It is often objected against Islam why it has prescribed physical punishments.
For example, the punishment for theft is amputation of the hand, and the punishment for adultery is prescribed as one hundred lashes or stoning.
Objectors say that Islam could have prescribed imprisonment, fines, or other lenient punishments, so why physical punishment?
Before answering this objection, we need to understand some basic facts.
According to crime statistics in Egypt in 1960, there were 7419 cases of theft that year; only 25 of them were such in which the criminal was being punished for the first time.
The rest had already been to jail, and some had even served prison sentences two or three times.
This clearly shows that simply putting a person in jail does not necessarily change them; rather, often after going to jail, they become even more hardened criminals after interacting with major criminals.
That is why Islam has prescribed physical punishments, so that the fear of the law is created in the heart of a person even before committing a crime.
When a person knows that the consequence of a crime will be immediate, clear, and severe, they will think many times before committing it.
In contrast, in imprisonment, the criminal outwardly appears to be good when they come out, but often their thinking does not change in reality.
Whereas physical punishment becomes a lesson and also a cause for closing the doors to crimes in society.
History is witness that when Islam came and these punishments were implemented, crimes like theft and adultery remained almost non-existent for a long time.
This is proof that the punishments of Sharia are not for revenge but for the reformation of the individual and the protection of society.
Ahmed Zakariya Asami ✍️✍️✍️