Muslim Perspectives

In this section, I read "The Death Penalty, Mercy, and Islam: A Call for Retrospection" by Khaled Abou El Fadl. El Fadl starts off his essay be reiterating the gravity of a killing state and capital punishment itself. Life belongs to the divine territory and therefore when one thinks about capital punishment, "one is treading upon divine territory and one does so at great peril to one's soul and ultimate well-being in the hereafter" (El Fadl 73). A killing state only kills as an act on God's behalf, not for security purposes or general consensus by the citizens, and this burden of responsibility is heavy. El Fadl brings up the idea of shubha which is doubt that God has authorized your actions or choices. The presence of shubha in a possible sentencing demands the preservation of the accused's life. Before concluding, the author cautions against two things. The first is against the value of a state "that is willing to share the seat of judgement with God and kill" (El Fadl 77). The second caution is against focusing on past Muslim practice in regards to the death penalty but rather to focus on better fulfilling the ideals of Islam. The author writes, "Islam is the product of the constant and evolving dynamic between the divine and the temporal -- between the scripted text, the unscripted text of creation and the reader of these texts" (El Fadl 78). El Fadl concludes that the only version of Justice based off Islam has to be premised on mercy and regard for the sanctity of human life. Decisions about the life and death are too serious for fickle states to handle.
I really enjoyed El Fadl's essay, especially his emphasis on how serious life and extermination of life is, whether through murder or capital punishment. In the previous essays, some authors did not seem to understand that concept as they purported that God will correct in the afterlife any wrongful death sentences we may commit in our time on life. And they believed that He would do so without any consequence to the executioners. This is a very contradictory belief. On one hand, humans want to be able to make decisions about life and death. Yet, they understand that only God can know what action truly is just and accordingly can dispense justice. They are treading on divine territory and know it but still don't want to acknowledge divine (or afterlife) consequences for their actions. I sympathize much more with El Fadl's position. I also enjoyed El Fadl's definition of Islam as fluid and dynamic. I think that allowing new information and experiences to inform how we read religious texts is not only legitimate but helpful. Perspectives that create tradition in Christianity or Islam or any other religion were equally fallible centuries ago as they are now. Time does not determine the legitimacy of a certain tradition.