Shari'ah and Afghanistan

[Debater Slayer]

Believers who deny the capital punishment (and other punishments) for the crimes mentioned in their religion are inconsistent. They don't have to want to excecute the punishment - they have to believe it is the command of their God and they cannot object to it.

It isn't so simple, though. Some believe that the capital punishment for certain crimes (or supposed crimes) was specific to a certain cultural and historical context. Some believe that the religion doesn't order such punishment in the first place and interpret the texts differently.

Your view aligns with a traditional and literalist view of Islam, but hopefully you realize that millions of Muslims don't subscribe to this view or even wish to be governed by it in their countries or communities.

 

[Vouthon]

The violent passages in Leviticus, among others, seem to me an example that Jewish and Christian laws aren't fundamentally different from Islamic ones when mixed with state law.

I fully concurred with your initial post, inasmuch as their have always been a range of different madhabs of jurisprudence in classical Islam, with a diversity of theological perspectives on certain moral matters, based on the sunnah (or in some cases using 'itijihad', the independent method of reasoning), some more moderate and others harsher.

Thus, to take one key example, early Qur'anic exegetes such as Ibn ʿAbbas, ʿAtaʾ b. Abi Rabah, Mujahid b. Jabr, and Muqatil b. Sulayman had all firmly maintained that Qurʾan 2:190 unambiguously forbade the initiation of military hostilities and thus of 'offensive jihad'. Whereas, some ulema and jurists from the 9th century onwards like al-Tabari, al-Shafiʿi (d. 202/820) and al-Mawardi (d. 450/1058) endorsed the principle of offensive jihad.

And so, if you have an Islamic theology shaped more by the literature of these earlier interpreters, then it would be much more 'peacable' and non-confrontational, whereas one influenced by al-Shafi'i might promote a relatively more militant interpretation of the Sunnah (though still interpreting the nonaggression clause in this verse as prohibiting harm to non-combatants).

However, I think that a simple exercise in 'relativism' between religions (i.e. they're all the same, pretty much) isn't anymore helpful than one that mistakenly takes the most hard-line strains of Islamic thought to be normative for the tradition as a whole. And this is because, a relativistic stance glosses over fundamental differences in theology that quite thoroughly distinguish these religious systems.

Many posters in this thread have referred to 'Christian law', as if there were such a legal phenomenon within the New Testament or the later patristic tradition, analogous in nature to the shariah (divine positive law) derived from the Qur'an and Hadith in Islam. But there isn't any such analogue in orthodox Christianity.

Some Christian societies have implemented all manner of nasty and repressive stuff.

But there are no 'laws' in the New Testament which mandated the burning of heretics as some medieval Christian societies did, the hanging of adulterers and murderers, the public humiliation of thieves and liars, or the proscription of festivals. Why? Because of a fundamental theological point:

"He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances" (Ephesians 2:15-17)

"having canceled the written legal code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he [Jesus] took it away, nailing it to the cross" (Colossians 2:14)
​

The New Testament is devoid of a divinely ordained legal code like Shariah or Torah that God has purportedly revealed for society, so the Church had nothing to point to other than secular law or Mosaic law (which was abrogated criminally, civilly and ceremonially for Gentile Christians) for civil, criminal etc.

It had no divine laws for the state "revealed" from God in the New Testament or Sacred Tradition to source from but rather had to appeal to natural law mediated through reason and conscience for lawmaking, illuminated by revelation ethically.

I think its unquestionable that Jesus's approach and purpose were quite different from Moses, Muhammad and Baha'u'llah in this regard. Jesus cannot be described as a "lawgiver" like them. The church father St. Ambrose of Milan noted that: "the wise man is always free...the just man is a law unto himself, and he does not need to summon the law from afar, for he carries it enclosed in his heart" (Letters 54) and St. Clement of Alexandria: "virtue can come only through voluntary choice. The law assumes this from the outset" (Stromata 2:2).

Which is not to say he had no teachings on society - in fact the lion's share of the gospel is concerned with his thoughts on rich and poor, the reversal of fortune that should come with those at the top of society brought low and the meek raised, the inclusion of the marginalized and those on the fringes of society like prostitutes and lepers, up etc. There is a strong socio-political message: its social, moral and political but crucially not legal. One would need to jump through exegetical hoops to try and tease some kind of rudimentary law out of Jesus's dominical sayings and parables in the gospels, because it really isn't there in the first place.

To quote the former Pope Benedict XVI, from an address to the German Reichstag in 2011:


Apostolic Journey to Germany: Visit to the Federal Parliament in the Reichstag Building (Berlin, 22 September 2011) | BENEDICT XVI

In history, systems of law have almost always been based on religion: decisions regarding what was to be lawful among men were taken with reference to the divinity. Unlike other great religions, Christianity has never proposed a revealed law to the State and to society, that is to say a juridical order derived from revelation. Instead, it has pointed to nature and reason as the true sources of law – and to the harmony of objective and subjective reason​

(continued...)

 

[Vouthon]

There is nothing in the New Testament, nor for that matter the early apostolic tradition, which mandates - in any sense - for instance, 'temporal' punishments such as the death penalty. This was recognised even in medieval times, that Christ had not given the church sanction for such things (thus they had to justify it on other grounds post-Nicaea as the church became the state religion of the Roman Empire!).

And so, there is no 'Christian societal law' that is set in stone. St. Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic scholastic theologian, thus explained in 13th century:

"The judicial precepts [of the Old Testament] did not bind for ever, but were annulled by the coming of Christ [...] In the ministry of the New Law, no punishment of death or of bodily maiming is appointed...As regards Peter, he did not put Ananias and Saphira to death...The Priests or Levites of the Old Testament were the ministers of the Old Law, which appointed corporal penalties."​

(St. Thomas Aquinas, SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The judicial precepts (Prima Secundae Partis, Q. 104), 1265–1274)​

Long before him, in 866 A.D., the pagan Khan Boris of the Bulgars wanted to convert to Christianity and sent a letter to Pope Nicholas asking him to explain the "law of the Christians" so that he could live by it.

The pope replied as follows:


The Responses of Pope Nicholas I to the Questions of the Bulgars A.D. 866

Now then, at the very beginning of your questions, you properly and laudably state that your king seeks the Christian law...One should know that the law of the Christians consists in faith and good works. For faith is the first of all virtues in the lives of believers. Whence, even on the first day there is said to be light, since God is portrayed as having said: Let there be light,[Gen.1:3] that is, "let the illumination of belief appear." Indeed, it is also because of this illumination that Christ came down to earth. Good work is no less demanded from a Christian; for just as it is written in our law: Without faith it is impossible to please God,[Heb. 11:6] so it is also written: Just as a body without a spirit is dead, so, too, faith without works is dead.[James 2:20] This is the Christian law, and whoever keeps this law properly, shall be saved.​

He proceeds to explain in subsequent that Christians have no laws covering dress, diet or in terms of legal punishments. Indeed he invites the Khan to have a read of Justinian's Institutes of Roman Law as a model.

Christians just make this up as we go along, depending on the socio-legal-cultural environment we find ourselves in - which, to be honest, is pretty useful because its highly adaptable and might explain a few things about how Christianity has managed to penetrate a multiplicity of cultures.

Likewise, when Jesus was asked by someone to act as arbiter in a family property dispute, he completely disowned even a modicum of interest in telling people how to run their own lives in that way:

Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?”​

And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” 16 Then he told them a parable... (Luke 12:13-14)​

In other words, whereas Numbers 27:7-11 (which says a man's sons inherit first, daughters if no sons, brothers if he has no children, and so on) in the Torah and Sura 4 of the Qur'an have extensive details about inheritance law, Jesus prioritizes ethical living over the legal details and this has ultimately rendered the development of law a human responsibility in Christianity, not a religious one.

In the patristic and medieval scholastic tradition, positive law arises from 'natural law' and is an application of 'reason' to concrete circumstances. It is not something divinely imposed and immutable. Whether something is to be judged a criminal or civil offence (with a corresponding sentance or penalty or restorative justice) is for the relevant political and/or legal authority (i.e. supreme court judgments) to determine. And that's been very fluid and contigent throughout Christian history, with one country have xyz law that differed from another country with xyz.

And that's the reason why in medieval England 'sodomy' was at odds with the ethical codes of that religious society but it wasn't concretised into a civil or criminal offence until the 16th century when Henry VIII instituted the Reformation, rather it had been a 'spiritual' offence coming under the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts (who could only impose 'penalties' like, go to confession; obligatory fasting and mortification for a period and so on, no 'crime' at the state level):

gay rights movement | Definition & History​

Religious admonitions against sexual relations between same-sex individuals (particularly men) long stigmatized such behaviour, but most legal codes in Europe were silent on the subject of homosexuality. The judicial systems of many predominantly Muslim countries invoked Islamic law (Sharīʿah) in a wide range of contexts, and many sexual or quasi-sexual acts including same-sex intimacy were criminalized in those countries with severe penalties, including execution.​

This is just a fundamental difference between Christianity and Islam, or Judaism for that matter, as religious systems. They are not comparable in respect of divine 'law', even though they are in many, many other respects.

 

[firedragon]

I think the honest truth is that most Muslims are not very familiar with Sharia and when it's implemented it's a huge shock, because many likely think it will be more akin to the superior system they've been told that it is. The sad truth is, as far as I am concerned, that most Muslims are in a position where they want to remain Muslim but have a law more akin to the Christian one that led to the modern West (in terms of rights and so on) than what Sharia gives them.

In my view, Islamic law is never good in any form and the only people who want it are hardcore Islamic fundamentalists, usually men.

You're not going to change my mind. I fully believe the Jewish and Christian laws are better.

Thats just a facade assumption.

Look at the world. If the country is financially well, people are happy and they are not displaced. If there is political turmoil and poverty, people leave to greener pastures. This is prevalent around the world. Lol. Christians in poor countries go to some western countries for greener pastures. So do buddhists. And lot of the people are Hindus. When motivated by bias or cognitive bias, it maybe a bit difficult to remove the shades. Try and do that. This is so surprising.

 

[firedragon]

The West may justly be accused of political interference by attempting to open Afghan society to notions of democracy when such ideas are incongruous with Islamic patriarchal society.

99.7% of Afghans are Muslim. It must be preferable for Muslims to opt for a Shari'ah system of law (I understand that there are four main variations within Sunni Islam) than for a system of law that does not recognise the Qur'an, or Sunnah.

Why are Muslims wanting to leave for the West when the ideal of Islamic law is about to be implemented?
It may appear threatening to some to see a 'pure' Islamic state arise, but the experiment (whether it be a Caliphate in Syria/Iraq or an Emirate in Afghanistan) should be seen as a honest attempt to demonstrate the Muslim way of life.

Some Muslims just want prosperity and a comfortable life and their religion is private. So you cannot generalise anything to anyone. If you truly open your eyes, it is not only the Muslims who want to leave to the west. Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, do too.

Why do Hindus want to come to the west? Because their country was the highest GDP producing nation in the world prior to the western invasion and plunder. Now their country has the highest number of people below the poverty line. In some areas children are fed from day one to aim at going to the west.

This rabbit hole runs deeper.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

One went through the right legal channels and evidence, and the other didn't.

But that's not your issue here, is it? Your issue is that you don't believe anyone should be stoned for breaking Shabbat and won't be happy until everyone agrees.

We don't agree.

For what it's worth, I don't think anyone should be stoned for breaking Shabbat.

 

[Debater Slayer]

There is nothing in the New Testament, nor for that matter the early apostolic tradition, which mandates - in any sense - for instance, 'temporal' punishments such as the death penalty. This was recognised even in medieval times, that Christ had not given the church sanction for such things (thus they had to justify it on other grounds post-Nicaea as the church became the state religion of the Roman Empire!).

And so, there is no 'Christian societal law' that is set in stone. St. Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic scholastic theologian, thus explained in 13th century:

"The judicial precepts [of the Old Testament] did not bind for ever, but were annulled by the coming of Christ [...] In the ministry of the New Law, no punishment of death or of bodily maiming is appointed...As regards Peter, he did not put Ananias and Saphira to death...The Priests or Levites of the Old Testament were the ministers of the Old Law, which appointed corporal penalties."​

(St. Thomas Aquinas, SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The judicial precepts (Prima Secundae Partis, Q. 104), 1265–1274)​

Long before him, in 866 A.D., the pagan Khan Boris of the Bulgars wanted to convert to Christianity and sent a letter to Pope Nicholas asking him to explain the "law of the Christians" so that he could live by it.

The pope replied as follows:


The Responses of Pope Nicholas I to the Questions of the Bulgars A.D. 866

Now then, at the very beginning of your questions, you properly and laudably state that your king seeks the Christian law...One should know that the law of the Christians consists in faith and good works. For faith is the first of all virtues in the lives of believers. Whence, even on the first day there is said to be light, since God is portrayed as having said: Let there be light,[Gen.1:3] that is, "let the illumination of belief appear." Indeed, it is also because of this illumination that Christ came down to earth. Good work is no less demanded from a Christian; for just as it is written in our law: Without faith it is impossible to please God,[Heb. 11:6] so it is also written: Just as a body without a spirit is dead, so, too, faith without works is dead.[James 2:20] This is the Christian law, and whoever keeps this law properly, shall be saved.​

He proceeds to explain in subsequent that Christians have no laws covering dress, diet or in terms of legal punishments. Indeed he invites the Khan to have a read of Justinian's Institutes of Roman Law as a model.

Christians just make this up as we go along, depending on the socio-legal-cultural environment we find ourselves in - which, to be honest, is pretty useful because its highly adaptable and might explain a few things about how Christianity has managed to penetrate a multiplicity of cultures.

Likewise, when Jesus was asked by someone to act as arbiter in a family property dispute, he completely disowned even a modicum of interest in telling people how to run their own lives in that way:

Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?”​

And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” 16 Then he told them a parable... (Luke 12:13-14)​

In other words, whereas Numbers 27:7-11 (which says a man's sons inherit first, daughters if no sons, brothers if he has no children, and so on) in the Torah and Sura 4 of the Qur'an have extensive details about inheritance law, Jesus prioritizes ethical living over the legal details and this has ultimately rendered the development of law a human responsibility in Christianity, not a religious one.

In the patristic and medieval scholastic tradition, positive law arises from 'natural law' and is an application of 'reason' to concrete circumstances. It is not something divinely imposed and immutable. Whether something is to be judged a criminal or civil offence (with a corresponding sentance or penalty or restorative justice) is for the relevant political and/or legal authority (i.e. supreme court judgments) to determine. And that's been very fluid and contigent throughout Christian history, with one country have xyz law that differed from another country with xyz.

And that's the reason why in medieval England 'sodomy' (not homosexuality but contravening the sex 'roles' described in my part (A)) was at odds with the ethical codes of that religious society but it wasn't concretised into a civil or criminal offence until the 16th century when Henry VIII instituted the Reformation, rather it had been a 'spiritual' offence coming under the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts (who could only impose 'penalties' like, go to confession; obligatory fasting and mortification for a period and so on, no 'crime' at the state level):

gay rights movement | Definition & History​

Religious admonitions against sexual relations between same-sex individuals (particularly men) long stigmatized such behaviour, but most legal codes in Europe were silent on the subject of homosexuality. The judicial systems of many predominantly Muslim countries invoked Islamic law (Sharīʿah) in a wide range of contexts, and many sexual or quasi-sexual acts including same-sex intimacy were criminalized in those countries with severe penalties, including execution.​

This is just a fundamental difference between Christianity and Islam, or Judaism for that matter, as religious systems. They are not comparable in respect of divine 'law', even though they are in many, many other respects.

First, I would like to thank you for the informative, greatly detailed posts. I appreciate the wealth of information you often provide in your posts.

Second, while I actually agree with you that there are fundamental differences between Islamic and Christian laws (or guidelines, as the case may be), especially in terms of their underpinning theologies, I think you might have interpreted my point differently from how I meant it, referring to this:

However, I think that a simple exercise in 'relativism' between religions (i.e. they're all the same, pretty much) isn't anymore helpful than one that mistakenly takes the most hard-line strains of Islamic thought to be normative for the tradition as a whole. And this is because, a relativistic stance glosses over fundamental differences in theology that quite thoroughly distinguish these religious systems.

My view isn't that they're the same but that, when mixed with politics, the real-world outcomes often have a lot of overlap. They're not identical, and in my view, Judaism is definitely closer to Islam than Christianity is. The passages of Leviticus that I mentioned seem to me very similar to a hadith that some Islamic schools of thought interpret to be an injunction to punish those convicted of having homosexual sex with the death penalty:

It was narrated from Ibn`Abbas that the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said:
“Whoever you find doing the action of the people of Lut, kill the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done.”

Grade: Hasan (Darussalam)
Reference : Sunan Ibn Majah 2561
In-book reference : Book 20, Hadith 29
English translation : Vol. 3, Book 20, Hadith 2561

Sunan Ibn Majah 2561 - The Chapters on Legal Punishments - كتاب الحدود - Sunnah.com - Sayings and Teachings of Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه و سلم)

While some modern interpretations now interpret the above reference to the "action of the people of Lut" to mean actions other than homosexual sex, such as rape, the traditional understanding of the hadith interprets it to be about homosexuality. In that context, it seems to borrow from the passages of Leviticus, as do the hadiths about stoning adulterers.

I think a fundamental point to keep in mind here is that we may be assessing religious teachings from different angles: while your posts seem to focus on the theological underpinnings of each religion's teachings, I mainly look at each religion from a secular humanist perspective that primarily concerns itself with how each religion has historically influenced government and society when allowed to dictate state law or when clerics were allowed to influence state law.

From the latter angle, I believe there is even more overlap between Islam and Christianity than the texts might suggest. For instance, looking at some of the conservative voices in European and American politics that continually push for more theocratic laws and attempt to push society away from acceptance of certain groups (e.g., LGBT people), much of what they claim to support or wish to implement within their respective countries'/states' legal systems is quite similar in principle to what many Islamists and other conservative Muslims support.

How justified each group's stance is within their respective religions' teachings and theology is a related but still different issue, but from a strictly secularist viewpoint, there are both Christian and Muslim groups that seek to undermine state secularism and share a lot of goals, such as support for anti-LGBT laws, blasphemy laws, and restriction of women's reproductive rights. This was the point of my post, not that both religions are the same.

In my opinion, addressing the problematic political agendas of some Christian and Islamic groups may require addressing a lot of the same issues (e.g., homophobia, sexism, and oppression of religious minorities), but the most effective methods to do so may vary greatly between the two religions due to their different historical contexts and theological frameworks.

 

[Redemptionsong]

The Taliban do not implement sharia properly.

I think this should be seen as very obvious trolling.

I think a degree of honesty is required here. Islam is a religion of law, and Shari'ah is the name given to lslamic law.

It is not unreasonable, lMO, to ask why Muslims are not happy to live under a system of law that represents the beliefs of Muhammad and the Qur'an.

If Muslims don't like lslamic law why do they remain Muslims?

Let's not forget that 99.7% of Afghans are Muslim. They cannot argue that they live in a multi-faith society and that secular law is more appropriate.

IMO.

 

[Spirit of Light]

I think a degree of honesty is required here. Islam is a religion of law, and Shari'ah is the name given to lslamic law.

It is not an unreasonable, lMO, to ask why Muslims are not happy to live under a system of law that represents the beliefs of Muhammad and the Qur'an.

If Muslims don't like lslamic law why do they remain Muslims?

Let's not forget that 99.7% of Afghans are Muslim. They cannot argue that they live in a multi-faith society and that secular law is more appropriate.

IMO.

IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SHARI’A AND ISLAMIC LAW?
Yes. Shari’a isn’t a legal system. It includes Islamic principles to help guide people to new answers, and it includes common cultural practices that had to do with a specific time and place in history. Muslim rulers wanted a way to make Shari’a into law. To do that, they decided which rules needed to be laws, first. Then they used interpretations of Shari’a to show people that the new laws were Islamic. The result was what we call Islamic Law.

Islamic Law is always based on someone’s interpretation of the Shari’a (which is an interpretation of the Qur’an and Hadith). Because it is a human interpretation, Islamic Law can mean different things in different places and at different times in history.


Today, interpretations of Shari’a are usually still limited to rules of interpretation (called usul al-fiqh) that were established by early scholars before 900 CE. More recently scholars have called for new ijtihad to meet the changing needs of modern Islamic societies.

Some info about sharia and sharia law | Religious Forums

 

[Meow Mix]

The Taliban do not implement sharia properly.

Can you give some examples of ways the Taliban is implementing Sharia improperly? This isn't me doubting you, I'm ignorant of Sharia.

 

[Redemptionsong]

IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SHARI’A AND ISLAMIC LAW?
Yes. Shari’a isn’t a legal system. It includes Islamic principles to help guide people to new answers, and it includes common cultural practices that had to do with a specific time and place in history. Muslim rulers wanted a way to make Shari’a into law. To do that, they decided which rules needed to be laws, first. Then they used interpretations of Shari’a to show people that the new laws were Islamic. The result was what we call Islamic Law.

Islamic Law is always based on someone’s interpretation of the Shari’a (which is an interpretation of the Qur’an and Hadith). Because it is a human interpretation, Islamic Law can mean different things in different places and at different times in history.


Today, interpretations of Shari’a are usually still limited to rules of interpretation (called usul al-fiqh) that were established by early scholars before 900 CE. More recently scholars have called for new ijtihad to meet the changing needs of modern Islamic societies.

Some info about sharia and sharia law | Religious Forums

I don't know of any Muslim who would argue that Islam does not have a behavioural dimension which requires formulation.

Even requiring that a person fulfil the Five Pillars has an impact on daily life and culture, does it not?

 

[firedragon]

The Christian Law is especially different.

What do you mean by "Christian Law"?

 

[Spirit of Light]

I don't know of any Muslim who would argue that Islam does not have a behavioural dimension which requires formulation.

Even requiring that a person fulfil the Five Pillars has an impact on daily life and culture, does it not?

It has an inpact on each person who practice Islam yes, but it does not mean one should be evil toward others, and Sharia is not in it self an evil law, it is a way of life for the person who practice daily.

Sharia law was made by the people who wanted to control others under their government, but there is so many laws that are different from area to area, that sharia (way of life) and sharia law (governmental applyed) are two different systems. What you see in Afghanistan is Sharia law, and not sharia the way of life

 

[ajay0]

I think the honest truth is that most Muslims are not very familiar with Sharia and when it's implemented it's a huge shock, because many likely think it will be more akin to the superior system they've been told that it is. The sad truth is, as far as I am concerned, that most Muslims are in a position where they want to remain Muslim but have a law more akin to the Christian one that led to the modern West (in terms of rights and so on) than what Sharia gives them.

But Christianity was not able to prevent the Dark Ages that engulfed Europe. It was open-minded European scholars who accessed new ideas from all over the world and incorporated them, who were able to bring about progressive changes in western society and helped the western mind to come out of the constrictions of past regressive conditioning.

 

[Truthseeker]

There's lots of difference and I think it's much too generalising to say they're all basically the same. The Christian Law is especially different.

There's very little actual Christian law based on what Jesus taught. No divorce except for adultery, you can do good things on the Sabbath. A ratification of the 10 commandments after reinterpreting some of them. Love thy neighbor isn't really a law in the sense it could have a penalty for not doing so. It is a commandment which is different from a law as I understand laws are, which has enforcement tied to them. I'm speaking off the top of my head here. I'm undoubtedly wrong about some of this. It was unclear at the time to the Christians what laws of the Jews were to be continued. The ten commandments themselves have no prescribed penalties for breaking them if I remember right.

 

[firedragon]

Can you give some examples of ways the Taliban is implementing Sharia improperly? This isn't me doubting you, I'm ignorant of Sharia.

Hmm. You didnt ask me this question, but I can give you an answer.

Shariah is generally derived to represent "law". Its like law in countries, and the way countries differ, the Shariah also differs. When you think of it this way, you can never say someone is implementing Shariah "improperly". Its like saying a country like Stalins Russia was implementing the "Law" improperly. No. He was implementing "His" law properly, just that others would deem his law to be fanatic, from a different perspective. Thus if you think of it that way, the Taliban is implementing "their Shariah" properly. It's just that their Shariah is fanatic, from a different perspective.

Lets say someone takes up the Qur'an as the foundation of the Shariah (which is how its supposed to be), flogging exists. I mean flogging really really exists in the Qur'an. Some argue that the word Jeld used in the Quran for flogging means skin, not stick, so it is not really flogging with a stick. Nevertheless, keeping that aside, this is for adultery and adultery only. In that case, how did the Taliban those days hit women in public places? For what? Just talking loud?? Where did they get that from? Also, how in the world were they stoning for adultery when the Qur'an does not have a single verse prescribing stoning for adultery???

Thus, if you think from that point of view, they are not implementing the Quranic Shariah properly. They have their own Shariah, and they are implementing that properly, which is not Quranic, and some would say if something is not Quranic, it is not Islamic.

Anyway, this single issue can be discussed for hours. But I hope you understand what I am trying to say.

 

[firedragon]

Which version of Shari'ah is the closest to the teaching of Muhamnad and the Qur'an?

I wasn't aware that Shari'ah law had been implemented in Turkey.

Shariah is implemented everywhere.

 

[England my lionheart]

I think a degree of honesty is required here. Islam is a religion of law, and Shari'ah is the name given to lslamic law.

It is not an unreasonable, lMO, to ask why Muslims are not happy to live under a system of law that represents the beliefs of Muhammad and the Qur'an.

If Muslims don't like lslamic law why do they remain Muslims?

Let's not forget that 99.7% of Afghans are Muslim. They cannot argue that they live in a multi-faith society and that secular law is more appropriate.

IMO.

sayyid qutb an influential Muslim brotherhood author said as much in “social justice in Islam”


Islam chose to unite earth and heaven in a single system, present both in the heart of the individual and the actuality of society, recognizing no separation of practical exertion from religious impulse. ... The center of its being and the field of its action is human life in its entirety, spiritual and material, religious and worldly. Such a religion cannot continue to exist in isolation from society, nor can its adherents be true Muslims unless they practice their faith in their social, legal and economic relationships

A society cannot be Islamic if it expels the civil and religious Laws of Islam from its codes and customs, so that nothing of Islam is left except rites and ceremonial.

 

[Redemptionsong]

Shariah is implemented everywhere.

In what sense?

 

[Redemptionsong]

sayyid qutb an influential Muslim brotherhood author said as much in “social justice in Islam”


Islam chose to unite earth and heaven in a single system, present both in the heart of the individual and the actuality of society, recognizing no separation of practical exertion from religious impulse. ... The center of its being and the field of its action is human life in its entirety, spiritual and material, religious and worldly. Such a religion cannot continue to exist in isolation from society, nor can its adherents be true Muslims unless they practice their faith in their social, legal and economic relationships

A society cannot be Islamic if it expels the civil and religious Laws of Islam from its codes and customs, so that nothing of Islam is left except rites and ceremonial.

Without intending any injustice to Muslims or lslam, that's the conclusion l have also reached. It will be interesting to hear from those who disagree.