Today I participated at a conference held in Madrid on the issue of the abolition of the death penalty in Arab States. There were a lot of stuff I had no idea about, so I found it pretty interesting. For example, though I've been studying political and ideological stuff for 4 years, I never new that the Muslim world, just like the Western world developed several schools of thought. Of course, while in the West these school are guided by the idea of power, in the Muslim world they are guided by the idea of religion. Religion was also the issue when talking about the abolition of the death penalty, which is very common in the Arab States. According to one of the schools (Wahabita School in Saudi Arabia) there are six reasons for which a person should be executed by hanging (this is the most common method): apostasy (which basically means leaving the Muslim religion), adultery (which is mostly applied to women, but there are cases when no matter which one of them has committed it, they are both killed because it is considered to have been the responsibility of both, or there are other cases where 4 witness are needed in order to prove it), premeditated murder (the killer could also be forgiven in case the family of the victim accepts to pardon him and get compensation or DIA as it is called in Iraq, which means "blood money"), sedition (this is also one of the most popular reasons for the death sentence especially, of course, because of the ruling regime), spying (a spy always has to be hanged, but is not very clear as it is not mentioned weather the person accused and sentenced could also be a non-Muslim) and the last witchcraft (it refers to the ones that refuse to pray or are atheist). The problem is that other reasons interfere in different countries and usually more innocent people die, for example, there is the Alacula, the family or tribe of the murderer, which is killed together with him because they are considered responsible for his education and actions. I was shocked about all the other stupid, to me, reasons I was hearing, but the scholars were really serious about this issue and they were trying to show how hard it is to make a decision. They are now forced by Human Rights Organizations, from all around the world, to stop this. The problem would be that in Arab countries religious writings (Sharia - the body of Islamic religious law) are used as a source of law, though they don't represent this and can be interpreted in various ways. They are struggling now to build a new, common legislation for all the Arab States, independent from any religious writings and based on the current international law. Their main argument could be that the Koran does not state anything about the death sentence, but on the contrary, talks about forgiveness.
As in the case of China, the media is forbidden to talk about this and so the public opinion doesn't really exist. China is a good example because it also uses the death sentence method and though it has been tried to be abolished, the public opinion surveys showed that they had no idea that this was happening in their country and had no opinion actually on the issue. The only shocking moment for the public opinion in the Arab States was Sadam Hussein's execution...which showed how cruel the procedure is and left people disgusted.
The Vatican had the same problem before 1962, when it had to separate religion from politics. Abolition has been common in European history, but has only been a real trend since the end of the Second World War when human rights became a particular priority. The death penalty has been totally abolished in almost all European countries (46 out of 50). A moratorium on the death penalty is a condition of membership in the Council of Europe and abolition is considered a central value to the European Union. Of all European countries, San Marino and Portugal were the first to abolish and only Belarus still practices capital punishment. Russia maintains the death penalty in law, but currently practices a de facto moratorium, the last execution officially taking place in 1996. Latvia has abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes but retains it for crimes during wartime. Italy was the latest country (March 3, 2009) to ratify the abolishing of the penalty for all crimes.
Since 1990, 85-90% of all judicial executions worldwide have taken place in China, the US, Iran, Saudi Arabia; the Congo Democratic Republic.
The whole debate brings me back to the brainwashing I am put to through my studies. In deed the West is more developed that the Rest, but it should look back at the steps it took, and the years that went by before the public opinion and the discourses were changed and not try to rush things and confuse societies that have no idea about what is actually happening and are brain washed by governments.