Judicial System

Judicial System in Saudi Arabia
including judge Hamad bin Muammar (1160 – 1225H)
(corresponding to 1747 - 1810), judge Abdul Aziz Al
Huzzain (1154 – 1237H) (corresponding to 1741- 1821),
and others as well (1) .
2) The American traveler Cheesman, who visited the
Kingdom in the year1341H (corresponding to the
year 1923), said in his book ‘Arabian Peninsula – the
Unknown’ that ‘the judiciary’s rulings under Wahhabi
were restricted to matters relating to: blood money,
murder, flogging until death, and these punishments fit
the community brutal, unlike civilized society’ (2) . He
gave a false and untrue account of the judiciary! By
the same token, an Arab can similarly produce a biased
writing about Western courts by saying for example,
‘the US state courts system is concerned with collection
of taxes and the killing of human beings?’, on the basis
that some American courts issued sentences of death
and fine in exchange for some felonies: would this be
an objective judgment? Of course not, and so we would
criticize the account of Chesman. The blood money and
murder do constitute only a small fraction compared
to the other issues, and Islam (or Wahhabism) has no
provision for flogging until death! In addition to that, the
rulings for death and blood money are justified legally,
and with reason.
3) The Belgian explorer Philip Leibniz, who came to
the Kingdom in the year 1371H (corresponding to
(1) Judiciary in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Justice, pp. 61 – 63.
(2) Arabian Peninsula – the Unknown, Chessman, pp. 256 – 257, this has been
extracted from the Cultural Aspects in the Writings of Travellers in the Arabian
Peninsula in Modern Age: Study and Analysis, Ahmed Al Saleem.
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