Sharia Law

Mark Hamill

irishconvert wrote: »

With all due respect but that is a really ridiculous arguement. It's like saying we should abolish the whole banking system because a few people at the top stole from us.

Not really. The difference is that the banking system is recognised as being man-made and so people are generally a bit open to it being fallible and will change aspects they see as needing change. Shariah is supposed to be divinely authored. If you start changing aspects of sharia that need changing, then you must question how the source came up with such a flawed sytem in the first place, and since the source was supposedly god, you do end up questioning the whole thing. Its not neccessary that the whole thing should be completely abolished, but the whole thing needs to be completely re-assessed.

irishconvert

doctoremma wrote: »

Can you clarify in what way this woman was adulterous? Remember, she was divorced i.e. single and a free individual. She was punished, by torturous death, for a "crime" that hurt nobody. Can you describe the criminal "impact" of her actions? Can you tell me how it was anybody else's business except the woman and her partner?

Look, I am not defending what happened to this woman, actually I disgree with it and I don't agree with their interpretation of Sharia Law. But I am asking you to leave this case out of it for a minute as I don't believe it is a fair reflection of Sharia Law.

doctoremma wrote: »

I am not downplaying the impact of adultery in a relationship, with or without kids, but that clearly doesn't apply to this case.

In terms of damage to myself, I would rather be (non-violently) pickpocketed. But I would not feel a desire to recourse to law if my partner was adulterous. It is a matter for me to decide his fate, not the state. He has hurt nobody except me. He is not able to repeat the crime the next day to someone else. He is not a menace to people in general.

If people are seeing adultry all around them, without any consequences, it makes it more acceptable to society. It results in broken families. In Islam, the family unit is very important.

Look, I am trying to appeal to your reasonability here in that it is not right to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" and reject the many good points of Sharia law because of some extreme inperpretations in certain parts of the world. Is there any aspect to Sharia law you find good?

Mark Hamill

irishconvert wrote: »

Why do people downplay the impact of adultry? Which do you think causes more hurt, a woman being pickpocketed and losing their purse, or a woman who has been cheated on by her husband?

Why does society think the pick pocket should be punished but not the cheating husband? Islamic law decrees that there should be a punishment for the person who commits adultry. Forget about the actual punishment for a moment, we can come back to it but do you accept that adultry has a more devistating effect on the victim than simple pick pocketing?

You cannot forget about the actual punishment as the punishment is the issue. I dont think anyone is claiming that adultery cannot have a devasting effect on its voctims, but you have to ask doe sthe punishment fit the crime. Killing someone for cheating on their spouse is an act of revenge, not an act of justice.

irishconvert

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Not really. The difference is that the banking system is recognised as being man-made and so people are generally a bit open to it being fallible and will change aspects they see as needing change. Shariah is supposed to be divinely authored. If you start changing aspects of sharia that need changing, then you must question how the source came up with such a flawed sytem in the first place, and since the source was supposedly god, you do end up questioning the whole thing. Its not neccessary that the whole thing should be completely abolished, but the whole thing needs to be completely re-assessed.

Ok, I agree my banking example was a bad example, but I think you get my general point that you can't throw out a whole system because of the extreme intrepretations of certain Muslims.

Mark Hamill

irishconvert wrote: »

If people are seeing adultry all around them, without any consequences, it makes it more acceptable to society. It results in broken families. In Islam, the family unit is very important.

If adultery doesn't actually have any consequences then it wouldn't be a crime. It does have consequences, everyone recognises that, no one here is trying to claim that it doesn't. Its the punishment that is the issue.

irishconvert wrote: »

Look, I am trying to appeal to your reasonability here in that it is not right to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" and reject the many good points of Sharia law because of some extreme inperpretations in certain parts of the world. Is there any aspect to Sharia law you find good?

How can you just keep some parts of sharia law if you disregard others? Is sharia law not divinely authored?

doctoremma

irishconvert wrote: »

Look, I am not defending what happened to this woman, actually I disgree with it and I don't agree with their interpretation of Sharia Law. But I am asking you to leave this case out of it for a minute as I don't believe it is a fair reflection of Sharia Law.

I'm sure you speak for most Mulims when you reject this interpretation. Unfortuntely not all and that is what strikes fear into people. If you have time, is it possible for you to clarify what the alternative interpretations might be? I understood is was explicit that adulterers are stoned?

irishconvert wrote: »

If people are seeing adultry all around them, without any consequences, it makes it more acceptable to society. It results in broken families. In Islam, the family unit is very important.

The family unit is important to a lot of people, religious or not. And I hear you. I work with a Muslim girl whose parents no longer recognise her as their daughter because she divorced her husband. The family unit is apparently so important that parents disown their child for the crime of not submitting dutifully.

irishconvert wrote: »

Look, I am trying to appeal to your reasonability here in that it is not right to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" and reject the many good points of Sharia law because of some extreme inperpretations in certain parts of the world. Is there any aspect to Sharia law you find good?

I don't know the fine details of Sharia law so am not in optimum position to comment. How about this (if you are willing): you give me a few ideas that are specific to Sharia law i.e. not commonly accepted legal practice in the secular world, and we'll go from there?

irishconvert

Mark Hamill wrote: »

How can you just keep some parts of sharia law if you disregard others? Is sharia law not divinely authored?

There is disagreement amoung Muslims. The Qur'an says the punishment for adultry is lashes. It doesn't say anything about stoning. The stoning comes from a hadith, which is really a witness report of the teachings and ways of Prophet Muhammed. Some hadith are considered authentic, others are unreliable.

Hobart

doctoremma wrote: »

I'm sure you speak for most Mulims when you reject this interpretation. Unfortuntely not all and that is what strikes fear into people. If you have time, is it possible for you to clarify what the alternative interpretations might be? I understood is was explicit that adulterers are stoned?

Again, it's interpretation, and I think that your question is very unfair to be honest. Leviticus 21:9 states that some women should be burnt for losing their virginity, before marriage. Deuteronomy 25:11-12 states (very clearly) that a women should be punished for defending her husband from another, if in that defence she should grab or kick the genitals of the attacker.

Do Catholics, in general, enact these laws? No, is the answer. Do all Muslims stone "adulterous" women/men? No, they don't.

irishconvert

doctoremma wrote: »

I'm sure you speak for most Mulims when you reject this interpretation. Unfortuntely not all and that is what strikes fear into people. If you have time, is it possible for you to clarify what the alternative interpretations might be? I understood is was explicit that adulterers are stoned?

Please see my reply to Mark above.

irishconvert wrote: »

The family unit is important to a lot of people, religious or not. And I hear you. I work with a Muslim girl whose parents no longer recognise her as their daughter because she divorced her husband. The family unit is apparently so important that parents disown their child for the crime of not submitting dutifully.

That is down to their own culture, it is not Islamic teaching to do this AFAIK.

irishconvert wrote: »

I don't know the fine details of Sharia law so am not in optimum position to comment. How about this (if you are willing): you give me a few ideas that are specific to Sharia law i.e. not commonly accepted legal practice in the secular world, and we'll go from there?

I will come back to you on this later InshaAllah if you don't mind. Need to get some work done!

philologos

Just a question:
If we are to support the death penalty for committing adultery on the basis that God has decreed it, how does this affect the hypothesis of God being merciful?

Hobart wrote:

Do Catholics, in general, enact these laws? No, is the answer. Do all Muslims stone "adulterous" women/men? No, they don't.

Christians in general don't because:
1) The Jewish State doesn't exist under Torah law
2) Jesus fulfilled the legal and ceremonial commands of the Law of Moses.

As for whether or not grabbing anothers genitals in an argument or in a fight is acceptable. I'd still say it's immoral.

doctoremma

Hobart wrote: »

Again, it's interpretation, and I think that your question is very unfair to be honest. Leviticus 21:9 states that some women should be burnt for losing their virginity, before marriage. Deuteronomy 25:11-12 states (very clearly) that a women should be punished for defending her husband from another, if in that defence she should grab or kick the genitals of the attacker.

Do Catholics, in general, enact these laws? No, is the answer. Do all Muslims stone "adulterous" women/men? No, they don't.

Not unfair. I'm questioning the use of the word "interpretation". It's fine to say "Well, the text says this but I think we all agree that we're not actually going to do that". The problem there is, you are juxtaposing your own sense of morality onto your "moral authority" and demonstrating that you don't need any books to tell you what is right and what is wrong. This is interpreting text correctly but rejecting it. When people dicker over "interpretation", they usually claim that words can mean different things etc. I was asking if it explicity says "Adulterers will be stoned to death".

Hobart

Jakkass wrote: »

Just a question:
If we are to support the death penalty for committing adultery on the basis that God has decreed it, how does this affect the hypothesis of God being merciful?

I hate answering a question with a question, but why did God allow Hitler to exist? Why did God allow children to killed in Cambodia by having their heads smashed against a tree? Why are pedophiles allowed to carry out their tasks, when God see's everything? My answer?, is because God is either having a laugh, or does not exist, but that's a whole other argument.

irishconvert

Hobart wrote: »

I hate answering a question with a question, but why did God allow Hitler to exist? Why did God allow children to killed in Cambodia by having their heads smashed against a tree? Why are pedophiles allowed to carry out their tasks, when God see's everything? My answer?, is because God is either having a laugh, or does not exist, but that's a whole other argument.

This debate is not up for discussion here and is against the charter. Please take it elsewhere.

Hobart

irishconvert wrote: »

This debate is not up for discussion here and is against the charter. Please take it elsewhere.

I'm not debating anything. I answered a question, in the best way I can. I also indicated that it was not really a matter for this thread, I thought that that was clear.

It seems intolerance is not just the preserve of those with stones in their hands.

I'll bid this thread adieu, and leave you to it so. Thanks.

irishconvert

Hobart wrote: »

I'm not debating anything. I answered a question, in the best way I can. I also indicated that it was not really a matter for this thread, I thought that that was clear.

It seems intolerance is not just the preserve of those with stones in their hands.

I'll bid this thread adieu, and leave you to it so. Thanks.

If I was intolerant I would have banned you for 1) breaking the charter and 2) for this post. You should know better as a mod yourself.

philologos

Hobart wrote: »

I hate answering a question with a question, but why did God allow Hitler to exist? Why did God allow children to killed in Cambodia by having their heads smashed against a tree? Why are pedophiles allowed to carry out their tasks, when God see's everything? My answer?, is because God is either having a laugh, or does not exist, but that's a whole other argument.

This isn't answering my question in the slightest. I'm asking for an Islamic perspective on how they reconcile what they see as the mercy of God with stoning people to death for adultery.

In my Christian perspective:
God doesn't step in for every time that humans screw up. He doesn't step in precisely when He wants humankind to learn from their mistakes.

I personally think that society has learned much more from the Holocaust than in the numerous other events that had gone before it.

Mark Hamill

irishconvert wrote: »

There is disagreement amoung Muslims. The Qur'an says the punishment for adultry is lashes. It doesn't say anything about stoning. The stoning comes from a hadith, which is really a witness report of the teachings and ways of Prophet Muhammed. Some hadith are considered authentic, others are unreliable.

Why is the hadith still there if it seemingly contradicts the quran? Why would Muhammed do something that wasn't supported by the quran (give one punishment for adultery when he had written, under gods direction, that lashing was the punishment for it)?

BlaasForRafa

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Why is the hadith still there if it seemingly contradicts the quran? Why would Muhammed do something that wasn't supported by the quran (give one punishment for adultery when he had written, under gods direction, that lashing was the punishment for it)?

The Koran may have been told to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel but the hadiths from my understanding were reports written by people about what Mohammed said and did. I would presume that the reporters own biases may have (intentionally or unintentionally) coloured and perhaps even changed the intent of what Mohammed meant.

Over time the narrators of the hadiths may have changed the contents so that some of them are incompatible or contradictory to what the Koran says.

The seperation of church and state and an impartial judiciary are important parts of western democracy and are incompatible with Sharia law which is reminiscent of the Spanish inquisition which christianity managed to get past hundreds of years ago.

MrPudding

imported_guy wrote: »

if a punishment is grave, the crime wont occur, if you start giving out capital punishment to pedos, we wont have any pedo bears roaming around, same with robbries, etc etc, if we had capital punishment for nearly every major crime, i GURANTEE you there will be significantly less criminal activities

just my €.02

If capital punishment was such a good deterrent then why are countries that carry out executions still have to execute people? Criminals do not carry out criminal activity thinking they are going to get caught. It might be a deterrent to you but, assuming you are not a criminal, you don't think like a criminal. Personally I don’t think capital punishment makes a huge amount of difference and any difference is does make is not worth the price.

irishconvert wrote: »

Here is a story of a paedophile who has been sentanced to death by beheading for sex attacks on 5 children including a 3 year old boy. Many of the readers comments are backing the punishment and would like to see something similar in Britian for paedophiles

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1225006/Saudi-Arabian-paedophile-beheaded-crucified-string-sex-attacks-including-left-toddler-die-desert.html

Hard cases make bad law. Look at almost any crime personally and subjectively and you will find someone that thinks the perpetrator should be killed. I am vehemently opposed to capital punishment or lashes or anything like that, but if someone touched one of my kids I would execute them myself. Very emotive stuff like this need to be looked at objectively.

imported_guy wrote: »

it isnt. research before posting your getting annoying now.

Excellent advise. I look forward to your posting your research showing that that capital punishment, as well as other sadistic types of punishment, are an effective deterrent.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

If muslims truely believed in giving to charity then the law should be entirely unneccessary. Its not charity if you are forced to do it.

I believe it is called tax.


MrP

Mark Hamill

BlaasForRafa wrote: »

The Koran may have been told to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel but the hadiths from my understanding were reports written by people about what Mohammed said and did. I would presume that the reporters own biases may have (intentionally or unintentionally) coloured and perhaps even changed the intent of what Mohammed meant.

Over time the narrators of the hadiths may have changed the contents so that some of them are incompatible or contradictory to what the Koran says.

Well that answers the second part of my post (and it was pretty much what I was expecting), but it doesn't really answer the first. The hadith must be seen as the most compromised part of islamic teachings. They are stories about Muhammed written by people who presumably were not under the same compulsion as he to be completely honest in their writings as he was when writing the quran. So you have to question why people still look to them in cases where there is a definite contradiction between the two, such as in the punishment for adultery.

hivizman

Mark Hamill wrote: »

The hadith must be seen as the most compromised part of islamic teachings. They are stories about Muhammed written by people who presumably were not under the same compulsion as he to be completely honest in their writings as he was when writing the quran.

This thought occurred to Muslims in the generations after the death of Muhammad and his Companions (those who actually knew Muhammad). Many people were presenting traditions that they claimed to be statements or actions of Muhammad. In many cases these traditions favoured particular groups, for example, the Umayyad Caliphs who had taken power after the assassination of Ali, the fourth of the "rightly guided Caliphs", and Muhammad's son-in-law (supporters of Ali went on to be known as the Shi'a).

Because people began to suspect that a lot of traditions were in fact invented, the "Science of Hadith" developed as a means of trying to authenticate genuine hadiths and reject false ones. Scholars began to make collections of hadiths, and over the 200 years or so after the death of Muhammad, some of these collections gained status as authoritative. The main collections are those of Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Bukhari (died 870 - collection known as Sahih Bukhari) and Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj al-Naysaburi (died 875 - collection known as Sahih Muslim), although there are several other well respected collections of hadiths.

Much of the authentication of a particular hadith depended on the isnad, or chain of transmission back to the original narrator who heard the Prophet say something or observed him do (or avoid) something. The hadith scholars went to great pains to determine whether those transmitting hadiths were trustworthy, and whether it was physically possible for one person to have transmitted the hadith to the next person in the chain. It is said that Bukhari considered several hundred thousand potential hadiths but rejected most of them - his final collection reproduces about 7,400 narrations, but because many of these are different transmissions of the same original episode, there are only around 2,600 separate traditions reported by Bukhari.

Even though most contemporary Muslim scholars take the appearance of a tradition in Bukhari and/or Muslim as fairly conclusive that the event being narrated actually occurred, it is possible, though difficult, to criticise even these sources. In particular, if a tradition has been transmitted through one or two chains of transmission, it carries less weight than one transmitted through many chains, particularly as a basis for law-making.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

So you have to question why people still look to them in cases where there is a definite contradiction between the two, such as in the punishment for adultery.

The various hadiths about stoning as a punishment for zina (illegal sexual intercourse) in Bukhari are in Book 82 "Punishment of Disbelievers at War with Allah and his Messenger". The title represents a view (supported by some hadiths) that a Muslim who commits one of the sins singled out for punishment in the Qur'an becomes an unbeliever. There are several hadiths reporting that Muhammad ordered stoning as a punishment for zina, but there are also some hadiths that at least raise the possibility that these events took place before the verse in Surah an-Nur on the punishment for zina (lashes rather than stoning) was revealed.

The various hadiths seem to be multiple narrations of three basic events. In the first of these, the woman accused of zina was Jewish, and her tribe was not going to impose the punishment of stoning set out in the Torah. However, Muhammad insisted that the Jewish punishment was stoning, and Jews were obliged to enforce their own laws properly. This story could be explained away by saying that the main characters were not Muslims.

The second story involves a young man who goes to the Prophet and basically confesses, even though Muhammad provides various opportunities for the man to avoid punishment (he asks the man whether he is mad, whether perhaps he only kissed or winked at the woman concerned, whether he actually achieved full penetration - the hadith suggests that Muhammad used a more robust term - and various other questions that seem to be an attempt to give the young man an escape clause).

The third story is about a father whose son had committed zina with his boss's wife. The father had originally compensated his son's employer with 100 sheep and a slave, but the hadith hints that the employer wanted more, and called on Muhammad to "judge according to Allah's Law". Muhammad pointed out that the son should be lashed, and ordered the employer to return the sheep and the slave to the father. However, Muhammad also asked a Companion to investigate the wife's role, and the hadith reports that the wife confessed to zina and was stoned.

Finally, Bukhari reports a hadith reporting the words of Umar, the second caliph, that claimed that, despite the absence of a verse in the Qur'an imposing stoning as the punishment for zina, this punishment was still what Allah had revealed and the Prophet had enforced.

The fact that Bukhari had collected and reported these hadiths on stoning suggests that he did not consider the punishment to be inappropriate, which implies that, by the third century of Islam, the jurists were by and large of the opinion that the proper punishment for zina was stoning, if the offender were married, or one hundred lashes, if the offender were unmarried. The force of this punishment was mitigated by the difficulty in obtaining a conviction - there had to be four witnesses for the actual act of penetration - unless there was a confession, or manifest evidence of zina in the form of a child. Even here, many judges followed the practice of the Prophet (as documented in hadiths reported by Bukhari and others) of trying to find an alternative explanation for the child's birth rather than adultery.

However, the persistence into the 21st century of stoning for illicit sexual intercourse enforced by those who claim to be upholding Sharia is, in my opinion, a black mark against those who use Sharia as a tool for continued male domination, who ignore the clear words of the Qur'an imposing a punishment of lashes rather than stoning, and even then deferring or annulling the punishment for those who are genuinely repentant.

Panrich

Stoning as a punishment should have been left in the stone ages.

kumate_champ07

af_thefragile wrote: »

Why is Sharia Law frown down upon by the majority of people in the world when they don't even have the slightest clue of what it is?!

People think Sharia Law is all about stoning innocent women to death and chopping off heads and arms and nothing could be further from the truth than that.

If one takes the time to actually find out what Islamic Sharia actually is he'll find out it probably is the most just and sensible system of governance.
Most modern concepts of human rights, ethics, freedom of speech, welfare state and even many notions of women's rights where derived from the Islamic system of governance, the Caliphate, especially the Rashidun Caliphate which was the earliest and considered the finest Caliphate.


Its quite a pity that most muslims themselves have no clue about what the Sharia actually is and how the Islamic state was run during the early Islamic age which was centuries ahead of any other civilization in the world.

The media and people with no clue and knowledge about the Islamic system of governance and Jurisprudence keep constantly defaming it while most muslims can't even retaliate because of their own lack of knowledge.

I think its about time muslims stand up for themselves and what they believe in and respond back to the constant attacks against their religion. Its time muslims put up a voice of their own in the world and stop everyone else speak for them.

dont you mean he/she?

old_aussie

How and why did Muhammad die?

I know how and why Christ died

irishconvert

kumate_champ07 wrote: »

dont you mean he/she?

Don't be so pedantic. Please only post if you have something constructive to add.

kumate_champ07

irishconvert wrote: »

Don't be so pedantic. Please only post if you have something constructive to add.

I was simply pointing out the hypocrisy in his statement

The Recliner

kumate_champ07 wrote: »

I was simply pointing out the hypocrisy in his statement

I find that unlikely

Don't post again unless you have something constructive to add, any further posts like that will lead to a banning

imported_guy

old_aussie wrote: »

How and why did Muhammad die?

I know how and why Christ died

natural causes brah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed#Farewell_pilgrimage_and_death

kumate_champ07

imported_guy wrote: »

natural causes brah.

old war wounds/injuries?

imported_guy

kumate_champ07 wrote: »

old war wounds/injuries?

no check the link, i know its wikipedia, but not everything on there is incorrect.

A few months after the farewell pilgrimage, Muhammad fell ill and suffered for several days with head pain and weakness. He died on Monday, June 8, 632, in Medina.