Alan Dershowitz Quotes
There’s simply nothing in there that would justify second degree murder.
Dershowitz, Alan. Interview. Fox News, Fox News Network, 2012.
The implication of this sura is that it is permissible to kill non-Muslims but not Muslims. The same is true of slavery. Another prescription of this sura is that a Muslim should never kill another Muslim, so while this sura is very discriminatory and in that sense reprehensible, it does call into question the Islamic terrorist practice of the late 20th and early 21st century of killing fellow Muslims who might vote, serve in an official role or cooperate with non-believers. And it definitely to the Western mind prohibits the kind of Islamic sectarian violent practice of Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims torturing and butchering each other—a practice that has continued since the two groups fought over who was the rightful successor to Muhammad. The religious rationale for that murderous behavior is that each Islamic group sees the other as apostate and therefore no longer real Muslims.
Until very recently common law derived from this law allowed a thief on someone else’s property to be killed even with no danger to the property owner. In Texas and other jurisdictions the “unwritten” law would not convict such a killer for murder even if he came upon a trespasser who was stealing nothing. Today, the legal principle is that deadly force may only be used if the person reasonably believed his life was in danger and had no other means of escape.
He was the first person to make the distinction in English law between murder and accidental homicide. Earlier they both carried the same death penalty. Bracton, with murder and with theft, wrote of the concept of “mens rea”—criminal mind or intent which is a fundamental principle of modern law. Aristotle, in his Nichomachean Ethics, made similar distinctions of responsibility depending on intent, but Bracton codified it in English law.
It was common then for people to die in tenements as a result of shoddy construction, poisoning by sewer gas, and unsanitary conditions. As the result of the efforts of reformers like Riis and Theodore Roosevelt health inspectors were appointed and errant builders went to jail—in some cases for manslaughter.
Alan Morton Dershowitz is an American lawyer known for his work in U.S. constitutional law and American criminal law, and for controversial political views.
