Criminal capacity of mentally disordered people in İslamic Law

Crime is a destructive action both harming the perpetrator himselfs and the social environment he lives in. Hence every society regardless to its size responded to this action threatening its peace with a sanction called punishment. In Islamic penal law relieving public conscience by punishing the offender and with the deterrent side of the penalty the prevention of future crimes are aimed. The rights of the offenders were not ignored while the public interest was taken into consideration so his legal capacity was firstly questioned. In Islamic law children whose reason is not yet developed and people with mental illnesses who luck this capacity principally are not obligated or charged with any responsibilty. But mental illnesses are classified just by regarding their beginnings or durations in classical fıqh literature. The objective of this study is to deal with disorders which do not take place in the classical literature and search for judgements within the Islamic penal law. Hence new doors for new current questions in İslamic penal law will be opened and a contribution to its consistency will be made. During the study firstly main sources –focusing on the Hanefith sources –are searched taking into account the general classification of the punishments as had, qısas, diyat and ta'zir. Secondly, by collecting data from modern psychiatry, criminal psychiatry sources, acedemic papers and Turkish Penal Law clauses a result within the frame of fıqh was tried to be reached. Since the study is just a post graduate thesis in order to keep its volume the number of the mental illnesses mentioned were kept limited. Schizophrenia and mood disorders holding the the first place in criminal data are included to the theses