Hudud - Requirements For Conviction

Requirements For Conviction

Only eye-witness testimony and confession were admitted. For eye-witness testimony, the number of witnesses required was doubled from Islamic law's usual standard of two to four. Only free, adult Muslim men are eligible to testify in hudud cases. (In non-hudud cases the testimony of women, non-Muslims and slaves could be admitted in certain circumstances). A confession had to be repeated four times, the confessing person had to be in a healthy state of mind, and he or she could retract the confession at any point before punishment.

However, while these standards of proof made hudud punishments very difficult to apply in practice, an offender could still be sentenced to corporal punishment at the discretion of the judge (see tazir), if he or she was found guilty but the standards of proof required for hudud punishments could not be met.