Between Orthodoxy and Reform: Theorizing the Suspension of Islamic Corporal Punishments in Shiʿi Theocracy

After the Occultation of the Twelfth Imam ( al-ghaybah al-kubrā ) in the fourth AH/tenth CE century, the applicability of divinely ordained punishments, ḥudūd , became a subject of theo-juridical controversies between two groups of Shiʿi jurists: pro- and anti- ḥudūd. In the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the establishment of a Shiʿi theocracy, Iranian theocrats supported the pro- ḥudūd Shiʿi jurists, and as a result, ḥudūd punishments were incorporated into the Islamic Penal Code and have been applied by the state ever since. Some Iranian legal reformers, recognizing the challenges in applying ḥudūd punishments, have put forward two politico-juridical mechanisms ( zarfiyat ): the secondary ruling and the state order. These two mechanisms, the reformers assert, may be used by the Islamic Republic of Iran to suspend ḥudūd punishments. In this article, I examine both the arguments presented by reformers and the objections to these arguments raised by conservative and Shiʿi orthodox-minded jurists. These objections pose doctrinal challenges that impede the utilization of these mechanisms, thus obstructing the suspension of ḥudūd punishments.