Posted on 10/31/2005 9:09:51 AM PST by Valin
Review of Radical Islam's Rules The Worldwide Spread of Extreme Shari'a Law Edited by Paul Marshall Rowman & Littlefield, 226 pp., $27.95
ITS IMAGES ARE ETCHED INTO our memory. In Bali, 202 people are incinerated in Kutu Beach nightclubs, punished for their "decadence." In Pakistan, Zafran Bibi, pregnant by rape, is sentenced to death by stoning, her pregnancy taken as proof of adultery. In Saudi Arabia, 15 girls, fleeing a burning dormitory in their nightdresses, are forced back into the flames by the mutawwiyya (religious militia) and die in the flames for violating "Islamic" standards of dress.
This, we are told, is sharia, Islamic law. But as the authors here explain, there is a crucial distinction to be made between traditional and extreme sharia, and at the outset they provide two essential insights. First, Paul Marshall defines radical Islamism as "a program for the restoration of a unified Muslim ummah, ruled by a new Caliphate, governed by reactionary Islamic sharia law, and organized to wage jihad on the rest of the world."
Second, extreme sharia is shown to be a radical departure from traditional sharia, the body of guidance for Muslims, organized in varied schools. These formulated a legal consensus based on the Koran, the hadith, the lives of the Prophet and his original companions, and precedents from early Muslim jurists. Traditional sharia--"the path" or "the way"--incorporates guidelines for marriage, economics, and criminal law that exemplify justice, "the right," and "the good."
By contrast, extreme sharia claims to manifest divine will. Because extreme sharia, says Nina Shea in her essay, "is maintained as God's direct reign on earth--and not simply a fallible human interpretation of sacred law--it precludes checks and balances, a separation of powers, real legislative power, the rule of law, and free elections."
The first Western glimpse of extreme sharia came with the Iranian revolution of 1979. Abolishing the rights granted by the 1906 Persian constitution and extended during the Pahlavi era, the revolutions forced women to cover themselves and accept complete personal control by men. The Baha'i and other dissenters from Shia Islamic orthodoxy were viciously suppressed, and personal freedoms all but vanished.
A doctrine of "bloodshed with impunity" created what Mehrangiz Kar, another contributor, calls "a vacuum that generates terror." Possessed of absolute governing power, Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa ordering the killing for blasphemy of Salman Rushdie, a British subject. Arrogating ever-increasing power to themselves, the nonelected Iranian Council of Guardians has vetoed every piece of reform legislation brought before it, and, in 2004, disqualified the candidacies of thousands of liberals standing for national election.
In Pakistan, extreme sharia arose in a legal environment made vulnerable to extremism by an unstable constitution. Its implementation has generated social havoc and near-total economic chaos. The country's powerful use terrifying blasphemy laws and gruesome hudud punishments--only rarely employed since the earliest Ottoman times--as coercive devices to intimidate dissenters. Pakistan stands in violation of virtually all international human rights agreements, including conventions against the use of torture and the inhumane treatment of children.
But the most brutal form of extreme sharia is the original one: Wahhabism, the state religion of Saudi Arabia, which spawned al Qaeda. It arose just 250 years ago in the desolate Nejd region of Arabia. "It is not conservative," writes Stephen Schwartz, in the opening essay, "but radical. . . . It is not based on sharia as understood during more than 1,000 years of Islamic jurisprudence but on a crude and ultrasimplistic interpretation that rejects the sharia embodied in the four established Sunni legal schools." Women are beaten in the streets for the slightest dress code violation, denied the vote, prohibited from driving, and have no rights even to the children they bear.
Wahhabi extremism did not remain within Saudi borders. Shocked by the Iranian Revolution, and fearful of rising Shia power in the region, the House of Saud launched a campaign for worldwide export of the Wahhabi version of sharia in 1980, funded by their oil wealth. Saudis appeared with Alhaji Ahmed Sani, the governor of Nigeria's Zamfara state, just days before he announced plans to implement sharia in his jurisdiction. Nigerian Islamists hope to institute extreme sharia in 19 of Nigeria's 36 states, and then to use the majority to force it on the rest of the country. The Saudi cultural attaché in Lagos, Sheikh Abdul-Aziz, reports that his government has followed developments in Nigeria closely and has noted the results "with delight."
In Sudan, the Saudis bankrolled the National Islamic Front (NIF), founded by the Muslim Brotherhood. Thus far, the NIF has starved or slaughtered as many as two million Christians, Muslims, and animists. In the case of the Nuba, an indigenous south Sudanese community, the NIF attempted an authentic genocide. As Hamouda Fathelrahman Bella relates here, Sudan today is a stark example of Islamic pluralism destroyed. The Sufi Islamic funj state in Sudan (1504-1821) was characterized by simple, flexible worship and a lenient "white sharia" that fostered harmony between peoples of different beliefs, races, and cultures. Today, Sudan could not be more different from its historical example.
In contrast to these atrocities, developments in Malaysia and Indonesia, as described by Peter G. Riddell, offer some hope. In the 2004 elections in both countries, the Muslim majority reinforced protection of previously established safeguards of religious pluralism. Politicians supporting Indonesia's Pancasila philosophy--defining God as a principle shared by all five of Indonesia's major religions (Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism)--triumphed over those supporting the so-called Jakarta Charter, rejected in the constitution, which would institutionalize sharia for all Muslims in Indonesia.
After years of slow Islamization under Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad, Malaysians returned to the vision of Tunku Abdul Rahman, the country's first prime minister: "There is no way we should have an Islamic state here," Rahman said. "We cannot force the non-Malays and non-Muslims to follow our way of life." Malays elected Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who holds a vision of Islam equated with progress, not a backward-looking vision of extreme sharia. His decisive victory, says Riddell, "has given a shot in the arm to Muslim governments elsewhere that are faced by conservative Islamist opponents who dream of creating sharia states."
Radical Islam's Rules concludes with a Rand Corporation assessment of the Afghan constitution and Nina Shea's recommendations for American responses to pressure to institute extreme sharia. A picture of an uninformed U.S. foreign policy emerges from both. A top State Department policy coordinator suggested that the Afghan bill of rights need not assert the right of individual religious freedom because "99.9 percent of the population is Muslim." The constitution was drafted without this safeguard, and thereafter, two journalists and a cabinet member in the interim government of Hamid Karzai have faced blasphemy charges. The "repugnancy" clause of the constitution provides that "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam."
Then there is America. In the confusion following 9/11, Washington sought ways to prevent radical Islamism from spreading here, only to discover it already had. Slipping in under the radar, Wahhabis had already gained control of 80 percent of all American mosques (and countless schools and charities) and now distribute anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and anti-American jihadist literature. The Armed Forces' Muslim chaplain program was established and run by Abdurahman Alamoudi, now serving a 23-year prison sentence for supporting terrorism.
Proponents of extreme sharia, Shea says, "outflank moderate Muslims in resources, institutions, infrastructure, and opportunities to influence American foreign policy makers." Among Shea's recommendations: that the United States stop the propagation by Saudi Arabia of all Wahhabi ideology on American soil--in mosques, schools, prisons, and the military--and that America urge other countries to do the same. R. James Woolsey adds another: "In combating this reactionary force, we must make common cause with the hundreds of millions of decent and reasonable Muslims in the world who want peace and prosperity for themselves and their families. . . . In supporting their struggle for democracy and against . . . extreme sharia, we are helping secure our own interest in a peaceful and prosperous world."
Rich with concise histories and a wealth of viable information on Islam, Radical Islam's Rules provides real clarity about sharia, both as the traditional body of guidance it has always been, and as the politicized, virulently oppressive control mechanism it has been deliberately manipulated to become.
Morgana Sinclair is a book editor in Washington and a research associate with the Center for Islamic Pluralism.
© Copyright 2005, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
Is this like comparing the color of two different dog droppings?
Thank you for your input. Rest assured it will be given all the consideration it deserves.
Like blue or white burkas?
Thank you.
LOL...you have become quite the gentleman.
Congrats!
Valin, you have found another good one. Stay on your radar.
Wanna Bet!
Remember this is the final day of National Sarcastic Awareness Month.
The very fact that there are Sunnis and Shiites for 1500 years illustrates that Islam has always been open to interpretation.
Unlike the Bible, the Koran has many contradictory passages. Over his life-time, the revelations to Mohammed "evolved", which seems very strange as those evloving revelations came from Allah who is absolute truth in the same sense that all children of Abraham understand.
So, under radical sharia, "Zafran Bibi, pregnant by rape, is sentenced to death by stoning"
But under traditional saria, "Zafran Bibi is sentenced to death by stoning, her pregnancy taken as proof of adultery"
Oh, ok, I see the difference.
What difference? One is mint flavored?
There's a simple and surefire method: don't let them colonize us. Don't let the settlers in. Repeal the '65 Autoholocaust Act. And recognize that we don't want Islam, extreme or traditional-extreme to have any say in how we live, and speak up about it.
"Dueling jihads".
There is only one way to interpret the Sharia. Interproet as would one of the first three Caliphs. Salifism has won the day in Islam, let's face up to it.
Salifism has won the day in Islam, let's face up to it.
Really? And just where do you see this? In Malaysia, where the radicals got their heads handed to them in the last election, ditto Indonesia. Maybe it's in Iraq & Afghanistan where Muslims are fighting and dieing at Americas side to defeat the terrorists. I KNOW, it's Algeria...no I just remembered they're fighting Islamic terrorist too. Darn it there has to be some where that they're winning and taking over...it's....ah...
Check out Saudi Arabia in 5 to 10 years and maybe Pakistan.
TODAY where are they winning?
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