We often hear the judge in Egypt – when ruling in a murder case in which he wants to sentence the defendant to death – say: The defendant's papers are referred to the Grand Mufti of the Republic, that is: the case papers are referred to express the jurisprudential and legal opinion of the Mufti, about his approval or refusal to carry out the death sentence against the accused, and this is a judicial tradition that has taken place since the British occupation of Egypt, replacing the Sharia courts with civil courts, and making the opinion of the Mufti advisory and not binding as it was before.
And between Dr. Emad Ahmed Hilal - in his valuable encyclopedia "Egyptian Iftaa" in its seven parts - the stages of fatwa, and dealt in the sixth part of the relationship of fatwas to the issue of execution, and presented statistics for the number of death cases since the era of Mufti Sheikh Muhammad Al-Bina, up to Dr. Ali Gomaa, and the number of those approved for execution, and the number of cases of rejection, but he did not mention - unfortunately - the number of executions in the era of the current Mufti Dr. Shawky Allam, despite the translation of him in the last part of the encyclopedia!
The importance of Muhammad Abdo's fatwas in death cases
Among the fatwas of the Egyptian muftis, I drew attention to the fatwas of Imam Muhammad Abdo, which were recently issued in two large parts, and I began to see what he dealt with of murder cases, some of which did not issue fatwas to execute the accused, although the court's question addressed to him says: "So-and-so killed Falana, deliberately and with premeditation."
Studying this aspect of Muhammad Abdo's fatwas, and comparing it with other muftis, is of particular importance: the cases before Sheikh Muhammad Abdo were free of incidents of political killing, but the fatwas of others were not, and this comparison will reveal the position of the religious establishment on political assassinations between the monarchy and the republic, or military rule, and will shed light on the institutionalization and impartiality of the official fatwa.
Sheikh Muhammad Abdo was referred to about (30) murder cases to express a legal opinion, and the heroes of these cases varied among the sects of the residents of the Egyptian country at the time: Egyptian Muslims, Christians, Jews, foreigners, and between Muslims and other religions, and varied between men and women, and a father who killed his son, or brothers among whom the killing occurred. The facts and fatwas took place in the period of time from 1899 until 1904.
Muhammad Abdo's approach to death cases was characterized by several advantages, which made his fatwas accurate and knowledgeable in all aspects of the case, and does not overlook the fine details
The fatwas were sent and gave the mufti 8 days or a little more, and the mufti general of the country does not monopolize the fatwa in these cases, as the courts were sent to the referendum of muftis in the regions as well, and therefore we find referendums sent to Muhammad Abdo because the mufti of Alexandria is on vacation, for example.
In most of the cases sent to Mohamed Abdo, the name of the judge who sent the fatwa was not mentioned, but his position (the president of such and such a court) is mentioned, except for one fatwa that was from the head of the Major Criminal Chamber, and his name was mentioned in the question, which is: Qassem Bey Amin, the well-known Egyptian intellectual, and a friend of Muhammad Abdo.
His approach to death penalty cases
Muhammad Abdo's approach in death cases was characterized by several features, which made his fatwas accurate, and access to all aspects of the case, and does not overlook accurate details such as the number of case papers that reached him for the referendum, if he prepared his opinion increased in precaution and re-sent the papers on which he built his opinion, saying: And fold the papers as received.
if his heart entered an area of suspicion, doubt and suspicion, despite the presence of many evidence, so he goes to another punishment other, although the wording of the question received from the court sometimes may pay for the death penalty who did not read the details of the case papers accurately, but the Sheikh was not one of those.
In his answer to the case of premeditated murder, he said, "I looked at the papers of the case No. (156 felonies), in which Taha Rushdie, and those with him are accused of deliberately killing Hassan Ibrahim Al-Janaini with premeditation, and I have seen that the act of murder is definitely not fixed on Taha Rushdie, and the end of what he thinks that he participated with others, and attended the felony with them, it is not permissible to sentence him to death, even if he examined the testimony of the prosecution witnesses, it would be difficult to take it for him even In the proof of subscription.
As for the rest, what can be taken from the testimony of Ali Daoud is that Faraj Muhammad Khalifa is the one who caught the neck of the deceased, so he would be the killer if that testimony is true, but there is in the testimonies what shakes the certainty of proving the felony in the manner to which the charge was directed, and the end of what can happen from it is the preponderance of the suspicion that it occurred from the three defendants, and the preponderance of conjecture does not justify sentencing to death on anyone for fear that the error of the judgment appears after its implementation can not be remedied, which I see it: that the three should be sentenced to the punishment that follows the death penalty only, if the pleading is correct, and the statements apply to the established principles."
Such a phrase appeared in about a quarter of the cases brought before him, as he was investigating the death sentence, because it took a life, and he believed that a mistake in pardon was better than a mistake in punishment. However, if he ascertains by all the evidence and means the validity of attributing the crime of premeditated murder to the murderer, he shall acknowledge his punishment, provided that the proceedings of the case are valid.
does not haveto One of the signs of his keenness in the death fatwas is that he stops in cases in which the killer is not clearly required, such as the case sent to him by the Court of Appeal on October 1900, 1010, bearing No. <>, and his opinion on the case of the Public Prosecution against Mahmoud Mekkawi and those with him.
Muhammad Abdo replied: I have seen the case mentioned in this number, and I have not seen any justification for sentencing one of the defendants to death, because there is no evidence that requires certainty that one of them is the killer and the other is an accomplice, if they are to be sentenced together, then this is not the doctrine of Abu Hanifa, but the doctrine of Malik in the eulogy for murder, and God knows best).
Despite what we saw in the previous fatwa of the statement of his position based on the Hanafi school, which is the official doctrine, he was presented with a murder case, the killing tool was strangulation, Muhammad Abdo replied for the first time in detail, it was in most of his fatwas does not mean to mention the evidence and detail, he said:
"I have seen that the evidence is based on the fact that he is the killer deliberately inevitably, but retribution in such an incident is in dispute; There is no fuel (retribution) in it, and the doctrine of its companions that it is fuel, such as killing with a hurtful instrument, as is the doctrine of non-Hanafi as well, which is the most likely to launch retribution in the Almighty's saying: (And you have life in retribution, O people of heart). And his saying: (It is written on you retribution for the dead...) to the end of the verse, and the launch of the Sunnah in that as well, what applies to the Sharia is retribution in such an incident, after all the other conditions are met in the lawsuit to request retribution."
medicineThere is no doubt that the work of Muhammad Abdo in the judiciary - which preceded his work with fatwas - gave him a strong training and machine to deal with such cases, as he knows how the work is going in the corridors of the judiciary, and how to prove cases, and the gaps that can occur in the course of the case, and its evidence and witnesses.
It was also based on forensic medicine as a science accompanying the judiciary, which may contradict or correspond to the accounts of witnesses, so we saw him in one case, after verifying the evidence and witnesses, supporting and confirming his position with the chemical analysis as mentioned, so he was assured of the death sentence for the killer in this case.
Forensic medicine in Egypt at the time was at the beginning of his reign, but it was internationally acclaimed for its efficiency, and the British Dr. Sidney Smith (one of the most brilliant founders of this science) wrote a book about his experience in Egypt - a few years after Muhammad Abdo - entitled "The Corpse Reader, Memoirs of a British Anatomist in Royal Egypt."
One of the important phrases in the book that shows us the secret of the trust that Muhammad Abdo used to place in forensic medicine is that "one of the most important things I learned in Egypt was that when something is determined by scientific evidence, and this matter contradicts the testimony of an eyewitness, the eyewitness must be wrong, or deliberately lying."
There are other areas in the fatwas of death cases that need to compare between Muhammad Abdo and his predecessors, and those who followed him, and aspects of agreement and separation, but we wanted in our article here to refer to the accuracy and investigation of the imam in taking people's lives, even if they were in murders, which was characterized by the fatwa in Egypt for long periods, not different from it except in a few cases, which need to be studied individually.