The victim's role in the Islamic justice process

This is a comparative study of the victim's role in the Islamic justice process compared with modem Western laws. The study analyses and evaluates the Islamic approach towards crime victims in terms of their roles and rights in the justice process. It covers the key stages of the criminal process such as the prosecution and sentencing process. It also investigates the Islamic attitude towards the victim's right to compensation either from the offender or from the State. The study attempts to explain the underlying philosophy of the extreme Islamic pro-victim approach in which crime victims are placed in an incomparable influential position that allows them to effectively guide the justice process. It stresses the link between such an approach and the Islamic law view on the civil-criminal dichotomy which plays a less significant role than in modem Western laws.The study adopts a dual comparative methodology. On the one hand, it compares the Islamic approach with its modem Western counterparts trying to discover their common grounds and differing points in order to explore the ways in which they can benefit from each other. On the other hand, the study compares the attitude of modem Muslim states, particularly Egypt and the Sudan, with an attempt to measure their compliance with the principles of Islamic approaches or to evaluate the effectiveness of the alternative approach.The dissertation is based essentially on library materials in both English and Arabic. It also depends on in-depth personal interviews held with Muslim scholars and senior Egyptian and Sudanese judges. The dissertation promises to be the first systematic study in English of the Islamic approach towards an important growing area in legal studies i.e. crime victims.