Sharia for toddlers
It’s kind of the BBC to explain about sharia for us.
Sharia rulings have been developed to help Muslims understand how they should lead every aspect of their lives according to God’s wishes.
Well, not exactly – not according to God’s wishes, because no one knows what those are (or if there are such things); according to what they think are God’s wishes. The BBC tactfully skipped over that rather important difference, but that is what’s at stake here. Not God’s wishes but what believers believe are God’s wishes (and the rest of us don’t).
Apostasy, or leaving the faith, is a very controversial issue in the Muslim world and the majority of scholars believe it is punishable by death…The Koran itself declares there is “no compulsion” in religion.
Uh huh. And Sura 40 says that those who reject the scriptures will have iron collars and chains placed around their necks, be dragged into scalding water and burnt in the fire. The Beeb doesn’t mention that though.
The most amazing item is the last. In reply to the rather gormless question ‘So women have reservations about Sharia?’ Dominic Casciani says:
Some Muslim women in the West would be worried about protection of their rights in Sharia courts where there is discrimination against them because of patriarchal and cultural control in their communities. This does not mean that they are necessarily opposed to Sharia – only there are live concerns about the fairness of its application. It’s fair to say that many leading Muslim women are more concerned about how existing British equality measures and human rights laws can be used to improve their position and voice in society.
You bet; perfectly fair.
“Some Muslim women in the West would be worried about protection of their rights in Sharia courts “
That seems to be true. Odd that they forgot to mention that some women in the East share this concern.
Steady JohnM, we don’t want to appear orientalist or imperialist…
“Patriarchal and cultural control”. Yeah – nothing to do with Islam at all. It seems that Casciani has something of a history of this sort of thing: http://rottypup.com/?p=802. A most compliant useful idiot.
“Why is Sharia mentioned in the same breath as public executions?”
“Of all the issues around Islamic law, this remains the most controversial in Western eyes – and its presentation the most infuriating for Muslims.
Muslims say the Western world misrepresents Sharia by focusing on beheadings in Saudi Arabia and other gruesome punishments. The equivalent, they say, would be a debate about the history of Western law focused on America’s electric chair.”
Interesting that they don’t mention the offences that lead to capital punishment.
But my main concern is that there is no recognition that the main difference between Sharia and Western law is that between revealed truth and rational change. The latter is capable of complete change. The former cannot be changed, the only possibility of reform being interpretation, which is surely a major limiting factor.