An Analysis of Combination of Causes in Islamic Jurisprudence and Criminal Law with an Emphasis on Imam Khomeini’s Viewpoins

Given the need for uniform judicial precedent during the legislative body’s enactment of laws on various forms of crime perpetration, this paper intends to analyze one of the most important issues in jurisprudence and law, i.e. plurality of causes – including successive and concurrent – or combination of direct and indirect causes and even plurality of the indirect causes. The belief in legal obligation concerning discernment of causal link between behavior and criminal effect as a constituent element of actus reus in the crimes and also between the harmful act and damages thus incurred – that are among the major elements of civil liability – cannot be a factor to justify neglecting flagrant and numerous losses and defects in the 2013 Penal Code, in particular, lack of uniform criterion and prescription of various strategies for discernment of causality. Therefore, through studying various laws and theories, this research came to the conclusion that under the current circumstances, the discernment of causality should be based on analysis of the type of intervention by factors and type of behavior of the offenders within the framework of plurality of causes or plurality of indirect causes or a combination of both. By virtue of legal provisions, the judicial precedent extracted from various sources such as jurist views, Imam Khomeini’s views in particular, and the realities of each case must be taken into consideration before making any decision on causal link based on common law.