From Jihad Watch:
Sharia, Canon Law, and Sovereignty
The following was posted by those helpful folks at Translating Jihad. Go ahead and read the whole thing first before I comment on it.
Translated from the website of Dr. Salah al-Sawy, the secretary-general of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA), 28 March 2011:
Between the Shura and Democracy
Q: What is the difference between the Shura and democracy, and which is preferred? Are there any books which could benefit me on this topic? May Allah reward you well.
A: In the name of Allah, the most merciful and gracious.
Praise be to Allah, and peace be upon him the Messenger of Allah, and upon his family, companions, and those that follow him. The Shura comes from the rulings of the shari'a, and an entire surah of the Qur'an was sent down with this name. The difference between it and democracy is that the Shura does not exist (under Islam) except in the areas of permissible actions or legislative amnesty. For things which have been stipulated in the texts of Islam, the Ummah possesses no power except to acknowledge and obey, following the saying of the Most High: "It is not fitting for a Believer, man or woman, when a matter has been decided by Allah and His Messenger to have any option about their decision: if any one disobeys Allah and His Messenger, he is indeed on a clearly wrong Path" [Qur'an 33:36]. For example, it is not for the Shura to consider, "Should the noon prayer contain four or five bows?" Or, "Should we fast during the month of Ramadan, or should we replace it with the month of Shawwal?" Or, "Should we forbid wine or allow it?" Or, "Should we forbid adultery, or permit it if it's done by consensual agreement of those who have reached the legal age, and it's not done on the married couple's bed?"
Al-Bukhari said in his Sahih: "The Imams after the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him) would consult the trustworthy scholars in things which were permissible, to take the best option. But if the Qur'an or the Sunnah was clear on the matter, they wouldn't transgress against it, following the example of the Prophet (peace be upon him). The reciters of the Qur'an would consult, whether old or young, and they were careful to adhere to the book of Almighty Allah."
But democracy gives free reign to the authority of the Ummah, and puts no ceiling on it. The law is the expression of its will, and if the law says it, the conscience must be silent! A constitutionalist even said: "We have departed from the divine right to rule for kings, and replaced it with the divine right to rule for parliaments!" The shari'a, on the other hand, differentiates between the source of the legal system and the source of the political authority. The source of the legal system is the shari'a, while the source of the political authority is the Ummah. Meanwhile democracy makes the Ummah the source of both. On my website there is a book named "Political Pluralism." If you review it, it will you benefit you in regards to this topic, Allah-willing. Allah Almighty is all-powerful, all-knowing.
Anti-jihadists are raising plenty of hackles with their attempts in various states to ban sharia law, to prohibit judges—as happened this past month in Florida—from exempting Muslim residents of America from our standard civil law and allowing them to resolve their own disputes according to sharia. Now some libertarians are complaining that it's not for the government to prevent private citizens from using whatever forms of mediation that they wish. But that's a red herring. If all the parties in a dispute agree to private, binding arbitration—by a sharia judge, or that hot chick from Fairly Legal—do you know what happens in court?
Absolutely nothing, because the case never gets to a judge. The law would not be involved, except as the enforcer of whatever contract such people signed as a result. None of the proposed legal restrictions on sharia would invalidate such contracts. So those pro-sharia libertarians are feeding us red herring over rye toast. The reason anti-jihadists are trying to ban sharia is to avoid having U.S. judges cite it as in any way authoritative—which is precisely what Muslim supremacists want to see happen. Inspired as they are by the orthodox tenets of their religion, they believe (as Dr. Salah al-Sawy states so concisely above) that the Quran and the Sunnah—the sources of sharia—are the only legitimate sources of sovereignty on earth. Everything else, including the U.S. Constitution and the will of the people, is a blasphemous usurpation of divine authority.
Knowing what we do of how Islam advances its power, slipping a pseudopod in through every gap that presents itself, then claiming that its grip is inviolable and irrevocable, it's essential that those of us who reject the Muslim claim to universal sovereignty slam every door tight against its legitimization.
In America, we do not allow private systems of justice to operate in parallel with the public one. The “Shirk Family Rules” cannot trump those of my local municipality. In deciding a case concerning organized crime, no court would take into account the ancestral code of La Cosa Nostra. Nor should the state allow Canon Law to decide what transpires among Roman Catholics. Indeed, one of the reasons that the sex abuse crisis among Catholic clergy was allowed to spiral out of control was this: Public law enforcement officers, from beat cops all the way up to city prosecutors and state district attorneys repeatedly and illegally deferred to bishops who promised to “take care of” abusive clergymen using the Church's own internal mechanisms. Ironically, those same bishops in fact were flouting Canon Law, whose provisions for dealing with pedophiles have long been swift and certain. The bishops were lying to the cops, and lying to the Vatican. Instead of using Canon Law (which state authorities shouldn't have let them do anyway) these ass-covering bureaucrats were making the law up as they went along—which is what tends to happen when you let private agents unaccountable to the community usurp the functions of the state.
Given how rightly unpopular the faithless bishops who shuffled sex abusers have become, perhaps this is one way we can support our firm refusal to allow sharia to corrupt our legal system—by comparing the use of sharia (with its brutal, archaic tenets) to the squalid cover-up mechanisms that allowed the repeated abuse of children at the hands of perverted priests. It isn't just foreign, Arab systems of divinely-“sponsored” justice that we refuse to enforce in American courts. It isn't only odd-looking foreigners with orange beards whom we won't permit to create a network of alternatives to the civil law. It's everyone. We are even-handed, and believe in equal justice and equal treatment under the law. Even prescinding from the distinctly repugnant attributes of sharia, we reject this system in principle. The source of our legal code is the Constitution, and the source of our sovereignty is the people. Anyone who can't get on board with that should be hounded out of public life. And we ought to check their immigration documents....
Posted by Roland Shirk on March 30, 2011 7:20 PM
Sharia, Canon Law, and Sovereignty
The following was posted by those helpful folks at Translating Jihad. Go ahead and read the whole thing first before I comment on it.
Translated from the website of Dr. Salah al-Sawy, the secretary-general of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA), 28 March 2011:
Between the Shura and Democracy
Q: What is the difference between the Shura and democracy, and which is preferred? Are there any books which could benefit me on this topic? May Allah reward you well.
A: In the name of Allah, the most merciful and gracious.
Praise be to Allah, and peace be upon him the Messenger of Allah, and upon his family, companions, and those that follow him. The Shura comes from the rulings of the shari'a, and an entire surah of the Qur'an was sent down with this name. The difference between it and democracy is that the Shura does not exist (under Islam) except in the areas of permissible actions or legislative amnesty. For things which have been stipulated in the texts of Islam, the Ummah possesses no power except to acknowledge and obey, following the saying of the Most High: "It is not fitting for a Believer, man or woman, when a matter has been decided by Allah and His Messenger to have any option about their decision: if any one disobeys Allah and His Messenger, he is indeed on a clearly wrong Path" [Qur'an 33:36]. For example, it is not for the Shura to consider, "Should the noon prayer contain four or five bows?" Or, "Should we fast during the month of Ramadan, or should we replace it with the month of Shawwal?" Or, "Should we forbid wine or allow it?" Or, "Should we forbid adultery, or permit it if it's done by consensual agreement of those who have reached the legal age, and it's not done on the married couple's bed?"
Al-Bukhari said in his Sahih: "The Imams after the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him) would consult the trustworthy scholars in things which were permissible, to take the best option. But if the Qur'an or the Sunnah was clear on the matter, they wouldn't transgress against it, following the example of the Prophet (peace be upon him). The reciters of the Qur'an would consult, whether old or young, and they were careful to adhere to the book of Almighty Allah."
But democracy gives free reign to the authority of the Ummah, and puts no ceiling on it. The law is the expression of its will, and if the law says it, the conscience must be silent! A constitutionalist even said: "We have departed from the divine right to rule for kings, and replaced it with the divine right to rule for parliaments!" The shari'a, on the other hand, differentiates between the source of the legal system and the source of the political authority. The source of the legal system is the shari'a, while the source of the political authority is the Ummah. Meanwhile democracy makes the Ummah the source of both. On my website there is a book named "Political Pluralism." If you review it, it will you benefit you in regards to this topic, Allah-willing. Allah Almighty is all-powerful, all-knowing.
Anti-jihadists are raising plenty of hackles with their attempts in various states to ban sharia law, to prohibit judges—as happened this past month in Florida—from exempting Muslim residents of America from our standard civil law and allowing them to resolve their own disputes according to sharia. Now some libertarians are complaining that it's not for the government to prevent private citizens from using whatever forms of mediation that they wish. But that's a red herring. If all the parties in a dispute agree to private, binding arbitration—by a sharia judge, or that hot chick from Fairly Legal—do you know what happens in court?
Absolutely nothing, because the case never gets to a judge. The law would not be involved, except as the enforcer of whatever contract such people signed as a result. None of the proposed legal restrictions on sharia would invalidate such contracts. So those pro-sharia libertarians are feeding us red herring over rye toast. The reason anti-jihadists are trying to ban sharia is to avoid having U.S. judges cite it as in any way authoritative—which is precisely what Muslim supremacists want to see happen. Inspired as they are by the orthodox tenets of their religion, they believe (as Dr. Salah al-Sawy states so concisely above) that the Quran and the Sunnah—the sources of sharia—are the only legitimate sources of sovereignty on earth. Everything else, including the U.S. Constitution and the will of the people, is a blasphemous usurpation of divine authority.
Knowing what we do of how Islam advances its power, slipping a pseudopod in through every gap that presents itself, then claiming that its grip is inviolable and irrevocable, it's essential that those of us who reject the Muslim claim to universal sovereignty slam every door tight against its legitimization.
In America, we do not allow private systems of justice to operate in parallel with the public one. The “Shirk Family Rules” cannot trump those of my local municipality. In deciding a case concerning organized crime, no court would take into account the ancestral code of La Cosa Nostra. Nor should the state allow Canon Law to decide what transpires among Roman Catholics. Indeed, one of the reasons that the sex abuse crisis among Catholic clergy was allowed to spiral out of control was this: Public law enforcement officers, from beat cops all the way up to city prosecutors and state district attorneys repeatedly and illegally deferred to bishops who promised to “take care of” abusive clergymen using the Church's own internal mechanisms. Ironically, those same bishops in fact were flouting Canon Law, whose provisions for dealing with pedophiles have long been swift and certain. The bishops were lying to the cops, and lying to the Vatican. Instead of using Canon Law (which state authorities shouldn't have let them do anyway) these ass-covering bureaucrats were making the law up as they went along—which is what tends to happen when you let private agents unaccountable to the community usurp the functions of the state.
Given how rightly unpopular the faithless bishops who shuffled sex abusers have become, perhaps this is one way we can support our firm refusal to allow sharia to corrupt our legal system—by comparing the use of sharia (with its brutal, archaic tenets) to the squalid cover-up mechanisms that allowed the repeated abuse of children at the hands of perverted priests. It isn't just foreign, Arab systems of divinely-“sponsored” justice that we refuse to enforce in American courts. It isn't only odd-looking foreigners with orange beards whom we won't permit to create a network of alternatives to the civil law. It's everyone. We are even-handed, and believe in equal justice and equal treatment under the law. Even prescinding from the distinctly repugnant attributes of sharia, we reject this system in principle. The source of our legal code is the Constitution, and the source of our sovereignty is the people. Anyone who can't get on board with that should be hounded out of public life. And we ought to check their immigration documents....
Posted by Roland Shirk on March 30, 2011 7:20 PM
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