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Talon,
lol,
One thing is for sure, when Pakistan gets full shariah going,
the mullahs will go bat crazy all over Pakistan with beheadings and stoning and chopping of hands and whipping on all the streets of pakistan.
Kindly get the basic education on Shariah before commenting ...I really am tired of you people jumping at the word shariah because you were told it is the boogey man!
Shariah is a set of laws....Some def were meant for that time ...because people were less likely to misuse...we do not have records (if you want from gora people) saying I visited Muslim land and saw people maimed on the streets or while walking down the street I saw someone getting whipped or stoned to death! Mind you medieval laws did do that in public...and there is alot of literature reporting it!
Some can be implemented even today ...Family laws, division laws
and some have brought fame to Scandanavian area (Welfare laws)...
These are to see the will of God done on earth as it is in Heaven (as in the Christian
Lord's Prayer). How can we possibly know this will? By study of the revealed scriptures and by choosing talented, intelligent and far-sighted merciful people of excellent character as our judges.
The whole principle of God's will is to bring about compassion, kindness, generosity, justice, fair play, tolerance, and care in general, as opposed to tyranny, cruelty, selfishness, exploitation etc. All the rules of Sharia are towards those ends.
The usual criticisms of Sharia - that it is so cruel as regards execution, flogging and cutting off hands - totally ignore all the extenuating circumstances that would lead to these penalties not being applied. They are known as
hadd penalties (pl.
hudud), the extreme limit of the penalty. Thus, if a person was sentenced to having a hand cut off, he or she should not be sent to prison and/or be fined as well. People who regard these practices as cruel will never be persuaded otherwise, so Muslims usually leave that aside. Their point is that the cutting of the hand for theft is a very powerful deterrent - Muslims care less for the callous and continual thief than they do for the poor souls who are mugged and robbed and hurt by the thieves.
The Middle East is certainly not full of one-handed people - as any traveller would tell you. What
we have lost here is the horror of dishonour that true Muslims still have. They
would do anything rather than offend Allah, and they of course believe that Allah sees every single thing that is done - there are no secrets. Even if you get away with something on earth, it has been seen and recorded and you will have to face judgement for it eventually, and the people hurt by your action will be recompensed.
Of course, if you do not believe in God, or a judgement, or a life to come, the whole system is quite meaningless to you. In Sharia law, if a thief could prove that he/she only stole because of need, then the Muslim society would be held at fault and made to supply that need, and there would be no hand-cutting. Most thieves would think twice before risking a hand on mugging an old lady for her handbag!
Adultery
In the west, adultery has become so commonplace because of sexual freedoms - all the emphasis these days seems to be on finding sexual satisfaction;
in Muslim societies, there is far less emphasis on sex - it is usually regarded as a weakness that can lead to all sorts of trouble. Family is far more important; the notion of a million unborn children per year being aborted, and single mothers, is abhorrent in Islam.
Murder
Sharia law for murder allows the
death penalty, but is
kinder than western law in one respect - after judicial judgement has been made,
appeals are then allowed to the family of the murdered victims, and
they are begged to be merciful. In Islam, it is always
regarded as the height of mercy to forgive a murderer, even though one may have the right to take his/her life in reprisal.
The
form of execution is not specified in Islam - i.e. it is
not usually a stoning. Beheading used to be regarded as the quickest and most merciful way (as in Roman law, and the French guillotine); these days other methods may find approval. There are apparently far
fewer executions in most Muslim countries than in the USA, for example. The
penalty for adultery is open to debate. Most scholars will insist that the penalty as laid down in the Qur'an was 100 lashes, and there were various rules for regulating how lashes were to be given too. Other scholars maintain that the old penalty for adultery as laid down by the previous prophets was stoning (as in the Old Testament). By New Testament times, the prophet Jesus had the famous case where a guilty woman was forgiven and sent away, told only to sin no more.
In some Muslim societies, judges and populaces might stone out of mistaken belief that this was what Islam required. In fact,
Islam made it virtually impossible - to be sentenced to death for adultery, the couple had to be actually witnessed performing the physical act by four people who were in a position to identify both parties without doubt; this virtually ruled out the penalty, since adultery is taken for granted as a secret act and something not done in public.
The crazy part will be that minorities especially the shias and ahmedis will be lined up on the streets and beheaded or shot on some trumped up charges.
Again your knowledge makes you look like a clear cut fool...
Individual rights vs needs of society?
Basically
in Islam the needs of society always come first, with the proviso
that injustices should always be able to be taken to judges who are not corrupt. The old Arab system allowed any person, no matter how humble, to take his/her case to the highest in the land personally. Islam brings a very strong sense of justice, and care of the oppressed and exploited.
Does Sharia make life easier or harder for the ordinary Muslim?
Much easier for those who strive to live the correct life pleasing to God and in kindness and peace with the neighbour; much harder for the one who is selfish, callous, cruel, exploitative, dishonest etc. There is virtually no sympathy for such people - unless they really are mentally ill, in which case they are not regarded as culpable in Sharia. All those before the age of puberty, or not of sound mind, are not regarded as culpable.
Why has Sharia become a synonym for cruelty and lack of compassion?
I think through two things -
ignorance of the reality of Sharia law, and much publicised cases where Muslims in positions of authority have been very poor Muslims, if not non-Muslims in Muslim disguise. For example, 100 years ago
we had stories of awful Turkish sultans, and people being rushed to blocks to have their hands cut off etc. The media picks out certain cases and blows them up to make a big drama of them - they might pick on one particular murderer on death row in the USA and rouse everyone's feelings, but totally ignore all the others due to be executed that day!
A case like the Nigerian woman in danger of being stoned for adultery is a case in point.
She might have been stoned by irate villagers, but on being taken into custody and judged by Sharia law she gets the opportunity to appeal and explain etc. In her case, if it is true that she was raped, she most certainly would not be sentenced to death. What interests me is who were the rotten people who brought the case against her anyway?
Incidentally
the correct Islamic method of stoning according to Sharia was similar to that advised by the Pharisees at the time of Jesus - the person was held fast in a fixed position, and a stone or rock that it took two men to lift (i.e. was heavier than one man could lift alone) was to be dropped to crush the head - it was not someone tied to a post and rocks hurled at them, although this has been done in some cultures. The point was that if someone really had to be executed, it was to be done swiftly, with as little torture as possible, and usually publicly so that no vindictive person could do further nasty things behind the scenes and get away with it.
Sharia should promote gender equality. In fac
t, the natural Islamic tendency is to always consider women as the weaker sex in need of care and protection, and come down hard on the men who allow their womenfolk to get into difficulties.
BBC - Religions - Islam: Sharia
But off course everyone oversees all this...Out of mere habit or ignorance? That is up to you to decide!
@
Talon,
lol,
One thing is for sure, when Pakistan gets full shariah going, the mullahs will go bat crazy all over Pakistan with beheadings and stoning and chopping of hands and whipping on all the streets of pakistan.
The crazy part will be that minorities especially the shias and ahmedis will be lined up on the streets and beheaded or shot on some trumped up charges.
Seriously your ignorance is far from funny