ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the background of the evolution of the juvenile death penalty policy and an empirical profile of executing children in the political and Islamic criminal justice systems. It develops an analysis of the factors that may influence the future of capital punishment as a criminal sanction for children in Islamic nations. The chapter considers only countries which are predominantly Muslim, meaning that the Muslim population constitutes at least 50 per cent of the total population. The Islamic penal codes do not constrain the death penalty as a punishment reserved for a few crimes. In Islamic criminal law there is a principle that punishments are to be avoided whenever there is ambiguity or doubt as to the textual basis, evidence or criminal culpability of the accused. Several Muslim nations with large Islamic populations have recently gone through long periods without juvenile executions. Most of the Islamic countries that are low-execution nations have governments with secular rather than religious orientations.
