Page 184 - UAE Truncal States
P. 184

The Islamic Basis of Society

         example has already been cited above02 of Shaikh Shakhbut, who did
         not try any of the cases which were brought to him during his visit to
         Dainunah in 1950s, but sent the cjacli to do this. In the course of the
         continued opposition of members of the ruling family and an
         influential group of citizens of Dubai to the Ruler, Shaikh Sa'Id bin
         Maktum, his judicial competence did not remain unchallenged either.
         A group of erudite citizens, obviously realising the conflict between
         judgement according to shari'ah and that according to other
         standards, “called on the notables and the Ruler to take notice of the
         fact that crime is on the increase in Dubai and to punish perpetrators
         according to the Shari'ah law and not as is done by the Ruler and his
         officials at present."03
           A Ruler’s reason for wishing to deal himself with certain cases,
         particularly if they involved non-lribal inhabitants of the town, such
         as slaves or foreigners, was two-fold: he could thereby continue to
         exercise his authority as the source of law and order within the tribal
         society, and he was seen to be reacting to novel political situations.
         When the Ruler of Dubai, Shaikh Sa'Id bin Maktum, ordered that the
         punishment recommended by the shari'ah court for theft was carried
         out and the hand of a certain Salim bin Fairuz was cut off, the British
         Resident in Bushire was prompt to criticise the Ruler severely for
         condoning this type of punishment. Sa'Id bin Maktum tried to keep
         such cases away from the shari'ah court because he did not want to
         alienate his British support; afterwards he justified the court’s
          decision by saying that the Trucial Shaikhs could not afford to
          maintain men in prison and therefore had to punish culprits in this
          way.04 The furore about this case shows that such severe forms of
          punishment as are recommended according to shari'ah for theft,
          adultery, murder and so on, were not normally administered in this
          tribal society, where the offender was usually known in the
          community. Criminal acts, such as murder or sexual assault were
          avenged by the family, either by killing the offender if he could be
          caught or by negotiating blood money if he managed to take refuge
          with some other tribe or community. For petty theft and other minor
          offences a local culprit who was found out had to pay compensation
          or he was imprisoned, which usually meant being shackled for a
          couple of weeks in the local fort, albeit sharing the lives and the food
          of the Ruler’s guards.
            The increasing number of criminal offences during and after the
          economic recession of the early 1930s most frequently proved to be

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