By Dominik Krell
Introduction
Saudi Arabia has a reputation for harsh criminal punishments. In 2025, a record number of 356 people were executed in the Kingdom.[1] Apart from the extensive use of the death penalty, Saudi judges regularly impose year-long prison sentences even for minor offenses, as well as high fines and, until 2020, flogging.[2]
In this essay, I explore why Saudi Arabia regularly applies harsh punishments. I argue that harsh punishments are not simply the result of applying Islamic criminal law. Rather, they are a result of Saudi jurists’ deliberate move away from the restrictions on taʿzīr punishments developed by premodern jurists.[3] This shift predates the Saudi government’s introduction of specialized criminal codes. It is rooted instead in twentieth-century Saudi legal thought, particularly in the work of former Grand Mufti Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm Āl al-Shaykh (d. 1969), who rejected the limitations on taʿzīr punishments found in mainstream Ḥanbalī legal doctrine.
Forms of Punishment in Islamic Legal Doctrine
There are three main forms of punishment in Islamic law: (1) ḥudūd (sg. ḥadd, punishments for transgressions against God’s rights), (2) taʿzīr (discretionary punishments for other offenses), and (3) qiṣāṣ (retaliation in cases of injury).[4]
The ḥudūd punishments include the death penalty in cases of brigandage (ḥirāba) and illicit sexual intercourse (zinā) when committed by a married person.[5] In addition to the death penalty, the ḥudūd punishments also include flogging, amputation, and banishment.[6]
Evidentiary standards for ḥudūd punishments are high.[7] As I have argued elsewhere, the introduction of forensic technologies has, in practice, lowered these standards in Saudi Arabia.[8] This is mainly because proof has become easier to obtain but also because accused persons often confess when confronted with forensic evidence.
Taʿzīr in Premodern Legal Doctrine
If a ḥadd crime cannot be established, the accused does not necessarily escape punishment. The judge may instead impose a discretionary punishment (taʿzīr).[9] In academic discussions of Islamic criminal law, taʿzīr punishments often remain in the shadow of the ḥudūd punishments. One reason is that, unlike the ḥudūd punishments, taʿzīr punishments are generally determined by the ruler (walī al-amr) or by the judge serving as the ruler’s representative.[10] Nevertheless, premodern jurists placed limits on the severity of taʿzīr punishments, and Ḥanbalī jurists in particular limited its scope.[11]
Premodern Ḥanbalī jurists generally held that judges could not apply the death penalty as a taʿzīr punishment.[12] Ibn Qudāma (d. 620/1223), for instance, writes that taʿzīr punishments generally consist only of beating (ḍarb), detention (ḥabs) and public rebuke (tawbīkh).[13] Jurists from other schools were less restrictive. Ḥanafī jurists held that the death penalty could be imposed as taʿzīr punishment.[14] The Ḥanbalī jurist Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) and his student Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 751/1350), both of whom have exercised a profound influence on Saudi jurists, also permitted the death penalty in severe cases.[15]
Moreover, the majority of Ḥanbalī scholars, like most jurists from other schools, did not permit punishment by fine (taʿzīr bi’l-māl).[16] Yet other jurists, among them Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim, argued that offenders could indeed be fined, at least in certain specified offenses.[17]
Similarly, most jurists across the schools restricted the number of lashes that could be imposed. Among Ḥanbalī jurists, the prevailing view was that a judge could sentence an offender to a maximum of ten lashes.[18] Ḥanbalī scholars were particularly cautious in this regard. Jurists from most other schools maintained that a taʿzīr punishment could not exceed the number of lashes prescribed for the ḥudūd punishments, either thirty-nine or seventy-nine lashes.[19] By contrast, jurists of the Mālikī school argued that there was no fixed upper limit to the number of lashes a judge could impose.[20] Again, Ibn Taymiyya opposed the cautious approach prevailing in the Ḥanbalī school and advocated against limiting the number of lashes.[21]
Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm and the Expansion of Taʿzīr
In the twentieth century, Saudi jurists set aside many of the limits placed on taʿzīr punishments within the Ḥanbalī school. This was largely due to the influence of the former Saudi Grand Mufti Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm Āl al-Shaykh, who regularly departed from established Ḥanbalī positions and remains influential in the Saudi judiciary today. In many respects, his legal reasoning reflects the impact of Ibn Taymiyya’s unconventional thought on Saudi jurists. During his time as grand mufti from 1953 until his death in 1969, Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm effectively functioned as a court of appeal, as I mentioned in an earlier essay in this series.
In one of his fatwās (legal responsa), he stated:
There is no fixed limit to a taʿzīr punishment. Its severity increases or decreases according to the seriousness of the crime. Some jurists even state that it may extend to capital punishment, should the ruler (walī al-amr) of the Muslims consider this [appropriate].[22]
In another fatwā, Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm argued that the death penalty could be applied in taʿzīr cases only where the accused was a repeat offender.[23] His criticism of the limitations on taʿzīr punishment resonated among subsequent Saudi jurists. In 1971, the Higher Judicial Authority confirmed that the death penalty could be imposed in cases involving serial offenders.[24] However, in later decisions, the Council also applied the death penalty in other taʿzīr cases, including homosexuality.[25] In some instances, those executed were subsequently crucified.[26]
The expansion of flogging as a taʿzīr punishment also goes back to Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm. In one fatwā, he stated explicitly that no fixed limit exists for the number of lashes in taʿzīr cases and that the number could even exceed those prescribed for a ḥadd offense.[27] The High Court later held that it was for the judge to determine the precise number of lashes.[28] Fines have likewise come to be accepted within the Saudi judiciary. Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm stated that fines are permissible as taʿzīr punishment,[29] and the Higher Judicial Council later confirmed this in several decisions.[30]
Taʿzīr Punishments in Twenty-first Century Saudi Legal Practice
In legal practice today, there are two different forms of taʿzīr punishments. The first form is those imposed at the discretion of the individual judge. These are applied when the evidentiary threshold required for a ḥadd punishment has not been met, or where the conduct in question falls outside the scope of codified law and the ḥudūd offenses. One example of the latter is the production of alcohol, which does not fall under the ḥadd punishment for the consumption of intoxicants (muskir). If an accused person has both consumed alcohol and produced or trafficked it, judges tend to impose the ḥadd punishment for consumption together with an additional taʿzīr punishment for alcohol production or trafficking.[31] While the judge has formal discretion in determining the severity of taʿzīr punishment, the decision may be reviewed on appeal.[32]
The second form of taʿzīr punishment relates to codes (anẓima, s. niẓām) issued by the King which, similar to European and North American criminal codes, stipulate the range of punishments that judges may apply. Most of these codes address criminal offenses related to new technologies or other institutions introduced in the twentieth century.[33] Some of these codes stipulate the death penalty. Yet Saudi judges disagree on whether the death penalty should be applied in all cases stipulated by the codes and often differ in their judgements.[34] This is the case even where the death penalty is explicitly codified, such as in the Code against Drugs and Mind-Affecting Substances (Niẓām Mukāfaḥat al-Mukhaddirāt wa’l-Muʾaththirāt al-ʿAqliyya).[35]
Published court decisions from the 2010s show that lashes used to be widely applied in Saudi legal practice.[36] As there were no limitations, judges regularly sentenced offenders to up to 1000 lashes, far exceeding the descriptions found in pre-modern fiqh works.[37] Yet in 2020, the Saudi government announced that it would end all flogging except for ḥadd punishments.[38] It seems that flogging has not been used as taʿzīr punishment since. However, no further case law has been released, and it remains unclear to what extent flogging persists in practice.
Conclusion
In this essay, I have argued that the harsh punishments in contemporary Saudi Arabia are not the result of the application of classical Ḥanbalī doctrine but rather were enabled by a conscious move away from the limitations on taʿzīr punishments articulated by the majority of earlier Ḥanbalīs.
Moving away from the Ḥanbalī school is common in contemporary Saudi legal discourse. Although Saudi jurists are often caricatured as Ḥanbalīs, they in fact draw on the full range of the Sunnī legal tradition.[39] As I show in my recent book Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, Saudi jurists not only engage with opinions from all legal schools, but Saudi judges also frequently move between them.[40] This enables jurists and judges to respond to new developments in Saudi society and to make the law more flexible.
In some areas, this approach has led to an expansion of the rights of women and children, such as in matters of divorce and child custody.[41] Yet in the field of criminal punishment, the move away from strict adherence to the Ḥanbalī school has led to the introduction of severe punishments, which today rank among the harshest in the world.
Notes:
[1] “Saudi Arabia: Record Number of Executions in 2025,” Human Rights Watch, January 13, 2026, https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/01/13/saudi-arabia-record-number-of-executions-in-2025.
[2] In the 2010s, the Saudi Ministry of Justice published a large number of court decisions, which include the minutes of court hearings, the judges’ legal reasoning, and the sentences. The main collections containing criminal cases are Markaz al-Buḥūth, Majmūʿat al-Aḥkām al-Qaḍāʾiyya li-ʿĀm 1434 (Markaz al-Buḥūth, 1436/2015) and Markaz al-Buḥūth, Majmūʿat al-Aḥkām al-Waḍāʾiyya li-ʿĀm 1435 (Markaz al-Buḥūth, 1438/2017).
[3] On the restrictions on taʿzīr punishments in premodern law, see Intisar Rabb, Doubt in Islamic Law: A History of Legal Maxims, Interpretation, and Islamic Criminal Law (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 35–37.
[4] Silvia Tellenbach, “Islamic Criminal Law,” in The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Law, ed. Markus D. Dubber and Tatjana Hörnle (Oxford University Press, 2014), 248–68, 251.
[5] Wahba al-Zuḥaylī, al-Fiqh al-Islāmī wa-Adillatuh (Dār al-Fikr, 1405/1985), 6:40, 136.
[6] Ḥadd crimes usually comprise theft (sariqa), illicit sexual intercourse (zinā), false accusation of zinā (qadhf), consumption of intoxicants (shurb khamr), brigandage (ḥirāba), and apostasy (ridda). See Rudolph Peters, Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law: Theory and Practice from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge University Press, 2006), 7.
[7] Peters, Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law, 13.
[8] Dominik Krell, “Modern Forensic Technology and the Evolution of Islamic Criminal Law in Saudi Arabia,” Islamic Law Blog, March 12, 2026, https://islamiclaw.blog/2026/03/12/roundtable-modern-forensic-technology-and-the-evolution-of-islamic-criminal-law-in-saudi-arabia/.
[9] This is also the case if only one of the requirements of the ḥadd punishments were fulfilled, for instance, sexual acts that do not involve intercourse. See, for example, Bahūtī, Sharḥ Muntahā al-Irādāt (Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1421/2000), 6:225.
[10] al-Zuḥaylī, al-Fiqh al-Islāmī wa-Adillatuh, 6:198.
[11] Rabb, Doubt in Islamic Law, 35–37.
[12] Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ al-Fatāwā (Dār al-Wafāʾ, 1426/2005), 28:190.
[13] Ibn Qudāma, al-Mughnī (Dār ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1417/1997), 12:526.
[14] al-Zuḥaylī, al-Fiqh al-Islāmī wa-adillatuh, 6:200.
[15] Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Ṭuruq al-Ḥukmiyya fī al-Siyāsa al-Sharʿiyya (Dār ʿĀlam al-Fawāʿid, 1428/2006–7), 2:685.
[16] See, for example, Ibn Nujaym, al-Bahr al-Rāʾiq Sharḥ Kanz al-Daqāʾiq (Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1418/1997), 5: 68.
[17] Ibn al-Qayyim lists those offenses. Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Ṭuruq al-Ḥukmiyya, 2:688.
[18] Bahūtī, Sharḥ Muntahā al-Irādāt, 6:226. The jurists made some exceptions. For instance, a person who consumed intoxicants during daylight on Ramadan was punished with twenty lashes in addition to the ḥadd punishment; a person who had illicit sexual relations (zinā) with his mother-in-law was sentenced to hundred lashes in addition to the ḥadd punishment.
[19] See, for example, Ibn Humām, Fatḥ al-Qadīr (Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1424, 2003), 5:333.
[20] Ibn Farḥūn, Tabṣirat al-Ḥukkām (Dār ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1423/20003), 2:221
[21] Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ al-Fatāwā, 28:63–4. Ibn Taymiyya writes that his opinion would also be a minority opinion within the Ḥanbalī school at the time. In cases in which a ḥadd punishment could be applied, however, the taʿzīr punishment could not exceed the prescribed ḥadd punishment.
[22] Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Qāsim, ed. Fatāwā wa-Rasāʾil Samāḥat al-Shaykh Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Āl al-Shaykh (Maṭbaʿat al-Ḥukūma bi-Makka Mukarrama, 1399/1979), 12:118.
[23] al-Qāsim. Fatāwā wa-Rasāʾil, 12:120. Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm’s position has historical antecedents among most schools. On this point, see Rabb, Doubt in Islamic Law, 175.
[24] Decision of the Higher Judicial Authority, No. 235 printed in Markaz al-Buḥūth, al-Mabādiʾ wa’l-Qarārāt al-Ṣādira min al-Hayʾa al-Qaḍāʾiyya al-ʿUlyā wa’l-Hayʾa al-Dāʾima wa’l-ʿAmma bi-Majlis al-Qaḍāʾ al-ʿĀlā wa’l-Maḥkama al-ʿUlyā min ʿĀm 1391 ilā ʿĀm 1437 (Markaz al-Buḥūth, 1438/2017), 367.
[25] Decision of the Higher Judicial Council, N. 5/238 in Markaz al-Buḥūth, al-Mabādiʾ wa’l-Qarārāt, 372.
[26] Decision of the High Court, No. 204/1/1 in Markaz al-Buḥūth, al-Mabādiʾ wa’l-Qarārāt, 395.
[27] al-Qāsim, Fatāwā wa-Rasāʾil, 12:119.
[28] See, for instance, Decision of the Higher Judicial Authority, No. 192 in Markaz al-Buḥūth, al-Mabādiʾ wa’l-Qarārāt, 369.
[29] al-Qāsim, Fatāwā wa-Rasāʾil, 12:125.
[30] See, for instance, the decision of the Higher Judicial Council, No. 2/227 in Markaz al-Buḥūth, al-Mabādiʾ wa’l-Qarārāt, 372.
[31] See, for instance, Mecca Criminal Court, File No. 3422125, printed in Markaz al-Buḥūth, Majmūʿat al-Aḥkām 1434, 16:315–25.
[32] Decision of the High Court, No. 39/2/2 in Markaz al-Buḥūth, al-Mabādiʾ wa’l-Qarārāt, 400.
[33] Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, 33
[34] Fayṣal b. Ibrāhīm al-Nāṣir, Mā jarā ʿalayhi al-ʿAmal fī Maḥākim al-Tamyīz ʿalā Khilāf al-Madhhab al-Ḥanbalī (Dār al-Ḥadāra, 1441/2020), 886.
[35] On the development of the code, see Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, 149–54.
[36] The two largest collections of court decisions involving criminal law were published by the Ministry of Justice’s Research Centre (Markaz al-Buḥūth). see Markaz al-Buḥūth, Majmūʿat al-Aḥkām 1434 and Markaz al-Buḥūth, Majmūʿat al-Aḥkām 1435.
[37] al-Nāṣir, Mā jarā ʿalayhi al-Amal, 867.
[38] “Saudi Arabia: Courts Abolish Flogging as Punishment,” Middle East Eye, April 25, 2020, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/saudi-arabia-abolish-flogging-lashes-court.
[39] While some scholarship on Saudi Arabia mentions a decree issued by the Highest Judicial Authority (al-Hayʾa al-Qaḍāʾiyya) in 1928 that directed judges to use certain Ḥanbalī works, contemporary Saudi judges no longer consider the decree relevant to their legal reasoning. Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, 65–66.
[40] Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, ch. 2.
[41] Krell, Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, chs. 5 and 6.
Suggested Bluebook citation: Dominik Krell, The Expansion of Taʿzīr in Modern Saudi Arabia, Islamic L. Blog (Apr. 28, 2026), https://islamiclaw.blog/2026/04/28/the-expansion-of-ta%ca%bfzir-in-modern-saudi-arabia/.
Suggested Chicago citation: Dominik Krell, “The Expansion of Taʿzīr in Modern Saudi Arabia,” Islamic Law Blog, April 28, 2026, https://islamiclaw.blog/2026/04/28/the-expansion-of-ta%ca%bfzir-in-modern-saudi-arabia/.
