Re: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/message/15981

Dear Moderator,
Please post the attached response. Thanks.



I thank Ms. Yasmin for her candid remarks.

She said: “sharia is supposed to be derived at from 4 sources, the koran being
the primary source, if there was nothing in it to help, the next chronological
sources to be used are the hadith and sunna. The fourth step, if there was still
nothing that satisfied the querent’s mind, would be ijtihad (deduction) to be
decided by ijmaa’ (consensus) and following qiyas (analogy to similar events
already ruled on). So apart from the koran the other steps are all man made and
many sharia laws are in contradiction with the Koran itself.”

My response: From the above remarks, I conclude: 1. The Quran is not complete in
itself; 2. Whosoever says that the Quran is a complete book of guidance is a
liar. 3. It does not have a complete code of life, as Muslims claim, for its
followers; 4. It is not as clear and straightforward as its writer’s has claimed
in, for example, verse 2 of Sura Kahf (18).

I hope Ms. Yasmin will agree with my above conclusions.

Ms. Yasmin said: “actually there are rules to that, it is not just as simple as
cut off a thief's hand, a hand of a thief should only be cut off if the thief is
not hungry, has a job and clothes for himself and his family, i.e. is not
stealing out of need. Omar Ibn al Khattan himself questioned the practice of
cutting off a thief's hand when there was famine and he felt responsible for
people stealing to satisfy the hunger of their children. He asked the scholars
at his time if it shouldn't be rightfully his hand to be cut off instead because
he failed to provide for his people?”

My response: Actually, the Quran says the following: “As to the thief, male or
female, cut off his or her hand; a punishment by way of example, from God for
their crime: And God is Exalted in Power.” (5;41).

The verse is straightforward and it does not have the conditions as Ms. Yasmin
has mentioned. The conditions, which she has mentioned, were added to the Sharia
Law by its framers, after realizing that what God has prescribed to be the
punishment for theft was very harsh and brutal, and a thief does not deserve it
at all. It was the humans’ compassion over the All-Knowing and Almighty God’s
irrational and barbaric stipulation that made them to add the conditions to the
Sharia law. Otherwise, they would have felt guilty of committing a crime of an
unimaginable magnitude.

Omar’s action had emanated from his concern for the welfare of the humanity. His
‘questioning the practice of cutting off a thief’s hand’ shows that he had a
better ability of being rationale than was God in His pronouncements.

Ms. Yasmin said: “actually this statement is wrong, let me give you one example,
koran says that the punishment for adultry is 100 lashes for both committers,
male & female, it makes no destinction between married or unmarried offenders,
while sharia stipulates that married offenders be stoned to death, while
unmarried ones get the 100 lashes. And there are more examples like that where
the mullahs have derived a sharia from Allah knows where, while the koran says
something different.”

My response: The Quranic verse that Ms. Yasmin has in her mind is 24:2. This
verse appears in the Quran without any introduction or a preamble. Because
reading this verse, as it appears in the Quran, does not give its reader a real
sense of direction, the framers of the Sharia Law relied upon qiyas and came up
with what we find described in the ‘man-made’ Sharia Law.

Why should we try to find faults with the framers of the Sharia Laws, if they
depended, primarily, on the Quran, and not finding in it what they were looking
for, on the Hadith and
Sunnah of the Prophet, ijtihad, ijmaa and qiyas?

Ms. Yasmin asserted: “The muslims have not begun dividing themselves into sects
while the prophet was still alive. Please go back and study the history
properly, the first real division occured in Ali's time, the schism between shia
and sunni muslims, and then more divisions happened later, but during the
prophet's time there were no different sects, it was one only and it
had no name, they were all muslims, just muslims.”

My response: This verse of the Quran should correct Ms. Yasmin’s ‘historical’
error. It says: “As for those who divide their religion and break up into sects,
thou {Muhammad} hast no part in them in the least: Their affair is with God: He
will in the end tell them the truth of all that they did (6:159).

Regards,
Mohammad Asghar

March 29, 2004