Islamic Law--Perplexing, Cruel to Some--Stifles Saudi Arabia Crime : Justice: The Middle East nation deals with crimes ranging from theft to terrorism to murder according to the words of the Koran.

Somewhere in Jidda, in a dark, crowded prison cell, six young men await their encounter with Islamic justice for ambushing a bus with guns this month and slightly wounding two American GIs.

Justice for the men--four Palestinians and two Yemenis--is apt to be swift. They will be tried as terrorists under the same verse of the Koran that was used to deal with highway robbers in medieval times, and if convicted, their punishment appears clear: The ringleader will be beheaded in a public execution, and his followers will each suffer the amputation of two limbs--a hand and a foot on alternate sides of the body.

To many Westerners, Islamic law, or sharia, is one of the most perplexing aspects of a religion that is followed by a quarter of the world’s peoples. The beheadings may seem barbaric to societies that prefer the bloodless neatness of lethal injections, the gallows or the electric chair; the stoning to death of adulteresses may seem better suited to nightmarish visions of ancient times than to life in the 20th Century.

But Saudi Arabia, the only Arab country whose legal system bears no traces of France’s Napoleonic Code, provides startling proof that the sharia should not be dismissed out of hand, for this desert kingdom is probably the safest, most crime-free country on Earth. Muggings, robberies, murders and burglaries are not even vague threats to daily life here.

At the Dharhan International Hotel, where most of more than 900 foreign journalists covering Operation Desert Storm are staying, millions of dollars worth of communications gear, satellite transmitters and generators are stacked on the pool deck, unattended. Hotel room doors are often left open, computers, cameras and traveler’s checks in plain sight.

When a journalist Wednesday gave a local businessman the equivalent of $2,900 to cover a month’s rental of his car, a bellman appeared at the reporter’s door an hour later, bearing an envelope stuffed with riyals. The journalist had overpaid.

Sharia may be translated literally from the Arabic as “the road to a watering hole,” and from that derives the meaning of “the path of God.” It differs fundamentally from Western law in that it is not, in theory, man-made. It is divine, laid down by God, a code of social and religious duty that deals not just with law and punishment but with every aspect of life--from how Muslims pray in the mosque to how they conduct their affairs in the marketplace.

“In a democratic state,” said Frank Vogel, a Harvard University specialist in Islamic law who studied in Saudi Arabia, “law is something we choose to impose on ourselves, something we change when we want to. In the case of Islamic law, it’s something innate, an explicit command (that) mankind must follow for his own rohappiness in this world and the hereafter.”

Islam is a religion without a priesthood. Every believer communicates directly with God, and although God’s laws are interpreted at religious institutions and by scholars, their intent--in a society where God, rather than man or the state, is sovereign--is to keep those laws as close as humanly possible to what is expressed in the Koran, the Muslim holy book.

The Koranic verse (5:33) that Saudi scholars have decided deals with the modern scourge of terrorism--and thus the attack on the Americans--says: “The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and his messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the hereafter, theirs will be an awful doom.”

To be expelled from the land is often interpreted to mean imprisonment for life.

In court, the six accused will be part of a process that Western attorneys would not recognize. All witnesses will be investigated to determine their trustworthiness. There will be no spectators or newspaper reporters in the courtroom. The prosecutor’s role will be limited to merely outlining the results of the police investigation.

The defendants probably will not hire defense attorneys, preferring to rely instead on the fairness of the three or five judges, who will act as judge and jury and will often pick apart a police report to protect the rights of the accused.

The proceedings may only last a few days, and once a verdict is rendered, the case will be reviewed by two higher courts. If capital punishment is involved, the final review will be made by King Fahd and the executions carried out in a public square, just after Friday prayers.

Unless the defendants are considered a threat to society--which in the case of the attack on the GIs they probably would be--they could be set free, with all charges dropped, if the victims merely forgive them and say they do not want the punishment carried out.

Victims can also demand compensation in lieu of formal punishment; the cost of buying one’s way out of a murder conviction could run about $40,000.

“I think capital punishment is a deterrent, but not on its own unless it also makes me fear the hereafter,” said Mohammed A. Akkas, a Saudi religious scholar. “I might kill someone and do it in such a way that I evaded the authorities. Maybe. But still I’d know that this was only a transit life, and I’d know that in the hereafter I’d be brought to judgment.

“That’s what is absent today in the West--remembering that we are judged in the hereafter. It’s there in your society, but people have forgotten about it.”

Whereas punishment in the West is intertwined with rehabilitation and retribution, a Muslim is more apt to think in terms of atonement and repentance.

The amputated hand of a thief, for instance, will precede him to heaven, the Prophet Mohammed said, and thus the thief has atoned. Revenge--of society and of those harmed by a criminal’s act--is as much a part of Islamic law as of Napoleonic law, and the Koran refers to “a soul for a soul, an eye for an eye, a nose for a nose, an ear for an ear, a tooth for a tooth.”

The Saudis are not likely to be lenient toward acts of terrorism committed within the kingdom, but under the sharia, the circumstances of a crime are always weighed by the judges. A poor man, for instance, who stole food to feed his family would not be considered a thief and would be set free.

Judges will render guilty verdicts only if there are at least two witnesses to the crime; to convict rapists and adulterers, four witnesses are required.

“Whether you’re a prince or a slave, rich or poor, a righteous man or a disbeliever, you’re all treated with the same fairness under Islamic law,” said Akkas. “I’m not sure that’s the case in the West.”