alt.education

Why Shariah?


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/magazine/16Shariah-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

By NOAH FELDMAN
Published: March 16, 2008

Last month, Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, gave a nuanced,
scholarly lecture in London about whether the British legal system should
allow non-Christian courts to decide certain matters of family law. Britain
has no constitutional separation of church and state. The archbishop noted
that “the law of the Church of England is the law of the land” there;
indeed, ecclesiastical courts that once handled marriage and divorce are
still integrated into the British legal system, deciding matters of church
property and doctrine. His tentative suggestion was that, subject to the
agreement of all parties and the strict requirement of protecting equal
rights for women, it might be a good idea to consider allowing Islamic and
Orthodox Jewish courts to handle marriage and divorce.

Then all hell broke loose. From politicians across the spectrum to senior
church figures and the ubiquitous British tabloids came calls for the
leader of the world’s second largest Christian denomination to issue a
retraction or even resign. Williams has spent the last couple of years
trying to hold together the global Anglican Communion in the face of
continuing controversies about ordaining gay priests and recognizing
same-sex marriages. Yet little in that contentious battle subjected him to
the kind of outcry that his reference to religious courts unleashed.
Needless to say, the outrage was not occasioned by Williams’s mention of
Orthodox Jewish law. For the purposes of public discussion, it was the word
“Shariah” that was radioactive.

In some sense, the outrage about according a degree of official status to
Shariah in a Western country should come as no surprise. No legal system
has ever had worse press. To many, the word “Shariah” conjures horrors of
hands cut off, adulterers stoned and women oppressed. By contrast, who
today remembers that the much-loved English common law called for execution
as punishment for hundreds of crimes, including theft of any object worth
five shillings or more? How many know that until the 18th century, the laws
of most European countries authorized torture as an official component of
the criminal-justice system? As for sexism, the common law long denied
married women any property rights or indeed legal personality apart from
their husbands. When the British applied their law to Muslims in place of
Shariah, as they did in some colonies, the result was to strip married
women of the property that Islamic law had always granted them — hardly
progress toward equality of the sexes.

In fact, for most of its history, Islamic law offered the most liberal and
humane legal principles available anywhere in the world. Today, when we
invoke the harsh punishments prescribed by Shariah for a handful of
offenses, we rarely acknowledge the high standards of proof necessary for
their implementation. Before an adultery conviction can typically be
obtained, for example, the accused must confess four times or four adult
male witnesses of good character must testify that they directly observed
the sex act. The extremes of our own legal system — like life sentences for
relatively minor drug crimes, in some cases — are routinely ignored. We
neglect to mention the recent vintage of our tentative improvements in
family law. It sometimes seems as if we need Shariah as Westerners have
long needed Islam: as a canvas on which to project our ideas of the
horrible, and as a foil to make us look good.

In the Muslim world, on the other hand, the reputation of Shariah has
undergone an extraordinary revival in recent years. A century ago,
forward-looking Muslims thought of Shariah as outdated, in need of reform
or maybe abandonment. Today, 66 percent of Egyptians, 60 percent of
Pakistanis and 54 percent of Jordanians say that Shariah should be the only
source of legislation in their countries. Islamist political parties, like
those associated with the transnational Muslim Brotherhood, make the
adoption of Shariah the most prominent plank in their political platforms.
And the message resonates. Wherever Islamists have been allowed to run for
office in Arabic-speaking countries, they have tended to win almost as many
seats as the governments have let them contest. The Islamist movement in
its various incarnations — from moderate to radical — is easily the fastest
growing and most vital in the Muslim world; the return to Shariah is its
calling card.


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You are invited to check out the following:

The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm

American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm

The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html

[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]

HRSepCnS · Historical Reality SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/

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. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
. . .
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USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote

"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"

That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.

It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.

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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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