Fasiq

Fasiq (Arabic: فاسق fāsiq) is an Arabic term referring to someone who violates Islamic law. As a fasiq is considered unreliable, his testimony is not accepted in Islamic courts.^[1] The terms fasiq and fisq are sometime rendered as "impious",^[1] "venial sinner",^[1] or "depraved".^[2]

Constant committing of minor sins or the major sins that do not require greater punishment, which are described as wickedness in fiqh terminology, are punished by the judge's discretion, without a certain limit and measure.

In tazir punishments, there is no obligation to prove the crime by witnessing or similar mechanisms.^[3]

Origin

Fasiq is derived from the term fisq (Arabic: فسق), "breaking the agreement"^[4] or "to leave or go out of."^[2]

In its original Quranic usage, the term did not have the specific meaning of a violator of laws, and was more broadly associated with kufr (disbelief).^[5] Some theologians have associated fasiq-related behaviour to ahl al-hawa (people of caprice).^[6]

Theological debate

• The jurist Wasil ibn Ata (700–748 CE) submitted that a fasiq remained a member of Muslim society, so retained rights to life and property though he could not hold a religious position. This opinion set him at odds with Murji'ah jurists who considered a fasiq to be a munafiq (hypocrite), and the Kharijites who considered the fasiq a kafir.
• To the Kharijites "faith without works" was worthless, so one who professed Islam yet sinned was fasiq, and thus a kafir.^[7]

Applications

In the period leading up to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini described the Shah of Iran as fasiq.^[5]

See also

• Sharia