Hirabah

Hirābah (Arabic: حرابة‎‎) is an Arabic word for “piracy”, or “unlawful warfare”. Hirabah comes from the root hariba, which means “to become angry and enraged”. The noun harb (حَرْب, pl. hurub حُروب) means “war” and/or “enemy”. Examples of Hirabah are highway robbery (traditionally understood as robbery with violence or grand larceny, unlike theft which has a different punishment), rape, and terrorism. One who commits hirabah would be a mohareb (or muharebeh). Hiraba crimes are still prosecuted in modern Islamic countries that use "sharia law", such as Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Iran—where it is defined as "waging war against God" and called mohareb.

The verses 33-34 of Surah al-Ma'ida of the Qur'an^{[Quran 5:33]} specify punishment for "those who wage war against Allah and His Prophet and strive to spread disorder in the land":

The punishments of those who wage war against Allah and His Prophet and strive to spread disorder in the land are to execute them in an exemplary way or to crucify them or to amputate their hands and feet from opposite sides or to banish them from the land. Such is their disgrace in this world, and in the Hereafter theirs will be an awful doom save those who repent before you overpower them; you should know that Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Ever Merciful.

The verbal noun form (i.e. hirabah) is frequently used in classical and modern books of Islamic jurisprudence, but neither the word hirabah nor the root verb haraba occurs in the Quran. (Yuhaaribun is the form used in Quran 5:33-4.)

According to Islamic scholar Khaled Abou El Fadl, Hiraba in the Islamic context literally means "waging war against society" and in Islamic jurisprudence traditionally referred to acts such as killing noncombatants ("the resident and wayfarer"), "assassinations, setting fires, or poisoning water wells," crimes "so serious and repugnant" that their perpetrators were "not to be given quarter or sanctuary anywhere." Another source (Brian Murphy) states, "many Islamic scholars interpret the references to acts that defy universal codes such as intentionally killing civilians during warfare or causing random destruction." According to author Sadakat Kadri, "Most classical jurists" had established "a thousand or so years ago" that Hiraba "referred specifically to banditry in open country: a uniquely destabilizing threat to civil order in a premodern society." (The crime is sometimes lumped together with Mofsed-e-filarz (spreading disorder in the land) which is mentioned alongside waging "war against Allah and His Prophet" in 5:33-34.)

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