while also weighing the crime’s impact on society and whatever best secures the common welfare of Islam and the Muslims—except when the highwayman has actually taken a life, for then execution becomes categorically obligatory, as Ibn al-ʿArabī al-Mālikī records by consensus, and as the Hanbali jurist, the author of al-Insāf, states: “There is no disagreement on this.”
Second: Issues concerning intoxicants and narcotics
Because narcotic substances wreak serious harm on those who consume them—driving them to acts of violence, causing traffic accidents, sending them in pursuit of delusions that lead to such disasters; because they produce a class of criminals inclined to aggression; because they engender bouts of euphoria and agitation, convincing the user that he can do anything and prompting him to dream up fantasies that push him toward crime; and because they damage public health and may lead to mental impairment and even insanity—the offenders involved in these crimes fall into two categories:
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The individual who consumes the substance for personal use only. He is subject to the legal ruling that applies to intoxication. Should he become addicted and the prescribed ḥadd penalty cannot be enforced, the legitimate authority may, by way of discretionary taʿzīr, impose whatever punishment will deter and restrain him, even execution.
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The trafficker who promotes the substance—whether through manufacture, importation, buying and selling, gifting, or any other means of dissemination. If this is his first offense, he receives a severe taʿzīr punishment—imprisonment, flogging, a financial fine, or any combination thereof, as the court deems appropriate. Should he reoffend, he is to be punished in whatever manner will rid society of his harm, even death, for by his actions he is counted among those who spread corruption on earth and in whose souls criminality has become ingrained. The meticulous scholars have affirmed that execution is one form of taʿzīr.
Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, may Allah have mercy on him, said: “Whoever’s corruption cannot be repelled…”