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Medieval Islamic Shariah law in a Modern secular world…. ?
by Humanist International,
The response to the Archbishop of Canterbury's confused lecture on 7 February 2008, " Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective", has included discussion of the character of the "medieval and repressive sharia" that formed an important part of the address.
It is a valid argument that there is no fixed and
settled system of law called sharia; that this word does not, originally, had the meaning of "law", and is not indeed cognate with the word for "path" or"street". It is also useful recalling that the various schools of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) have issued divergent opinions down the centuries on all kinds of legal matters; and one may conclude that it is not sensible of the Church of England's spiritual leader to anticipate some compromise between the United Kingdom's modern and secular jurisdiction and the medieval and suppressive Islamic sharia.
The divine and the human
It is necessary to remind people in Britain (and Europe) of what they suffered of the dreadful religion in the shape of the Christian legacy. And one of the horrors that they owe to that Christian legacy is the idea that under religion, the law becomes merely a maid in the hands of the religious bureaucracy of fascist bishops and paedophile priests, the rapacious monks and the sexually immoral nuns-the religious prostitutes. The same religious bureaucracy which tortured, burned and killed millions of Europeans for witchcraft and heresy under the infamous Christian Inquisition. That only a secular institution, whose authority is founded in reasonable and rational human decisions can guarantee the fundamental human dignity, rights and civil liberties. Such institutions which are
independent of religion make ethical rules that takes precedence over the so-called and fictional divine commands.
Religiously brainwashed, socially primitive and medieval-minded Muslims may find it difficult to accept a civilized and secular vision of law. But it is time to ponder. How can the so-called fictional divine commands take precedence over rational and reasonable human decisions ? How can some real, rational and reasonable human institutions be set aside on the assumption of a demand by a merely fictional Allah or God ?
As to Islamic sharia laws produced by the Islamic fiqh
(quasi-legal) schools, it must be held all such schools of fiqh were human institutions which tried to humanise the repressive and barbaric Islamic Bedouin quasi-legal customs and traditions. As such their ijtihad (effort at renewal of religious prescriptions) was expended on showing that the fictional divine law, as revealed in the Qur'an, and as concocted on the name the Sunnah (sayings and actions of the Prophet of Islam collected 250 years after his death), might be made compatible with the social and administrative practises found to be necessary in governing various colonies which the barbaric Islamic Arab Bedouins conquered with their brutal and insatiable swords. These efforts were by turns approved and disapproved, and changed hundred times according to whims
of the conquerors and their lust for brutal misrule, female sex slaves and war booty.
By the time the Ottomans (19th century) strove to release the Muslim people out of the shackles of the primitive Islamic barbarism into the modern world, there was no choice but to adopt modern European codes of law, while allowing the various communities within the empire to settle matters of marriage, domestic strife and inheritance according to their own community traditions, without ever giving any legal status to these barbaric practises.
The cost of compromise
The European vision of law is very different, and its roots are deep. Europe has suffered long centuries of medieval Christianity which was trying to re-establish the ancient and barbaric Roman Empire on the name of Christianity.
An Europe harassed by the fire, swords and the murderous political manipulations by the Christian popes, had to submit to a pronouncement in the story of the tribute money, that we should render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's. This has served for many centuries as authority for the view that, in public matters, it is secular and human authority and not the Christian pope’s divine government that should be obeyed. This idea gained credibility through the Roman agent and an early Christian leader St Paul's letters, influenced as they were by Roman tradition and law and by the knowledge that the early church enjoyed the protection of the developed legal system of the Roman Empire.
This law, although tolerant at the beginning, soon claimed the absolute religious authority for the Christian religion. The pre-Christian pagan Roman law was equally tolerant of all gods who did not openly confront with the political authority of the Roman emperor and made annual sacrifices on the altar of the emperor. Even if religious edicts crept back into European jurisdictions after the triumph of Christianity, the Roman vision of secular sovereignty as exercised through civil law survived into modern times. It
served as the foundation of national jurisdictions, and shaped legal systems in which religious diversity is merely permitted as long as it doesn't n’t interfere the concern of the secular state.
This kind of secular jurisdiction has enabled people to accept the legitimacy of law which clearly is different from what they believe to be the fictional divine command. People in Britain must accept the legality of secular law which includes fundamental human
rights, civil liberties, as well as the consensual adult male-female natural sexual relationship and medically advised abortion; we must allow our children to marry whom they will and also to divorce when the going gets really impossible, these being few of the rules that may conflict with the medieval and often superstitious and repressive religious convictions.
Moreover any change in these provisions is to be secured by decisions taken in parliament, by elected representatives whose religious views are often kept behind the scene, and whose private conduct is their personal affair. Europeans, whether belonging to religious
groups like Christians, Hindus, Buddhists or Jews accept the secular law in the civil and criminal matters. Muslims have got to accept it too. For that is the basis on which we are governed. If you don't accept it, then you should explain why it is wrong and why Muslim community should be governed on the basis of a medieval Muslim mis-understanding of law (like forced marriages, female-genital-mutilation, multiple wives, beating of women, female sex-slaves, stoning of women, flogging, cutting of hands and feet for theft, beheading for apostasy and blasphemy, slavery etc. etc.).
These Islamic practises are often repugnant to the civilised European law codes; so if the Muslims and Bedouins do not like the civilised ways, they should go back to their Islamic deserts on their Islamic
camels, to backward and barbaric Islamic countries where people are repressed in away more congenial to their barbaric medieval Muslim mentalit and sadist sensibilities. In Iran, Bahais are facing mass-murders and extinction, a fate which awaits Coptics in Egypt and Ahmedis and Hindus in pakistan. Sudan is a clear example of genocide of non-Arabs in our own time.
For many in Islamic countries, the decision on legal codes is not about how the citizens should best be governed now, but about what the Arabian Bedouin ancestor, made deity-the Allah, had intended and had revealed 1,500 years ago what nonsense, what imbecility… !
As for the Archbishop of Canterbury, it is surely the case that his words, however superficially qualified, betray a lack of knowledge and respect for one of the great European achievements - the achievement of a continent that has survived by resisting
Christian fascist attacks on their civic institution, on the bodies as well as on the minds of women and men.
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as other articles listed below or in the yahoogroup mentioned, whole or part, in English or in translation in any other language. Other Rights reserved for the author).
See other interesting articles by the same author on this topic :
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has spent the last couple of years trying to destroy the global Anglican Communion from inside...... »
The anti-Shariah storm
What is Islamic Shariah… ?
Repression of women in Islam
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