Sharia, as is known, is a distillation of legal principles from the ‘trilogy’ - the three texts which form the core of Islam: the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the Sira.
The foundation of Sharia is the Hadd. While there is room for debate and interpretation in much of Sharia, the Hadd is considered the non-negotiable bedrock of Islamic civil law.
Hudud is simply the plural form of Hadd, and both words are used in scholarship. A glossary published in Oxford Islamic Studies explains that Hadd is a
Limit or prohibition; pl. hudud. A punishment fixed in the Quran and hadith for crimes considered to be against the rights of God. The six crimes for which punishments are fixed are theft (amputation of the hand), illicit sexual relations (death by stoning or one hundred lashes), making unproven accusations of illicit sex (eighty lashes), drinking intoxicants (eighty lashes), apostasy (death or banishment), and highway robbery (death).
Islamic scholars find room for interpretation regarding any crime which doesn’t fit into one of the six categories listed above:
Punishment for all other crimes is left to the discretion of the court; these punishments are called tazir.
While the forms of Sharia vary from one nation to another, the core of Hadd is immutable, and forms a standard within Islam. Saudi Arabia has long enforced Hadd, and
recently fundamentalist ideologies have demanded the reintroduction of hudud, especially in Sudan, Iran, and Afghanistan.
Pakistan approved legislation in February 1979 which incorporated Hadd into its civil code, and subsequently stoning, whipping, and amputation of hands is considered a governmental function, not a religious one, within the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
