A little bit of Sharia is like a little bit of cancer
simple_...@yahoo.com
The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, was nice
about sharia this week. It is not "only about mandating sanctions such
as stoning, flogging, the cutting off of hands and death to those who
do not comply with the law", he said. And the provisions of sharia "do
not include the repression of women".
Lord Phillips admitted that he did not claim "special expertise" in
the field, but he had been to see some sharia chaps in Oman and they
had seemed very civilised.
Anyway, his main point was that sharia might be useful here in
mediating disputes about things such as marriage.
Well, it is surely true that the customary practices of various
religions can be effective ways to reach agreement. Where these are
compatible with wider law, as they are in the case of Jewish religious
courts, they should be valued.
And it is true that sharia is not "only" about nasty punishments. But
such punishments are indeed part of sharia (40 lashes for drinking
alcohol is a widely accepted tariff, for example; 100 lashes for
fornication), even if they are not always applied. Lord Phillips also
did not mention that sharia upholds polygamy for men, prescribes a
lower compensation for injury to a Muslim woman or a non-believer than
to a Muslim man, and gives less value to their testimony in court. A
little bit of repression of women there, Lord Phillips?
Sharia also traditionally insists on a second-class status of
citizenship for Jews and Christians. All four main schools of sharia
say that the penalty for apostasy - abandoning the faith - is death.
Lord Phillips was speaking at the London Muslim Centre, which is part
of the East London Mosque. Dr Mohammed Abdul Bari, the head of the
Muslim Council of Britain, introduced him. Dr Bari said that British
judges must be "sensitive to our divine laws on personal relationships
and family matters". How sensitive? Up to four wives at once allowed?
He also quoted from the Koran to show the importance of justice in
Islam. I looked up the two quotations. The first appears in a chapter
called "Women", which says things like: "The male shall inherit twice
as much as a female". The bit about judging with fairness appears just
after the following: "Those that deny Our revelations will burn with
fire." The second quotation, also about judging with fairness, comes
in a passage about how Jews who believe the wrong things must be
punished.
Of course, you could find some blood-curdling things in Jewish and
Christian scriptures, but the difference for our society today is that
neither Jews nor Christians are trying to establish a state based on
the political implementation of their religion. Islamists are.
It is this question of context that bedevils the way Britain tries to
handle the problems of Muslim extremism. I wonder, for example, how
much the Lord Chief Justice knew about his venue.
The East London Mosque is considered respectable. But if you read Ed
Husain's remarkable book The Islamist, about how he embraced extremism
and later rejected it, you find that it was the East London Mosque
that helped him learn to hate the West. On Saturday evenings, he would
listen to talks at the mosque along these lines, often inspired by the
dead Islamist writer Abul Alah Mawdudi. Mawdudi incited the creation
of a wholly Islamic society by "organised struggle, sparing neither
life nor property for this purpose". Many leading figures in the
Muslim Council of Britain are admirers of Mawdudi.
There is a similar problem with the Government's efforts against
terrorism. A huge programme called Contest, with a subset called
Prevent, is supposed to address the hearts and minds of young Muslims.
If you read its latest strategy document, you find that its definition
of "shared values" has little idea of Britishness. Its section on
"grievances" implies that the root causes of extremism are Britain's
own racism, inequality or foreign policy. Its proposed "structures" to
prevent violent extremism are a cat's cradle of interdepartmental
confusion.
If you can cut through the jungle of jargon, you find "a risk-based
preventing violent extremism action plan". This risk is never
explained, but it seems to mean that the groups promised the money to
wean the young off violent extremism will often be pretty extremist
themselves.
And so it proves. The Mosques and Imams Advisory Board, which tries to
keep mosques free of baddies, includes representation of the Muslim
Association of Britain, which is a British arm of the Muslim
Brotherhood, one of the oldest Islamist organisations in the world. To
help purge violent extremism from universities, a new organisation has
emerged called Campusalam. At its launch, it gave a platform to three
Muslim Brotherhood men. Mawdudi supporters have also got state money
to revise the teaching of Islam in British universities.
Later this month, Labour may well lose the by-election in Glasgow East
to the Scottish National Party. Nearby, in Glasgow Central, the SNP
candidate is Osama Saeed. Mr Saeed is now the adviser on Islamic
matters for Alex Salmond, the First Minister. "Scotland can be the hub
for the Muslim world," he says. As part of the Scottish Contest
programme, he offers young Muslims "alternatives" to al-Qa'eda
material on the internet. This is how he proposes to do it: "When
people talk about deradicalisation, the last thing you want to do is
say you must be against terrorism." At various times, Mr Saeed has
told Western countries that they must change their foreign policy to
avoid being blown up, praised "martyrdom operations" (suicide bombing)
and called on Scottish Muslims to act "in defiance" of police
inquiries about terrorism. He is the Scottish spokesman of the Muslim
Brotherhood.
There is a theory behind all this. It is a sort of bastard child of
the Northern Ireland peace process. It says that the West is "morally
crippled" by its behaviour towards Muslims. It must reach out to all
those Islamist extremists who are not actually personally involved in
blowing anyone up and recognise, in the words of one of its
proponents, Alistair Crooke, that Islamism is "founded on
rehabilitated human values". Then it must empower them. Only they,
backed with our money, the theory goes, will be able to deliver the
terrorists.
Next week, a big exhibition at Olympia called Islam Expo, with stalls
from delightful governments like Sudan and Iran, will give a platform
to this grand coalition of Islamists under the banner of
"Understanding Political Islam". And a minister, Shahid Malik, will
appear on television for the anniversary of July 7, 2005 (when Muslim
extremists murdered British people of all religions), to say that
Muslims are "under siege like the Jews" under the Nazis.
So the solution to extremism is that extremists become the official
representatives of Islam in this country. Islamist mosques,
organisations and spokesmen will be treated as the true voice of
Muslims (and woe betide those Muslims who disagree). Then we shall get
a lot more sharia than Lord Phillips has bargained for.
Carole
<simple_...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3c56619b-2d9a-49d3...@a1g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
> source:
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/07/05/do0501.xml
>
> The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, was nice
> about sharia this week. It is not "only about mandating sanctions such
> as stoning, flogging, the cutting off of hands and death to those who
> do not comply with the law", he said. And the provisions of sharia "do
> not include the repression of women".
>
If a muslim man is allowed several wives, western women should be allowed
several husbands.
Why not?
Are men the dominant sex ...yes/ no/ maybe/ maybe not?
With women's lib and women being liberated from being treated as second
class citizens in a man's world, it is reasonable that what is good for the
goose is good for the gander.
So yes, western women should be allowed several husbands ie if muslim men
can get away with several wives.
Why not?
I'd have at least two -- one to fix the house and one to do the housework.
Carole
www.conspiracee.com
Polly the Parrot
> I'd have at least two -- one to fix the house and one to do the
> housework.
Can you let me know when you are interviewing for a third?
üDoug±Ç
news:saTbk.17440$IK1....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
What you propose sounds reasonable -- but reason has little to do w/sharia
law.
If you were to try proposing your theory in Indonesia, Malaysia or Pigistan
I'd expect
you would find out how reasonable islam really is. Let's not forget the
Teddy Bear
incident and the muslims calling for the death sentence to be imposed on the
poor
English woman who dared name her Teddy Bear Muhammad.
veritas
>
> What you propose sounds reasonable -- but reason has little to do w/sharia
> law.
> If you were to try proposing your theory in Indonesia, Malaysia or Pigistan
> I'd expect
> you would find out how reasonable islam really is. Let's not forget the
> Teddy Bear
> incident and the muslims calling for the death sentence to be imposed on the
> poor
> English woman who dared name her Teddy Bear Muhammad.
It's even worse than that, in fact, it was her Muslim students that actually
chose the name.
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