Blindspot!
From Issue: 991 [Read full issue]
Mercy Factor
Cold utilitarian logic, rational self-interested deduction, instinct, and perhaps even simple whimsy and self-indulgence, when needed, will always supply human beings with good reasons to kill. Aside from that, the state, any political entity that represents the elite, and often the loudest and most obnoxious elements within a society will often want to possess the power to kill. If power, in general, is intoxicating, this kind of power - the power to kill - will often serve as a sort of hallucinogen, giving whoever possess it an ultimate sense of control, and a false sense of security. It could even allow those who lost a loved one to overcome a sense of violation and vulnerability, and think that the execution of the offender will somehow restore balance to their lives and more importantly, to the life of the victim of murder. We often treat the victims of murder as if they continue to live, and as if killing the offender will restore some of life that was unjustly taken away from them. But like so many other short order fixes and instantaneous solutions, the costs associated with seeking after the immediate and gratifying, turn out in the long term to be oppressively prohibitive.
Executions are too serious a business to be left to the vagaries of societal whimsies or even logic and rationality. More particularly, the infliction of death is too grave a matter to entrust to the state, especially the authoritarian and despotic state. When confronted with something so laden with meaning and consequence as human life, it seems that what is needed is not logic, rationality, or instinct but magnanimity (ihsan). In the case of Islam, this magnanimity is captured and augmented by the mercy factor. The balance of justice, ethics, and, indeed, existence (al-mizan) is restored through the pursuit of the mercy factor, and not by enforcing the paradigm of strict retribution, or a life for a life, and an eye for an eye. Contrary to the message conveyed by the practices of several predominantly Muslim countries that supply some of the highest rates of executions in the world today, the Islamic vision of justice is not founded on vengeance and retribution. The Islamic vision of justice is premised on mercy and compassion, and the absolute sanctity of human life. Regardless of the moral achievements and failures of the past, the burden is always on Muslims to strive continuously towards a greater fulfillment and attainment of the Divine charge, and to achieve new levels of magnanimity and sanctification of human life. It is exactly the magnanimity and sanctimony of human life that perhaps today calls upon us, Muslims, to reconsider the morality of the killing state.
Compiled From:
"The Death Penalty, Mercy and Islam: A Call for Retrospection" - Khaled Abou El Fadl