Punishment in Islam
In today’s modern societies, most people disagree with many of the cruel types of punishment that are still commonly used in non-secular Islam-dominated countries. They still cut off a thieves' hand. They still stone a women to death for having sex out of marriage. They still have the death penalty for leaving Islam and for criticizing Islam. So why are they so far behind? In other words, why are we way ahead of them, speaking specifically about our ideas on the efficacy of punishment?
One thing to consider is that the punishments that Islam does now are things that even the most modern societies had in their distant history too. So why have we evolved our knowledge on punishment while they haven’t? I mean, Islam’s conception of ethical punishment today is exactly what it was 1,400 years ago when the Quran was written, while modern societies have made improvements to their conception of ethical punishment. So, why have Islamic societies not improved their understanding of punishment like we have? I think their are two factors at work here.
The first factor is related to the fact that in the Quran, it is written that Allah will protect the Quran from man-made changes. This is presented as a good thing, so that people don’t corrupt the religion. But actually it’s a very bad thing because with no changes means no improvements to the moral knowledge. The outcome of that is especially bad because most Muslims believe that the Quran is protected by Allah from man-made changes, since that's what is declared in the Quran. So even when occasionally a Muslim voices his opinion that the Islamic law should be updated, other Muslims get offended that Allah’s laws are being questioned, and they make threats of violence in order to scare the dissenters into conformity. So little progress is made.
The second factor at work is related to the attitudes of individuals in Islam-dominated countries today, and how that contrasts with that of modern societies.
Open societies vs closed societies
As David Deutsch explains in _The Beginning of Infinity_, there are open societies and closed societies. Closed societies are those that don’t change much. In such a society, throughout an individuals entire life, he sees little to no changes to traditions in his society. When people come up with new ideas, they get shot down by all the people that want to preserve what they know. They shun dissenters. They even violently retaliate against dissenters. In contrast, for open societies, change is common. An individual sees a seemingly uncountable number of changes to traditions in his society during his lifetime. So they are accustomed to change. They welcome it. They strive for it.
So what makes a society closed vs open? It’s the tradition of criticism. In societies where criticism is cherished as the great thing that it actually is, then dissent is welcomed instead of shunned. With this tradition of criticism, changes to traditions are seen as potentially good rather than automatically bad. People who have a good attitude towards criticism see change as opportunities for improvement. In an open society, critically questioning authority figures like government or police is ok, since it’s seen as an attempt to correct flaws in the traditions being criticized.
So in our modern society, the reason that we have outlawed so many types of cruel punishment is that we have improved our knowledge about punishment. For each type of punishment that we outlawed, we judged the punishment to be ineffective. We judged that the outlawed punishment is too cruel for the crime. And in Islam-dominated countries today, they are not updating their knowledge about punishment. They still use the same methods they had 1,400 years ago. They aren’t critically questioning their methods. They aren’t trying to figure out where their flaws are, so they aren’t trying to create fixes for those flaws. They think that their moral knowledge comes from Allah. They think their moral knowledge is perfect. They think their ideas on punishment are infallible.
Now I don’t mean to say that all Islam-dominated countries are like this. Some of these countries have secular governments, and they have outlawed many of the cruel punishments from Islam. I’m referring to the countries with Islamic governments, since they strive to adhere to Islamic law, like Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
To be clear, our modern societies still have a lot of improvements to make in our knowledge about punishment. But because we have a tradition of criticism, and as long as we don’t lose it, we will continue to make progress. We will continue to improve our knowledge, building on our previous knowledge in a step by step way. As long as we keep our tradition of criticism, we will find the flaws and fix them.
One major flaw that all modern societies still have today is in their understanding of the goal of punishment and the efficacy of punishment to that goal. The goal of punishment is for the punisher to prevent the punishee from committing a behavior that the punisher disapproves of. So the question is: Does punishment work at causing it’s desired result?
Human behavior and what the tradition of punishment says about it
To answer that question, we need to know how human behavior works, and what the tradition of punishment says about that. People behave according to what they know. So their behavior is related to their knowledge of how to behave. A kid who hits his sister when she doesn’t obey his commands, is behaving in accordance with what he knows about how to behave when somebody doesn’t obey his commands. He learned that hitting people is a useful way to get what he wants. Now, should the parent punish him to teach him a lesson that hitting is wrong as a means of preventing him from hitting his sister again? To answer this question, consider a situation where the parent believes that spanking is ok. So the parent hits his kid while saying “Hitting people is wrong.” Do you see the contradiction? What will the kid learn? How will the kid learn that hitting people when they disobey him is wrong when his parent his hitting him when he disobeys his parent? I mean, the kid learned this behavior from his parent, and the parent is continuing to behave in the manner that he’s saying the kid shouldn’t behave. It’s a double standard. It’s hypocrisy.
At this point many people might think that I’m advocating that we should close all our prisons and let out all the prisoners, but they would be mistaken. Prison serves two goals, one I disagree with, and the other I agree with. The one I disagree with is punishment. Punishing criminals does not help them learn that their behavior is wrong, nor how to do better. But the second goal I agree with, which is for criminals to be separated from society as a means of protecting people from repeat criminal activity by the criminals.
Some punishments ok?
Now a lot of people think that other types of punishment are fine, like giving a child a timeout or taking things he likes away from him, but this is a mistake. If the child is doing bad behavior, it’s because he doesn’t know it’s bad. I mean, it’s possible he knows that his parents think it’s bad, or that his religion considers it bad, but the point is that part of him wants to do it, and it’s that part of him that he’s choosing to act on. So in the case of a boy who hits his sister when she doesn’t obey his command, part of him knows that his parents think it’s bad to hit his sister, but part of him wants to hit her, and he’s choosing to act on the part of him that wants to hit her. Which raises the question: Why is he choosing to act on that part of him instead of the other part of him?
The boy chooses to hit because that’s what he understands about how to get what he wants. Why does he think this way? Because he learned it, from his parents. His parents try to make him feel pain or otherwise experience mental suffering as a means of getting him to do what they want him to do. So he learned to do exactly that, to make somebody feel mental pain as a means of getting them to do what he wants them to do. And he chooses hitting as his way of delivering mental pain, while his parents choose taking away privileges as their way of delivering mental pain.
So the boy learned to hurt people to get what he wants by copying his parents. And if the parents want him to learn that that is wrong, then they should start by following their own advice. Actions speak louder than words.
One objection I hear a lot from parents is that their kid doesn’t behave without taking away privileges. But this is the same argument that the boy gives for why he hit his sister, which is that she wouldn’t give back his toy, so he hit her. This argument is wrong, no matter who is using it. This argument is wrong on the grounds that the conclusion does not follow from the premises. They are saying that the only possible way for the person to behave in a certain manner is to cause mental pain on him in order for him to have encouragement to stop the behavior, which is not true. Another way is to help him learn the benefits of not doing the behavior, and the benefits of a better way to behave. There is no law of nature preventing him from learning the benefits of better behavior.
Instead of punishment?
Now even if a parent has learned that punishment doesn’t work, it still takes knowing what to do instead in order to put all of this into practice. The replacement behavior for punishment is discussions, where the parent and child discuss the merits and/or demerits of the behavior, and what other possible behaviors were possible, and the merits and/or demerits of those.[1]
What’s needed is better explanations. Parents should help their children get what they want, and to help them learn to figure out what things are wrong to want. They should help their children learn how to resolve disagreements. This requires a lot of skill in explaining things in simple enough terms for their children to understand. But more importantly, it requires a change of attitude, one that is consistent with the idea that punishment is wrong. The issue is that a person who is new to this philosophy still has a lot of triggers and habits in his mind that are consistent with his old philosophy, necessarily contradicting his new philosophy. It’s these triggers and habits that rear their ugly heads that makes it tougher to change. It requires a major effort.
Now what’s especially difficult is the situation where a boy watches his father beat his mother, which is especially common in families in Islamic cultures because the Quran declares that husbands should beat their wives when they disobey.[2] It’s especially difficult because in this sort of situation the boy is learning that beating people to get what you want is ok, and as an adult, if the boy decides to live his life by Islamic law, then he might use the Quran to justify beating his future wife. So how are these guys going to learn that their ways are wrong and better ways of resolving disagreements?
Well for one thing, it’s impossible to force him to learn that he’s wrong about how to deal with disagreements. Learning just doesn’t work that way. It must be voluntary. So if the person isn't willing to learn, then it’s not going to happen. But even if that hurdle was overcome, there are still many big obstacles standing in the way. People have entrenched ideas. And it’s one’s ideas that cause his attitude. His entrenched ideas make it hard to change because it’s those ideas that produce his emotions.
If your attitude towards disagreement is that it’s painful, then you’ll have negative emotions when disagreements happen. If your attitude towards dealing with problems is that it’s painful, then you’ll have negative emotions when you think about your problems. The key is to have an attitude that sees discussing disagreements as a good thing, and dealing with problems as a good thing.
Now a lot of people fail repeatedly in their attempts at resolving disagreements, and because of the frequent failure, they learned to fear disagreements. So when a disagreement happens, they get anxiety or they get angry because they think that they aren’t going to get what they want. But these are misplaced emotions. They are counter-productive. They make it harder to come to agreement. They make it harder to think about your problems. So these emotions cause more failure. The nice thing is that it’s possible for a person to change his emotions. There is no law of nature preventing it. What’s needed is a serious, sustained effort.[3]
[1] Parenting, by me [link:
http://ramirustom.blogspot.com/2013/10/how-should-parents-raise-their-children.html]
[2] [Wife-beating essay], by X [link:
[3] For more on how to change your emotions, consider reading these essays:
- Emotions, by Elliot Temple [link:
http://fallibleideas.com/emotions]
- Psycho-epistemology, by Elliot Temple [link:
http://curi.us/1257-xvi]
- Psycho-epistemology, by me [link:
http://ramirustom.blogspot.com/2012/09/psychology.html]
Topic: Punishment in Islam