The evolution of criminal legal norms :in Iran in state law and religious law: The case of apostasy

This article presents the evolution of criminal law in Iran since the 19th century, when the newly created domestic law began to incorporate legal paradigms developed in Europe. The specificity of Iranian criminal law lies in the interactions of the law of religious jurists (fiqh) which endures to this day with the supposedly Islamic criminal law enacted by the state since 1979. The study of the crime of apostasy exhibits that religious jurists still influence the debates on criminal matters in Iran although they sit on the margins of the domestic criminal system. The author shows that religious jurists continue updating religious law in the criminal realm by pronouncing on the status of legal principles foreign to their legal tradition.