both religious and secular knowledge. It was created at the behest of the second summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in 1974 and inaugurated in February 1981.

  15. II Samuel 12:13–18.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Jennifer Arlen, Nora El-Bialy, Matthias Dauner, Shubha Ghosh, Joseb Gudiashvili, Jerg Gutmann, Osman B. Gürzumar, Kareem Madkour, Alain Marciano, Cherie Metcalf, Giovanni Ramello, Shan Aman Rana, Jared Rubin, Ulrike Schillinger, Andrey E Shastitko, Henry E. Smith, and Stefan Voigt for their helpful comments and suggestions. Special thanks for Shima’a Hanafy, Anna Klabunde, Helmut Leipold, Volker Robeck, and Elisabeth Schulte for revising an earlier draft. My sincere gratitude goes to Hans-Bernd Schäfer for his great effort and suggestions. I also thank the participants at the 2012 European School of New Institutional Economics (ESNIE) in Corsica, the 16th Annual conference of the International Society for the New Institutional Economics (ISNIE) in Los Angeles, the 8th Italian Society of Law and Economics Annual conference in Rome, the 2013 Association for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Culture (ASREC) meeting in Washington for their helpful comments, as well as the 2014 International Law and Economics conference organized by Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. The author acknowledges financial support from the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund. The usual disclaimer applies. The author acknowledges financial support from the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund.

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  1. Graduate School of International and Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS), Seoul, South Korea

    Moamen Gouda

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Gouda, M. Stealing more is better? An economic analysis of Islamic law of theft. Eur J Law Econ 42, 103–128 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-015-9499-7

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Keywords

  • Islam
  • Criminal law
  • Economics of crime
  • Deterrence
  • Hadd
  • Ta’zir
  • Shari’a
  • Theft

JEL classification

  • K14
  • Z12
  • P40
  • K00