‘Need to amend our legislation, including that of death penalty’
“RETRIBUTION and the death penalty exist in all monotheistic religions. Nevertheless, the death penalty was stopped or not implemented in about 180 countries, and it is no longer implemented except in less than 20 countries, including us, so the European Union’s protest did not come out of nowhere, but rather this is their declared and permanent position together with the Amnesty International and the Committees for the Protection of Human Rights in the world,” columnist Sami Abdul Latif Al-Nisf wrote for Annahar daily.
In Kuwait, we were the first to suffer from the death penalty when Saddam executed hundreds of innocent prisoners, hostages, and abductees. and if it was enough to only imprison them, they would have returned to us some day.
One of the most important and major drawbacks to the death sentence is when we discover later that the ruling or decision was wrong, such as if any of them was put to death based on false testimony or deviant security men targeting the accused, or the presence of the unlucky accused in the wrong place and time, and these are repeated circumstances, thus it will be impossible to correct the mistake later, unlike a prison sentence.
“It has been scientifically proven that the death penalty, contrary to what is said, does not deter or reduce crimes, as evidenced by the fact that the crime rate in Europe, which does not apply the death penalty, is much lower than America, which applies it, even within the United States, it has been proven that the state of Texas is the most and fastest in carrying out the death penalty and is known to have more criminals than some states that do not apply capital punishment.
“It is time for us to be humble and listen to the demands of other countries of the world and to amend our legislation successively, including the death penalty legislation and the legislation not to naturalize non-Muslims knowing that those who invaded us, killed us, and burned our oil wells in the year 1990 – Muslims and those who liberated us from our tragedy, were Christians and non-Muslims.
“For information, over thousands of years, the penalty of stoning the adulterers or even amputation of the hands of the thief has not been applied in successive Islamic countries.
“The reason may be that the punishment in this way may extend from the perpetrator to his family, who will not marry an amputee whose hand was cut off because of the theft, or relatives of a woman who was publicly stoned because of adultery?
“The blood-money for retribution also made differences between the rich killer and the poor killer, and the murderer without support and the killer with great support that facilitates the process of collecting blood money for him, while the alternative imprisonment of the death penalty applies to only the poor.
“What is the wisdom of Kuwait declaring its desire to implement the death sentence?
“Was it not possible to implement it without announcing it to the public, as is the case with some neighboring countries that carry out retribution operations in public every Friday, and the wisdom required them to stop doing so?”
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“The Supreme Advisory Committee to work on completing the application of the provisions of Islamic Sharia was established in 1991 and lasted for more than 26 years without achieving its goals,” columnist Youssef Abdul Karim Al-Zankawi wrote for Al-Jarida daily.
“Despite this, no public benefit association, and we do not exclude the Kuwaiti Lawyers Association, proposed to cancel this Supreme Committee, which drained dozens of millions of dinars from the Treasury, without achieving its objectives for nearly 3 decades.
“The strange thing is that none of its proposals were considered and the state was not able to implement Islamic law in its entirety as if this committee was absent from the Kuwaiti arena, if not clinically dead since its birth, until the request for its abolition came from some members of the National Assembly with popular support in terms of protecting public money. So, the mercy bullet was fired in 2017, when the Amiri decree was issued to cancel it.
“Throughout more than 26 years of the work of the Supreme Advisory Committee to work to complete the implementation of the provisions of Islamic Sharia, we have not heard from any of the Kuwaiti public benefit societies of their desire to investigate this committee and stop wasting money and investigate the weakness of their achievement and limit the benefit.
“The statute of the Kuwaiti Lawyers Association defines its purposes by regulating the practice of the legal profession and ensuring its good performance, caring for the interests of the members, and defending their rights.
“Why did the association which is a public benefit association pay more attention to the Central System for Remedying the Status of Illegal Residents (CSRSIR) while its main task is trying to develop the performance of the judiciary?
“And if it is among the concerns of a Kuwaiti public benefit association to put the issue of Kuwaiti national security in mind, then it is expected that it will issue unlimited support for a device that tries to preserve our Kuwaiti identity, and if the device deviates from the right path, we expected to find exclusive legal or logistical support from the Kuwait Lawyers Association more than other Kuwaiti public benefit associations, and this increases our astonishment.
“Meanwhile, we do not question the intentions of the Kuwaiti Lawyers Association or the patriotism of its members and affiliates, in which we have our brothers, sons and grandchildren.
“The strange thing is that the Central System for Remedying the Status of Illegal Residents succeeded in remedying the status of tens of thousands of this category after the workers in this national apparatus made strenuous efforts by contacting various government agencies to collect all official papers that proved the origins of tens of thousands of so-called Kuwaiti bedoun and thanks to the efforts of the device which some are calling for its abolition.
“Imagine that there are tens of thousands of forgers of Kuwaiti nationality, and hundreds of thousands holding dual nationalities, add to them a category that demands Kuwaiti nationality despite the proof of its original nationalities, and for this we wonder: Isn’t it more appropriate for those who are loyal to the soil of this country to demand the arrest of the forgers of Kuwaiti nationality and holders if dual nationality before demanding the abolition of an apparatus that tries to preserve Kuwaiti identity?
“Imagine what Kuwait’s political, economic, and demographic conditions would be like if the Kuwaitis remained silent about the clear and flagrant destruction of the Kuwaiti identity?”
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“When the World Cup began, the entire world focused on this beautiful spot on the land of Arabs – the sisterly State of Qatar, which organized the World Cup in a professional manner, implanting the Arab and Islamic identity,” columnist Jamal Al-Hamoud wrote for Annahar daily.
“The beauty of this identity, including its normal morals and straight values, drew the attention of the entire world at a time some countries started marketing unusual practices and corrupt freedom, devoid of human values.
“We saw how Qatar imprinted our identity in the civilized construction of playgrounds and entertainment venues with a heritage design to see a dazzling stadium in every sense of the word in the form of a large tent embroidered with the colors of our Gulf heritage, exhibitions, heritage markets, Gulf national dress and others that showed our belongingness to this heritage.
“Thank you, Qatar, for such a wonderful presentation. Today, prove to the world that we are capable of creating success and a bright image for the world. We pray that Allah completes this joy and success.”
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“After watching the teams of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Morocco and Tunisia compete in the FIFA World Cup matches, we can only grieve for our team that could not compete in this tournament!” columnist Dr Naji Al-Zaid wrote for Al-Jarida daily.
“A lot of money was spent and capabilities were provided... Nevertheless, sports in general, and football in particular, deteriorated up to the point of questioning, hurting and feeling heartbroken over the decline that sports, particularly football, has reached!
“We are searching for the reasons behind such decline, but we do not find any satisfactory answer. Some have attributed this to administrative failure, which led to loss of leadership and the inability to compete. The reasons include competition, personal animosity, lack of focus, lack of planning and reliance on repetitive narration of past glories!
“Sports needs a major overhaul to restore the competitive spirit in order to make Kuwait a distinguished sporting country. Let this begin with the exclusion of opportunistic personalities whose main concern is media, social and political prominence!”