All countries are different from each other, and this is good - there are no two identical states, because then it would not be so interesting to study culture and customs. But the countries of the mysterious East have always been far from the Western world. Another religion, traditions, customs left an imprint on bilateral relations between East and West. Much of this seems to us wild, unbridled, somewhere even unjustifiably cruel. But the locals got used to their roots, all traditions were absorbed from time immemorial with mother's milk. It would seem that with the onset of the 20th and 21st centuries, many of the barbarian traditions should have become a thing of the past, but even now, in some countries, you can find such terrible customs as, for example, chopping off hands.
Most of the local punishments come from Sharia - the so-called divine law. But not only he moves the hand of justice. On its basis, ordinary laws similar to Western ones are created. For example, criminal law.
To understand Islamic criminal law, we need to make sure that we understand what is meant by criminal law in the first place. Most areas of law in the United States, Europe and other countries are civil law, that is, they relate to the rights and obligations of people to each other. This includes contracts, marriage, property, etc. The government can play a role in resolving disputes in these areas through the infrastructure of the courts, but these are disputes between private parties over what they are doing to each other.
Crimes are evil inflicted on society or the state as a whole, and in most modern states it is the government that acts to bring the people who committed them to justice. For example, according to old English law, if a person killed another person on the street, then two crimes were committed. The assassin harmed the victim's family by killing him, and he also harmed the king by disrupting his “peace” or the general order of his kingdom (hence the term “disrupting the peace”). Thus, the killer was accountable to both the injured parties. But, of course, from time immemorial in the world there is a rule that the person is innocent until proven otherwise.
Sharia law has surprisingly similarities with the Western legal vector
Muslim lawyers did not divide the law into civil and criminal law. There are violations of the rights of God and man. Human rights include the right to physical integrity (in other words, you cannot kill or harm without a valid reason), the right to dignity, the right to property, the right to family and the right to religion - that is, everything in this matter coincides with our laws.
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Violations of the "rights of God" in Shariah are an important analogue of crimes in the Western legal tradition. But unlike humans, God is supremely incapable of harming any creature. Also, unlike humans, God "took mercy on himself" and promised that his "mercy covers everything." This element of God's immense grace plays a critical role in other God's rights that have been defined by Muslim jurists, namely the crimes known as hudood.
The concept of hudood in Islamic criminal law is not found in the Qur'an. Hoodud, translated from Arabic, means the plural ḥadd, which means limit or border. The Qur'an mentions "the limits of God" several times, warning Muslims about the sin of violating them and that they should not even approach them. But nowhere does this phrase appear in the clear context of the designation of certain crimes.
As noted by the famous scholar Ibn Taymiyyah, the definitions of the categories of crimes (and the corresponding punishments) in Islamic law were the product of the human mind, not the Scriptures. early Muslim jurists probably inherited the concept of a category of crime called hudud from references made by the prophet and early generations of Muslims. Muslim scholars have agreed that hudood includes: adultery / fornication, the use of intoxicants and drugs, certain types of theft and armed robbery or banditry. Muslim law schools disagreed over whether three other crimes should also be included: public apostasy, sodomy, and murder / premeditated murder for the purpose of robbery.
Their punishments are indicated in the Qur'an
Common to the crimes of hudood is that their punishments are specified in the Qur'an or Sunnah and that they are considered violations of God's rights. Of course, some are also human rights violations, such as charges of theft, sexual defamation, armed robbery. The Western world mostly hears about such punishments as stoning women (for treason) and chopping off hands (with regards to thieves).
This tradition has survived in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, where Sharia plays a vital role in society. This type of punishment involved cutting off the right hand. In the modern world, this does not happen as often as in ancient times, but still we sometimes read the flashy headlines of newspapers telling about the events in the East. For example, the right hands were cut off at the wrist as punishment for theft in areas controlled by the sharia of Nigeria and Saudi Arabia.
Repeat offenders and criminals in the latter can lose both hands, and if the crime is more serious than previously implied, then amputation of legs can also be used. The executioner, Muhammad Saad al-Beshi, told the Saudi Arab News in 2003 that “I am using a special sharp knife, not a sword. When I cut off my hand, I cut it off from the joint. If it is a leg, then the authorities indicate where it should be cut off, so I follow that. " In Iran, in early 2008, five robbers had their right arm and left leg cut off in one week, a practice known as cross amputation. According to The New York Times, "Doctors were careful to limit bleeding and infection during the procedure." Hands and feet were also reported to have been cut off as punishment in Yemen, Sudan and Somalia.
As you can see, it is difficult to answer the question of how often hands are chopped off in Islamic states. For a Westerner, this type of punishment seems barbaric, but the inhabitants of Arab countries themselves do not think so and continue the bloody practice, claiming that this way the percentage of crime in the country is reduced. Who knows, maybe they are right about something. Although you can always find an alternative.