Abstract: This article tries to shed light on some Islamic foundations and concepts ‎according to which decriminalization becomes either permissible or necessary. Among ‎those foundations is insistence of Islamic teachings on different rights and freedoms of ‎citizens and particularly those return to their privacy. Islamic teachings also insist ‎promotion of good and virtue through free choosing of citizens rather than coercive ‎and external bans and restrictions. This approach, in its turn, requires a minimalistic ‎criminalization and occasionally decriminalization. Sometimes, experimental findings ‎achieved from criminalization suggest decriminalization. Religiously, these experiments ‎are valuable and cannot be belittled or ignored. Decriminalization in its Islamic reading, ‎however, in no way, consists with removal of blame from behaviours which are ‎religiously condemned and evaluated as evil. What is religiously assumed as vice cannot ‎be normalized or destigmatized. However, since criminalization follows some practical ‎considerations, every single evil is not, necessarily, a crime. Moreover, fighting evils is ‎not limited to criminalization or insistence on keeping a behaviour criminal.‎Keywords: Islamic criminal law, criminalization, social control, taʿzirāat, Ultima Ratio ‎principle.‎
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