Overview

On Theocratic Criminal Law explores the roots and structures of the criminal law system of the world's most prominent constitutional theocracy, the Islamic Republic of Iran. While discussing the processes of forced de-westernization and de-modernization which occurred in the wake of the Islamic Revolution, this work examines how the Islamic conception of civil order and polity has been established within the legal and theological framework of the Iranian Constitution. The book engages in a process of 'rational reconstruction' of Iranian theocratic criminal law and offers a critical analysis of the way criminal law functions as the centrepiece of this mode of political domination. It illuminates how this revelation-based, punitive ideology functions, how the current Islamic Penal Code (IPC) mirrors prevailing Shiite jurisprudence, and ultimately, from what sort of fundamental defects theocratic criminal law in Iran is suffering. This work provides a critical assessment of the criminalization and sentencing theories that have stemmed from the shariatization (Islamization) of all law in the wake of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. By embarking upon a typology of punishment in Shiite Islamic jurisprudence and the Iranian Islamic Penal Code the book then provides a systematic critical analysis of the three types of punishment stipulated in the Iranian Penal Code, namely ta'zir, hadd, and qisas. It also explores the jurisprudential principles and dynamic power of Shiite Islam not only as a driving force behind political and social change but as a force that has been capable of forging a whole theocratic legal system.

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9780198888352

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This is an impressive achievement. In addition to providing us with a much needed account of Iranian criminal law and criminal justice, Khodadadi also develops the concept of theocratic criminal law to analyse the combination of religious beliefs, constitutional doctrine and politics that has shaped contemporary Iranian criminal law. This is an important contribution both to comparative criminal law and to criminal law theory. * Lindsay Farmer, University of Glasgow * Bahman Khodadadi's courageous, interdisciplinary, wide-ranging, and precise work uses a case study, the Islamic Republic of Iran, to demonstrate a theocratically based, yet formally modern legal system as an ideal-typical counter-model to the liberal rule of law. He shows what functions a theocratic and thus ultimately totalitarian criminal law, which aims to equate crime with sin, assumes as an instrument of domination and discipline - a great and important book. * Thomas Gutmann, University of Münster * A fascinating, historically informed, critical analysis of Iran's theocratic criminal law. Khodadadi explores its grounding in a theocratic constitution, and its uneasy relationship with ideas of human rights and the rule of law. He provides readers with an illuminating introduction to a criminal law that will be alien to many; he illustrates the political foundations of criminal law, and the different forms that it can therefore take. * Antony Duff, University of Stirling *

Author Information

Bahman Khodadadi is an associate research scholar at Yale Law School, specialising in criminal law theory, Islamic jurisprudence, sociology of Law, and the development of Islamic law in the modern era. He pursued his doctoral thesis at the Law Faculty of the University of Münster, where he graduated with the highest distinction (summa cum laude). He is the recipient of the DAAD Award for 2016 and 2023 and is the recipient of the “Harry Westermann Award” from the University of Münster - an award that is granted to the best doctoral dissertation in the Law Faculty each year.

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