Why Is There Penal Punishment for Hand Theft?

In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful and Compassionate

I pray you are in good faith and health. Thank you for your question.

The purpose of penal punishments is to deter and prevent people. Historically, this has been successful. However, the spirit of corrective punishment does state that one is to avoid carrying it out due to ambiguities. The Ruler of the time could follow any of the traditional opinions. See below.

Aisha (Allah be pleased with her) reported that the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, Avoid applying legal punishment upon the Muslims if you are capable. If the criminal has a way out, leave him on his way. Verily, it is better for the leader to make a mistake forgiving the criminal than it is for him to make a mistake punishing the innocent. [Tirmidhi]

The Muslim judges who applied the rules of fiqh also followed the command of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) to avoid implementing penal punishments whenever there were ambiguities. It seems that historically, the hudud punishments were hardly ever executed. In the mid-1700s, a Scottish doctor working in Aleppo noted that there were only six public executions in twenty years. Theft was rare, and when it occurred, it was punished by caning.

According to a famous British scholar of Arabic who lived in Egypt during the mid-1800s, the hudud punishment for theft had yet to be carried out in recent times. Records from the Ottoman Empire’s five hundred years of rule over Constantinople indicate that only one instance of stoning for adultery occurred during that period. Compare this to many modern Western countries where many people were executed for various crimes.

According to the Hanafi school, Ibn Abbas, and Ibn Masud, it is the equivalent of 10 golden Dirhams (3.53 grams of gold), and according to the Maliki, Shafi’i, Hanbali, it is the equivalent of 3 golden Dirhams (1.06 gram of gold).
Today (November 24, 2023), the value of 3.53 grams of pure gold is as follows:

U.S. dollars (USD) | 226.44
Euros (EUR) | 207.44
British pounds (GBP) | 180.09

[Market prices as of November 24, 2023]

U.S. dollars (USD) | 68.00
Euros (EUR) | 62.29
British pounds (GBP) | 54.08

[Market prices as of November 24, 2023]

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I pray this helps with your question.

Wassalam,

[Mawlana]Ilyas Patel

Mawlana Ilyas Patel is a traditionally-trained scholar who has studied in the UK, India, Pakistan, Syria, Jordan, and Turkey. He started his early education in the UK. He went on to complete the hifz of the Quran in India, then enrolled in an Islamic seminary in the UK, where he studied the secular and ‘Aalimiyya sciences. He then traveled to Karachi, Pakistan. He has been an Imam in Rep of Ireland for several years. He has taught hifz of the Quran, Tajwid, Fiqh, and many other Islamic sciences to children and adults onsite and online extensively in the UK and Ireland. He taught at a local Islamic seminary for 12 years in the UK, where he was a librarian and a teacher of Islamic sciences. He currently resides in the UK with his wife. His interest is a love of books and gardening.