Hamas passes a bill for an ‘Islamic’ penal code

Reported in the Al-Hayat newspaper on 24th December 2008, members of the Palestinian legislative council belonging to Hamas held a meeting in Gaza in which they instated an ‘Islamic penal code’ which was proposed by Hamas in an attempt to implement ‘hudud’. The unexpected move has elicited the criticism and concern of human rights organizations in the Gaza Strip, especially because the bill includes punishments such as flogging, chopping of the hands, crucifixion and execution. In a section entitled ‘Blood Money’ the bill states ‘blood money is a hundred camels or their monetary equivalent according to the estimation of the shari'ah court after deliberating with specialist parties’.

Flogging was regularly mentioned in the bill as article 84 stated: ‘everyone who drinks wine or possesses it or produces it will be punished by forty lashes if Muslim... and everyone who drinks wine and intimidates people or aggravates or disturbs them, or drinks it in a public place or comes to a public place while drunk, will be punished by no less than forty lashes and imprisonment of no less than three months’. Flogging has also been assigned to offences such as ‘gambling, insulting religious beliefs, committing acts that are debauched, scandalous and that do not abide by public decency, defamation of character, insulting and cursing’. It also states that ‘whoever commits the crime of robbery will be punished by chopping his right hand from the wrist’. 

Maajid Nawaz, Director of the Quilliam Foundatiion said: ‘Hamas are finally showing their true colours, and the true colours of their colleagues in their parent organization the Muslim Brotherhood. To introduce a mode of punishment that was explicitly repealed by leading Muslim theologians of the then capital of the abolished Caliphate in Istanbul is yet another example of Islamists using democratic rhetoric to get into power, and then going on to abolish fundamental democratic principles and human rights.’

Those who argue that democracy demands greater Western support for elected Islamists in Muslim-majority countries, should recognize that elections are only one component of democracy. Pluralism, human rights and personal freedoms are all essential to avoid the ‘elected dictatorships’ that Europe suffered from so severely in the last century.’ He added: ‘Will the UK-based affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood now condemn Hamas?’

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