Hirabah

In Islamic law, Ḥirābah (Arabic: حرابة) is a legal category that comprises highway robbery (traditionally understood as aggravated robbery or grand larceny, unlike theft, which has a different punishment. Ḥirābah means piracy or unlawful warfare. It comes from the triliteral root ḥrb, which means “to become angry and enraged”. The noun ḥarb (حَرْب, pl. ḥurūb حُروب) means 'war' or 'wars'.

Moharebeh (also spelled muharebeh) is a Persian language term that is treated as interchangeable with ḥirabah in Arabic lexicons. The related term muḥārib (Arabic: محارب, lit. 'perpetrator of muḥāribah') has been translated by English-language Iranian media as "enemy of God". In English-language media sources, moḥarebeh in Iran has been translated variously as "waging war against God," "war against God and the state," "enmity against God." It is a capital crime in Saudi Arabia and Iran.

A verse from the Quran, surah al-Ma'idah 5:33, is known as "the ḥirāba verse" (āyat al-ḥirāba), specifies punishment for "those who wage war against God and His Messenger and strive to spread disorder in the land":

The punishment of those who wage war against God and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter; ^{[Quran 5:33]}

Although the verse gives punishments for waging war against God and His Messenger, it does not include the word ḥirābah, nor its meaning, nor the crime's "constituent elements, modes of crime and conditions".

The verbal noun form (i.e. ḥirāba) is frequently used in classical and modern books of Islamic jurisprudence, but neither the word ḥirāba nor the root verb ḥaraba occurs in the Quran. (Yuḥāribūna is the form used in Quran 5:33-4.)

According to early Islamic sources, the verse was revealed after the expedition of Kurz bin Jabir Al-Fihri: some members of the Arabian tribe of the Banu Urayna feigned conversion to Islam to steal Muslims' possessions and killed a young shepherd sent to teach them about the faith. Given the broad and strong language of the verse, however, various state representatives beginning with the Umayyad Caliphate have asserted that it applied to rebels in general.

The original meanings of the triliteral root ḥrb are to despoil someones wealth or property, and also fighting or committing sinful act. The Quran "refers to both meanings" in al-Baqara 2:279 and Al-Ma'ida 5:33-34.