10.

Between Life and Death: Buddhism,
Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity

Since the various world religions exist in so many forms—across different schools, organizations, and areas—it is impossible to say that any of them has a unified message on the ultimate punishment. On the one hand, many of their core teachings would seem to argue strongly against taking a life for a life, but on the other, there are plenty of counterexamples from history of religious institutions supporting the death penalty with bone-shaking vigor.

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The Dalai Lama had just finished speaking at an event on the Capitoline Hill in Rome when I sought him out and asked him to be one of the first signatories of the Community of Sant’Egidio’s Appeal for a Moratorium on the Death Penalty. He accepted immediately and signed in earth-green ink, which came as no surprise. Who more than the Dalai Lama is identified around the world with the need to respect life?

Indeed, all schools of Buddhism emphasize respect for life in all its forms. Though the Buddha did not specifically address capital punishment in his teachings, he encouraged his adherents not to do anything that could harm others, saying, “An action, even if it brings benefit to oneself, cannot be considered a good action if it causes physical and mental pain to another being.”

The respect for life that permeates Buddhism is inextricably connected to the principle of samsara, the infinitely repeating cycle of birth, suffering, death, and rebirth. Buddhists believe that samsara is the world’s nervous system, and when the death penalty is applied, both the soul of the person whose life is taken and the soul of the person who takes that life are negatively affected. It follows that trying to gain recompense for evil and even for violent death by inflicting more death simply causes a greater imbalance; only rehabilitation can restore balance and harmony in this world and the world of the spirit.

But, of course, the devil is in the details: in many countries where Buddhism is influential, such as Thailand and Japan, the death penalty is still thriving in spirit and in practice.

What accounts for this contradiction? One explanation may be that there is a wide disparity between the practices of Buddhist monastic orders and lay Buddhist followers (as in any religion). In their article “Mercy and Punishment: Buddhism and the Death Penalty,” criminology professors Leanne Fiftal Alarid and Hsiao-Ming Wang argue that while “the death penalty is inconsistent with Buddhist teachings,” historical reality is more complicated:

Buddhist doctrines hold nonviolence and compassion for all life in high regard. The First Precept of Buddhism requires individuals to abstain from injuring or killing all living creatures and Buddha’s teaching restricts Buddhist monks from any political involvement. Using historical documents and interviews with contemporary authorities on Buddhist doctrine, our research uncovered a long history of political involvement by Buddhist monks and Buddhist support of violence.

The website ProCon.org gathers opinions from different cultures and religions on capital punishment. In the case of Buddhism, one voice on the “pro” side is that of Tomoko Sasaki, a former member of the Japanese Diet. Writing in a Washington Post article titled “Why Japan Still Has the Death Penalty,” he evokes “retribution” to justify his opinion: “A basic teaching [in Japanese Buddhism] is retribution. If someone evil does something bad, he has to atone with his own life.”

Sasaki assumes that capital punishment restores balance in karmic terms. But in reality, the death penalty creates a double negative: one life is lost, and then another follows. Capital punishment, seen in this way, is a violent disruption to the possibility of balancing different karmas and improving the world by favoring mercy and life. The flow and intercommunication of the reproductive karma, the supportive karma, the obstructive karma, and the destructive karma are dealt great blows by every death sentence.

When the Dalai Lama subscribed to the appeal I submitted on behalf of the Community of Sant’Egidio, he also submitted this message, read at an event organized by the Peace Center on April 9, 1999:

The death penalty fulfills a preventive function, but it is also very clearly a form of revenge. It is an especially severe form of punishment because it is so final. The human life is ended and the executed person is deprived of the opportunity to change, to restore the harm done or compensate for it. Before advocating execution we should consider whether criminals are intrinsically negative and harmful people . . . The answer, I believe, is definitely not. However horrible the act they have committed, I believe that everyone has the potential to improve and correct themselves. Therefore, I am optimistic that it remains possible to deter criminal activity, and prevent such harmful consequences of such acts in society, without having to resort to the death penalty.

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“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”—this adage, generally attributed to Gandhi, is the remark quoted most often by opponents of the death penalty. And yet in Hinduism we are on the same contradictory ground as in Buddhism. On the one hand, India resumed executions in November 2012 after almost a decade of a de facto moratorium; on the other hand, there have been only two executions there over the past two years. When you compare that number to India’s giant population of 1.3 billion people, the death penalty starts to seem practically nonexistent.

Those who do support the death penalty give reasons that are distinctly different from the ones we generally hear in the West. The founder of the Hare Krishna movement, Srila Prabhupada, explained in Bhagavad-Gita As It Is (1968) that a murderer should be condemned to death so that “in his next life he will not have to suffer for the great sin he has committed.”

Samvidananda Saraswati, the head of Kailash Ashram, offers the counter perspective:

There is a general feeling that Hinduism is full of compassion and forgiveness . . . Therefore, taking the life of a human being is a very big issue for us . . . Our scriptures and Vedas do not favor capital punishment. They advocate the principle of nonviolence.

Another word for this “principle of nonviolence” in Hinduism is “Ahimsa,” which literally means “non-harm.” Gandhi, who was one of the most famous advocates of Ahimsa, explained, “In its negative form, [Ahimsa] means not injuring any living being, whether by body or mind. I may not therefore hurt the person of any wrong-doer, or bear any ill will to him and so cause mental suffering.”

This attitude is very nearly inscribed in the Indian Constitution, which says that the death penalty is to be applied only “in the rarest of rare cases.” And if it were up to some of India’s founding fathers—including the Constitution’s main architect, Babasaheb Ambedkar—there would be no death penalty at all. Ambedkar acknowledged that while people may not always practice nonviolence, “[t]hey certainly adhere to the principle of nonviolence as a moral mandate which they ought to observe as far as they possibly can.” For this reason he concluded that “the proper thing for this country to do is to abolish the death sentence altogether.”

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Like Hinduism and Buddhism, Judaism exhibits many contradictions when it comes to the death penalty. In the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud, the death penalty is both legitimate and widespread: thirty-six crimes in the Hebrew Bible are punishable by death, including idol worship, profanation of the Sabbath, adultery, incest, and public incitement to apostasy. And the Mishnah lists the methods of execution (Sanhedrin 7:1) as slaying by the sword, stoning, burning, and strangling.

But Jewish texts also place limits on the way a death sentence can be administered. First, there must be a trial before a Sanhedrin, an ancient Jewish liturgical and criminal court, whose jury comprised twenty-three judges in capital cases. Furthermore, at least two witnesses are required to testify both that they witnessed the crime for which the defendant is on trial and that they had warned him or her in advance that the crime was punishable by execution. Not even the defendant’s own confession is to be accepted as evidence.

And while Orthodox Judaism holds that in theory the death penalty is the correct and just punishment for some crimes, the Mishnah stresses that it is not to be administered lightly. A famous passage says,

A Sanhedrin that puts a man to death once in seven years is called destructive. Rabbi Eliezer ben Azariah says: even once in seventy years. Rabbi Akiba and Rabbi Tarfon say: had we been in the Sanhedrin none would ever have been put to death. Rabbi Simeon ben Gamaliel says: they would have multiplied shedders of blood in Israel. (Mattot 1:10)

Undoubtedly this reluctance to administer the death penalty stems from the belief in Judaism that human life is sacred. In his book Judaism and Human Rights, Rabbi David Rosen elaborates:

The Mishnah powerfully articulates…the human right to life and progeny. Precisely that sacred right to life resultant from being created in the image of God, is that which serves to make the concomitant demands on us to respect and protect the life of the other.

Perhaps because the taking of a life is such a serious thing in Judaism, some argue that humans can only administer the death penalty if and when their justice system is perfect. In a 1932 article, Rabbi Isaac Herzog, who went on to become the first chief rabbi of the State of Israel, wrote that the Sanhedrin—and, by extension, capital punishment—could only be restored in the Messianic age, when divine law and human law would become one; until then, he said, the death penalty should not be administered.

Indeed, when the State of Israel was founded, its legislature chose to rule not as a Sanhedrin but as a secular body. Furthermore, the legislature abolished the death penalty in 1954, except as a punishment for genocide or treason committed in wartime. Strictly speaking, in the history of modern Israel, capital punishment has been administered only once during peacetime, to the Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann in 1962.

In the United States, both the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) and the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) publicly oppose the death penalty. The CCAR formally rejected the death penalty “[b]oth in concept and in practice” in 1979. And the URJ has stated, “We believe that there is no crime for which the taking of human life by society is justified, and that it is the obligation of society to evolve other methods in dealing with crime.”

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Mainstream Islam generally favors forgiveness. In Policing Muslim Communities, Farrukh B. Hakeem, M.R. Haberfeld, and Arvind Verma write, “Contrary to the common perception that is widely prevalent, Islamic laws are essentially preventive and not based solely on harsh punishment as a first resort; rather, the harsh punishments are implemented as a last resort.”

Specifically, Islamic law applies the death penalty to two groups of crime. The first is intentional murder. In these cases the families of the victims are allowed to choose between capital punishment for the offender and monetary compensation—or they may simply forgive. And their decision is binding on the state.

The second group of crimes that may incur the death penalty, according to the Qur’an, is fasad fil-ardh, which is defined as spreading mischief in the community or the land. Fasad fil-ardh can have a broad meaning or a strict one. In authoritarian regimes, it can be a way for rulers to control opposition, spread terror, or eliminate political opponents by bringing exaggerated or invented charges against opponents or enemies. Treason, apostasy, terrorism, rape, piracy, adultery, and homosexual activity all may fall under fasad fil-ardh.

The BBC reported on the declaration of Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, the President of the Minaret of Freedom Institute, who two months after September 11 had this to say about the death penalty:

The views of American Muslims on the death penalty vary somewhat, but the range is narrow compared to the enormous disagreements among Christians. All Muslims accept the permissibility of the death penalty because it is addressed in the Qur’an. However, our views range from those who would apply it for a moderately short list of crimes (short compared to the enormous list of capital crimes in the Old Testament), to those who would apply it to a somewhat shorter list still, and finally, to those who would call for a moratorium on the death penalty in America altogether.

Although the Qur’an sanctions capital punishment in some cases, many Muslim countries have abolished the death penalty, including Albania, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. Other countries are abolitionist in practice if not in law: Algeria, Tajikistan, and Tunisia, to name a few. And still others are taking official steps toward a legal moratorium: for example, in February 2013, a strong parliamentary initiative began in Morocco and almost 180 MPs organized a Moroccan Parliamentarian Network Against the Death Penalty with the goal of outlawing capital punishment.

My friend Siti Musdah Mulia, researcher and professor at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences and a lecturer on Islamic Political Thought at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta, is fighting for an end of the death penalty in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world. When we were together in Aosta Valley, where the Italian government named her “Woman of the Year” in 2009, she explained to me that, in her view, “Islamic teaching is not compatible with the death penalty.”

She draws her argument from Imam al-Ghazali, a Muslim theologian, jurist, and philosopher who died in 1111 AD, and who identified “five necessities,” or al-darûriyyât al-khamsa, that Muslim law must protect: religion, life, intellect, offspring, and property. In the al-darûriyyât al-khamsa, Mulia finds a basis for something like a declaration of human rights: the right to religious freedom, the right to life, the right to express opinions freely, the right to reproductive health, and the right to property. Because capital punishment contravenes the right to life, she argues that it is antithetical to Islam and should be abolished.

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The relationship between Christianity and the death penalty is similarly inconsistent. In the Old Testament, of course, there is an abundance of references to crimes punishable by death. The Book of Leviticus contains a long list that is still quoted, and not just by fundamentalist Christians; among other sins, idolatry, adultery, incest, homosexual activity, and bestiality are punishable by death. But there are different lines of teaching between which we must negotiate. For example, God marks Cain to warn others against killing him, even though he has murdered his brother. God also forbids David to build His house on Earth because he “shed blood abundantly, and . . . made great wars.” (1 Chronicles 22:8)

While the New Testament does not explicitly condemn the death penalty, its attitude toward violence is more straightforwardly negative than the Old Testament’s. Jesus preached a message of love and compassion, famously saying, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” And in his Sermon on the Mount he stipulated that this love should extend even to our enemies (Matthew 5:43–47). He also opposed revenge: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Matthew 5:38–39)

A strong opposition to violence marked the first three centuries of Christian life. Church Fathers such as Athenagoras of Athens, Hippolytus of Rome, Tertullian, and Origen opposed Christian involvement with executions and the death penalty, arguing that violence went against Jesus’s teachings. For the same reason many early Christians refused to serve in the Roman army, which sometimes resulted in their executions.

But that all changed with the Edict of Milan in 313–14 AD, which legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire, dramatically altering Christianity’s relationship to the state and, by extension, to state-sponsored violence. In 314 AD, the Council of Arles, a representative meeting of Christian bishops, convened to discuss military service, among other things. They came to the consensus that, “[c]oncerning those who lay down their weapons in peacetime, be it resolved that they be excluded from fellowship.” While this canon has been interpreted in various ways, the most obvious interpretation would seem to be that the punishment for military desertion during peacetime is excommunication from the Church—a far cry from the early days of Christianity.

The legitimacy of violence soon made its way into Christian theology. Under his Just War theory, theologian and bishop Augustine of Hippo held that war was morally justified if it met certain conditions. Centuries later, Thomas Aquinas argued in favor of the death penalty, writing in Summa contra Gentiles:

The fact that the evil ones, as long as they live, can be corrected from their errors does not prohibit that they may be justly executed, for the danger which threatens from their way of life is greater and more certain than the good which may be expected from their improvement.

Christian support for the death penalty continued for many centuries as part of a broader Western trend, with both Protestant and Catholic supporters. But with the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, the Catholic Church moved closer to the early spirit of Christianity. In 1969, Pope Paul VI abolished the death penalty in the Vatican State, and in 1975 he appealed to Spain’s dictator, Francisco Franco, asking him to commute the death sentences of five convicted Spanish terrorists (who were later executed by firing squad).

Although the Catechism of the Catholic Church still “does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor,” recent popes have reinforced Paul VI’s opposition to capital punishment. In 1999, John Paul II called for an international consensus to abolish the “cruel and unnecessary” death penalty, saying, “Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform.” Pope Benedict XVI, receiving the participants in the International Meeting of Ministers of Justice promoted by the Community of Sant’Egidio on November 30, 2011, spoke of encouraging “the political and legislative initiatives being promoted in a growing number of countries to eliminate the death penalty.”

Most recently, Pope Francis has spoken out against the death penalty in a message to the International Association of Penal Law in October 2014, where he called upon “[a]ll Christians and people of goodwill . . . to struggle . . . for abolition of the death penalty, whether legal or illegal, and in all its forms…out of respect for the human dignity of persons deprived of their liberty.” He went on to say, “It is impossible to imagine that states today cannot make use of another means than capital punishment to defend peoples’ lives from an unjust aggressor.” He could not have been any clearer.

Another Christian denomination that has maintained a constant front against the death penalty is the Church of England. I remember a conversation I had with the Primate of the Church of England, Rowan Williams, in 2007. It was a few weeks before the UN General Assembly reaffirmed the resolution on a death penalty moratorium. When we reached the issue of capital punishment, he called for change:

The death penalty is one of those things which always speaks against hope . . . 

In so many countries where the death penalty exists, it is not the death penalty alone, it is the whole environment that grows up around it: the environment of the condemned cell, of the long periods where many people wait for execution. I have been in countries where people waited twenty years and have been on death row for twenty years. It is inhumane. I’ve also been in countries where it’s quite clear that certain races, certain classes, certain sections of the population are much more likely to receive the death penalty than others. So we need to remember—it’s not only the infliction of death itself, it is everything that goes with it that dehumanizes.

I asked him if he wanted to launch an appeal to different audiences around the world to abolish the death penalty, and he said, “The challenge I would want to put is this: can we truly affirm human dignity for everyone? Even if it’s difficult, even if it is in some ways risky, so that we can honestly say, we can say with integrity: this is a culture that takes life seriously.”

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It is the work of all the world’s religions to look seriously at life in all its vivid complexity. And so must we take the arguments and questions raised by these religions seriously, without resort to simplistic views of their arcs through history. Although none of the world’s religions can be said to irrefutably oppose the death penalty, they all contain teachings that celebrate life and human dignity above all else. And though it may be a long time yet before all the world’s religions unequivocally denounce the death penalty, more and more followers are speaking out against it and effecting change. Their work keeps the flicker of hope alive, even in the darkest times, for those who are living in any place and according to any custom.