Page 184 - Truncal States to UAE_Neat

The Islamic Basis of Society

example has already been cited above62 of Shaikh Shakhbut, who did
not try any of the cases which were brought to him during his visit to
Bainunah in 1950s, but sent the qadi 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 sharTah 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. ” G3
A Ruler’s reason for wishing to deal himself with certain cases,
particularly if they involved non-tribal 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.64 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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