DEBATE RAGES IN ALGERIA OVER PROPOSED DEATH PENALTY BAN

debate is heating up in Algeria between clerics and human rights activists over a proposed ban on capital punishment in the country. Farouk Ksentini, chief of the CNCPPDH, said capital punishment is outdated. "The abolition of the death penalty doesn't mean the release of the criminal", he said. "The penalty will be replaced with another one that makes him or her pay for the crimes committed." These arguments outraged Cheikh Abderehmane Chibane, head of the Algerian Association of Muslim Scholars. He said punishment by death is mentioned in the text of the Qur'an and Sunna, and "whoever thinks that a man-made judgment is better and more suitable than God's judgment has become an infidel and may not be buried in Muslim graves."