Sayyid Qutb’s Exposition on Qur’an 17:33 and its Relevance to the Nigerian Shari’ah Penal Codes

Abstract

Nigeria, like many other countries, is characterized by acts of disrespect, disregard and affront to human life.  This is evident in the prevalence of killing, kidnapping, bombing and sacrificing of human beings for rituals. The action is against the teaching of Islam and thus, attempt is made in this paper to examine the relevance of Sayyid Qutb‘s exposition on the sanctity of life to the law in use in the Northern Nigeria. This work navigated through the expository effort of

Sayyid Qutb on homicide as contained in Sūratul ‟Isra‟. A combination of historical and hermeneutical methods are adopted to study the relevance of the views of the exegete to the provision for the offence in the shariah penal codes with the objective of appreciating the relevance of Shari‟ah on the execution of the life of a deserving criminal. Findings of the work revealed that Sayyid Qutb narrowed his discussion on the legality for the execution of life as contained in the

Qur‘an just as he gave a literal interpretation to the Sunnah of the Prophet that legalizes the execution of the life of some category of people. This position is capable of allowing jungle justice in the execution of a criminal. It is in the light of the above that this paper condemns jungle justice in any form and recommends the adoption of Shari^cah as a legal system of the state.