It is not just in the west
Ziauddin Sardar sets the archbishop straight.
It is not just in the west, as the archbishop suggests, that the sharia is misunderstood, or where it conjures up instant images of oppression and brutality. It is also misunderstood by most Muslims in countries other than Britain, countries where it is seen as a total system of divine origin, and where it sometimes leads to oppression and brutality…The sharia needs to be reformed totally before it can be implemented anywhere – among the Muslim minorities in liberal democracies or in the Muslim-majority states. Giving the sharia as it stands legal sanction in Britain, even in limited areas, will replicate all the problems of gender inequality that it has produced in Muslim countries.
It would be nice if the archbishop could write that clearly and forthrightly (and succinctly).
Oh, I dunno. According to Ghena Krayem, a casual lecturer at the faculty of law, University of Sydney (who is doing a PhD on Islamic family law in Australia) and Haisam Farache, a solicitor and imam at Lakemba mosque, sharia has had a bad press, and this has hidden its useful aspects. It’s not just chopping off of hands and stoning ‘adulteresses’ to death. There’s a bit more to it.
Rad all about it at
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/grim-picture-of-sharia-hides-its-useful-aspects/2008/02/17/1203190646668.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
But nobody claims that chopping and stoning is all it is. That’s a red herring.
OB: “But nobody claims that chopping and stoning is all it is. That’s a red herring.”
Herring it might be, and red as a fire engine, but it certainly trumps whatever sharia says about, say, contract or traffic law.
From the linked article:
“While it needs to be acknowledged that atrocities have been committed against women overseas in the name of Islam, it also needs to be acknowledged that such practices have no basis in the religion itself. More than 1400 years ago Islam afforded women rights comparable to those in our contemporary international human rights documents.
“It is not Islam but other factors, notably cultural practices alien to the religion itself, which are the cause of the mistreatment of women.”
Here as I see it is one of Islam’s greatest problems, in a nutshell. The religion is not what is written down, any more than Christianity is. It is what is practiced. Imams and Islamic spokesmen the world over are quick to condemn what is more liberal and tolerant than their scriptures allow, but damned slow to come down on what is more intolerant, and more oppressive.
In the interest of presenting a united front to the world, whatever the imams might say about practices “that have no basis in the religion itself”, they say in private, and in dulcet tones.
Chopping and stoning might not be all that it is, but its certainly enough to cause me to lose interest in any project to apply it more widely. And I’m sure I’m not alone there.
To me the problem is the source of law. Sharia is law by divine revelation, that does not accord with Western ideas of rational democracy. Sharia is totally against ‘man-made’ law (as for ‘female-made law’ that’s impossible for a Muslim)so it’s not so much the content but how the law is derived and who it is applied to. Are we rationalists or not?
Oh I see. I missed the tone of your first comment, Ian. Well yes; just so.
Sue, I would say it’s both the content and how it’s derived. The derivation would be a lot more tolerable if it were all ‘Be good to one another.’
I thought the whole point about sharia law was that it is not in fact purely derived from religious revelation (the Quran) but also ‘sayings’ of the prophet and his mates, various ‘interpetations’ and even just local ‘custom’.
That is one of the reasons why it differs between different countries.
G.Tingey: “That alone should make the strict observance of islam illegal in any country that observes the EU human rights code – shouldn’t it?”
Yes, one would think so.
Thanks for the point from the ‘recital’. It has improved my ignorance of Islam enormously.