Saudi Affairs
Temper Justice With Mercy
By Amr Mohammed Al-Faisal
Nov 23, 2003, 13:20

Last week I read in the newspapers about a young woman from Jizan who was sentenced to 500 lashes for marrying a young Jizani man after getting divorced from her first husband. You see, the young woman did not wait for the mandatory three months to pass before marrying her new husband. In fact, she married him the same day she got her divorce.

For that she got 500 lashes.

500 lashes?

A fornicator is sentenced to only 100 lashes.

500 lashes?

It is unheard-of that anyone was ever sentenced to 500 lashes during the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him). No one was ever sentenced to 500 lashes for anything during the period of the rightly guided caliphs. Surely justice must be tempered with mercy. Is proportionality an alien concept to us?

A young woman is sentenced to 500 lashes. Our media is then eager to announce the news in all the newspapers including the non-Arabic ones. As if this is something for us to be proud of. This merely confirms all the negative stereotypes about us we are painstakingly trying to dispel.

I call upon the Supreme Council of Judges and the Ministry of Justice to investigate this case, for it is clear that the punishment meted out to this unfortunate young woman is far in excess of the crime.

Why do we not follow the example of our Prophet after the battle of Badr, for instance? The prophet decided after the battle to ransom the Makkah prisoners who were captured by the Muslims, despite the fact that they were people who had attacked the Muslims and tried to kill them.

It would have been just to kill them all. Instead the Prophet chose to spare their lives in the hope that some would eventually accept Islam. This tradition then became enshrined in law.

On another occasion, also after the battle of Badr, a man from Makkah arrived in Madinah to ransom his son, who was a prisoner of the Muslims. The man also intended to assassinate the Prophet on this occasion.

He had agreed to perform this task at the behest of one of the Makkah leaders called Safwan ibn Umayyah, who promised to care for his family as if they were his own and to assume all his debts. This agreement was known only to the two men.

When he approached the Prophet, Omar, one of the prophet’s companions, suspected his intention and tried to stop him, but the Prophet ordered him to leave the man be.

He then asked the man “What about your agreement with Safwan ibn Umayyah?” The man was stunned and promptly converted to Islam.

This is another example of our Prophet choosing mercy over blind justice. There are many others impossible to recount here.

It is imperative that guidelines be drawn up to avoid similar cases of excessive punishment so that it does not become a feature of Saudi justice.


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