people, terrifying them in their lives, their honor, and their property. If such criminals are not restrained by firm discipline and punishment, society falls into turmoil, fear grips the populace, and the roads become unsafe.
Out of His mercy, exalted is He, He prescribed punishments proportionate to these crimes, so that the offender is deterred and anyone contemplating them is driven away. Among those punishments is the amputation of the thief’s hand.
This aggressor has forsaken the lawful, dignified means of earning that Allah has permitted and people esteem—avenues that secure benefit for him and for society at large. Instead, he has unlawfully reached for other people’s wealth, frightening and alarming them. A penalty that fits such a crime is that his hand be cut off, for it is the very instrument by which the offence was perpetrated.
Yet, regrettably, we have been afflicted by irreligious factions enamored of sinful European statutes—laws that have failed to prevent criminals from spreading corruption across the land and from terrorizing the innocent in their homes and on the highways. They adore those regulations that claim to reform depraved offenders with remedies other than what Allah has revealed for them and for anyone whose heart is diseased in the same way. They have not succeeded; rather, crime and vice have increased under them, for their sole remedy, whatever the enormity of the sin or the crime, is imprisonment.
Many idle mischief-makers actually relish prison, where they find food and drink, while outside its walls they face hunger and unemployment.
Experience has shown that when our [Saudi] government—may Allah grant it success—ruled, praise be to Allah, by the noble Sharia, criminal activities, especially the plundering of wealth, markedly declined. By contrast, other powerful nations are awash with depravity, criminal gangs, highway robbers, and assailants. May Allah return the Muslims to the fold of their religion and to acting upon the good and blessing it contains.
Scholarly disagreement
The scholars have differed over the minimum amount for which a thief’s hand is to be amputated.
The Zāhirīs held that amputation applies to both small and large amounts alike, citing the verse, “As for the male thief and the female thief, cut off their hands” (5:38), which they understand as unrestricted in regard to the value of the stolen property. They also cite the report in al-Bukhārī from Abu Hurayrah in which the Prophet ﷺ said, “Allah curses the thief: he steals an egg and his hand is cut off; he steals a rope and his hand is cut off.”
The majority of scholars, however, maintain that a specific threshold is required, basing their view on authentic hadiths that set that limit. They reply to the Zāhirī proofs by saying that the verse is general about the type and amount of the item stolen, and that the hadith provides its clarification.
As for the hadith of the egg and the rope, its purpose is to depict the pettiness and feebleness of mind