Rethinking of the Criminal Justice in Islam and Judaism

Abstract

Divine religions own a single essence and truth. Concepts like justice, fairness and virtue found with minor differences in both Judaism and Islam, are examples of such truth. The Torah consists of many legal and ethical rules whose divinity cannot be doubted, because the noble Quran, a book which is immune to any kinds of distortion has described many of the adventures happened to Moses and Israelites with some little changes comparing to Jewish Sources. Thus, due to the special place of Shari'a in both Islam and Judaism, this research aims to investigate one of the common Shari'a- based teachings of both religions that is "criminal justice" stressing upon both similarities and differences of the subject in the two traditions. Principally, one cannot imagine divine religions without justice and in many scholars' point of view the key concept of both religions concerning “criminal justice” system must be that of justice and its implementation. This paper tries to investigate the concept of “criminal justice” and its comparison in both Islamic and Jewish traditions.

Keywords

• criminal law
• crimes
• criminal justice