As per various Qur’anic verses...

As per various Qur’anic verses, Islam encourages people to overlook their individual rights in matters such as qisās (retribution in kind) and financial rights, and refrain from causing their brothers pain and hardship. However, in regard to social rights, compassion regarding a felon and overlooking their punishment is, in truth, a transgression against an entire society in absolute cruelty.

Freeing a thief and preserving the honor of a criminal is equivalent to entangling millions of innocent people and shredding their honor. ترحم بر پلنگ تيزدندان ستمکاري بود بر گوسفندان Mercy upon the sharp-toothed tiger, becomes oppression upon the sheep. Must the society be sacrificed for the individual or vice versa?

In any event, the problem is that the legal decree legislated for punishing an offender must consider the society and a salve must be applied to the wound inflicted upon the body of the society rather than merely training thieves and victims. Here, the response to another criticism is made clear.

The criticism is this: there is an obvious difference between a person who is in desperate need of food, privation and misery forcing them to steal a ewer for instance, and a person whose profession is theft and crime—who abases and cripples a society, everyday afflicting another innocent family with poverty and wretchedness. Of course, these two have a striking difference whereas Islam considers the two identical and does not differentiate in the manner of their punishment!

The reply to this criticism is made clear by the previous discussion in addition to a short reminder: in Islam, punishment is carried out only for the most extreme instance of acts that are recognized as offences and crimes and necessitate punishment. For instance, a person who is guilty of fornication is dealt one hundred lashes as punishment. If a person repeats this act several times without the punishment being dealt and is later proven to be guilty, they will only be dealt one penance—i.e.

one hundred lashes. In view of this introduction and the preceding discussion, it is clear that the penance for theft is for the last theft proven by the Islamic executive branch. There is no difference between the greatness or smallness of the theft and the factors and conditions causing the theft are irrelevant. There is no difference between the theft of a veteran thief and the act of a chicken-thief or a ewer-thief in that they have both harmed a pillar of the society.