From permissibility to proportionality: Reconstructing the legitimacy and limits of capital punishment in contemporary Islamic jurisprudence
Keywords:
Death penalty, Fatwa MUI, Islamic criminal law, maqāsid al-sharī’ah, proportionalityAbstract
Capital punishment remains a contested jurisprudential issue at the intersection of state authority, public protection, human rights, and the objectives of Islamic law. This study examines the construction of capital-punishment legitimacy in MUI Fatwa No. 10/MUNAS VII/MUI/14/2005 and reconstructs it within contemporary Islamic jurisprudence. Employing normative legal research with jurisprudential, conceptual, and contextual approaches, the study analyzes the MUI Fatwa 2005, fiqh on qisās, hudūd, ta’zīr, and siyāsah shar’iyyah, and developments in Indonesian criminal law, particularly Law No. 1 of 2023 and Law No. 1 of 2026. The findings demonstrate that MUI Fatwa 2005 recognizes capital punishment as a form of normative state authority but does not establish an absolute mandate for its application. Through maqāsid al-sharī’ah, particularly hifz al-nafs and maslahah, that permissibility can be reconstructed as subject to cumulative requirements of exceptional criminal seriousness, necessity, proportionality, certainty of guilt, and procedural justice. The restrictive framework established by Law No. 1 of 2023, which positions capital punishment as an alternative and last-resort sanction, further reinforces this reconstruction. The study contributes to contemporary Islamic jurisprudence by shifting the legitimacy of capital punishment from permissibility toward conditional proportionality, whereby normative authorization constitutes only the starting point and concrete legitimacy depends upon stringent substantive and procedural justification.
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