Hudud in the context of "Islamic criminal jurisprudence"

The use of politically and religiously-motivated violence in Islam dates back to its early history. Islam has its origins in the behavior, sayings, and rulings of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, his companions, and the first caliphs in the 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries CE. Mainstream Islamic law stipulates detailed regulations for the use of violence, including corporal and capital punishment, as well as regulations on how, when, and whom to wage war against.

Qisas or Qiṣāṣ (Arabic: قِصَاص, romanized: Qiṣāṣ, lit. 'accountability, following up after, pursuing or prosecuting') is an Islamic term interpreted to mean "retaliation in kind", "eye for an eye", or retributive justice. Qisas (along with its alternative punishment blood money, aka Diyya, compensation paid by the offender, which is applied in cases where retaliation conditions are not met) is one of several forms of punishment in classical/traditional Islamic criminal jurisprudence, the others being Hudud and Ta'zir.

According to James Lindgren it is standard wisdom among legal historians that collective responsibility in ancient law has given way to individual responsibility in modern law. In ancient societies, the person perpetrating a crime or the family or tribe to which they belonged was commonly punished following the principle, "Life for life, eye for eye, nose for nose, ear for ear, tooth for tooth, and wounds equal for equal."

In Islamic Law, tazir (ta'zeer, ta'zir or ta’dhir, Arabic: تعزير, romanized: taʿzīr lit. scolding, "to punish") refers to punishment for offenses at the discretion of the judge (Qadi) or ruler of the state. It is one of three major categories of punishments or sanctions under Islamic law (sharia, the other two or three being hadd, and qisas/diyya). Contrary to the lightness implied in "scolding", these discretionary punishments can range from a warning from the judge to corporal punishment such as flogging, fines, imprisonment, exile, and in extreme cases execution.

Tazir punishments are sometimes described as being for violations of Islamic law not specified in either the Qur'an nor the hadith, and so not reaching "the level of hudud" (crimes and punishments determined in the Qur'an or hadith), qisas ("eye for an eye" proportional retaliation punishment), or diya (compensation payments for situations where sharia does not allow for qisas retaliation).

In Islam, stoning (Arabic: رجم, romanized: Rajm) is the Hudud punishment wherein an organized group throws stones at a convicted individual until that person dies. Under some versions of Islamic law (Sharia), it is the prescribed punishment in cases of adultery committed by a married person which requires either a confession from either the adulterer or adulteress, or producing four witnesses of sexual penetration.

The punishment of stoning as a capital punishment for adultery is unique in Islamic law in that it conflicts with the Qur'anic prescription for premarital and extramarital sex (zina) found in Surah An-Nur, 2: "The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication - flog each of them with a hundred stripes". For this reason some minority Muslim sects such as the former Kharijites, and Islamic modernists such as the Quranists disagree with the legality of stoning.

Cross-amputation (Arabic: قطع من خلاف) is a form of punitive judicial limb amputation and one of the Hudud punishments prescribed under Islamic jurisprudence (Sharia law). It involves cutting off the right hand and left foot of the alleged transgressor. The scriptural authority for the double amputation procedure is in the Quran (surah 5: 33-34) which stipulates:

The right hand is always amputated during administration of the punishment regardless of whether the victim is right- or left-handed. This is because the Muslim faith decrees that the right hand should be used for clean purposes such as writing or eating, while the left is reserved for unclean tasks, such as cleaning following defecation. By removing the right hand as part of the punishment, the victim is subsequently forced to use his or her 'unclean' left hand for tasks such as eating, and this added humiliation or indignity is regarded as part of the punishment.

Zināʾ (زِنَاء) or zinā (زِنًى or زِنًا) is an Islamic legal term referring to unlawful sexual intercourse. According to traditional jurisprudence, zina can include adultery, fornication, prostitution, sodomy, incest, and bestiality. Zina must be proved by testimony of four Muslim eyewitnesses to the actual act of penetration, confession repeated four times and not retracted later. The offenders must have acted of their own free will. Rapists could be prosecuted under different legal categories which used normal evidentiary rules. Accusing zina without presenting the required eyewitnesses is called qadhf (القذف), which is itself a hudud offense.

There are very few recorded examples of the stoning penalty for zinā being implemented legally. Before legal reform was introduced in several countries during the 20th century, the procedural requirements for proving the offense of zinā to the standard necessary to impose the stoning penalty were effectively impossible to meet.