Understanding Sharia

[Cyrus]

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Here Here.

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Where? Where?

[Cyrus]

I cannot understand why you get suddenly "interested" when someone from FrontPage.com says what I've been saying here for years. Here are the relevant parts:

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If we want to understand and combat radical Islam, we must understand Sharia, especially the radicals’ version.

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Precisely.

Yet, when you hear that from someone who's anti-war, the cry goes out for "conservatives who want to fight and liberals who (smirk) want to ..understand".

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American policymakers still show remarkably little interest in the jihadis’ ideology and sometimes seem content to regard it as mere fanatic reaction to U.S. policies, especially in the Middle East. It is as if, in the cold war, we were content simply to fight against communism without bothering to learn anything of Marxism[-Leninism].

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Say it, brother.

Halle-f*cking-lujah.

...And now we come to a paragraph that touches on a point which has been made here repeatedly but has been met by silence every time. It's a mighty serious point. It's as serious as two airplanes slamming into a pair of tall bulidings.

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Thirty years ago, only Saudi Arabia had these types of laws, but they have spread in the past quarter century, either pushed by entrenched regimes, such as the Saudis, by rulers who came to power in coups or revolutions, such as in Sudan and Iran, by creeping legislative change, such as in Pakistan and Indonesia, by state-level governments, such as in Nigeria and Malaysia. They are continuing to spread in Africa and Asia.

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The point is this : In almost every country mentioned above, and others as well, the United States has promoted anti-Left coups and massacres which were "successful" in that the "threat from communism" was drowned in blood, literally. What this did was to eliminate from the political arena almost the entire Left opposition. To the vacuum that was thus created rushed in and filled it the Religious Fundamentalists, the Muslim extremists.

After a quarter century of such "success", the chickens are coming home to roost.

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In our war on radical Islam we are succeeding at a military level, but on the level of ideas and laws we are losing.

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Say it, brother, say it.

(Though not many are listening.)

[nicky g]

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Marshall: I’ve spent a good chunk of the last three years in many parts of the Muslim world interviewing people about Sharia. One thing I quickly learned was that Muslims mean very different things when they use the term. Sharia's root meaning is "the way" or "path to the water" and to most Muslims it implies doing God's will, not necessarily imitating the Taliban. In Indonesia, polls show 67 percent support for "Sharia" but only 7 percent objecting to a woman head of state. There it seems to means something like the American polling term "moral values." Polling in Iraq shows a similar pattern: 80% support for Sharia combined with 80% support for equality of men and women.


To many Muslims, criticism of Sharia as such sounds strange because, much as they might disagree with stoning adulterous women or cutting off the hands of thieves, the word implies “justice” or “goodness.” So I use the phrase ‘extreme Sharia’ to describe the laws implemented by the Saudis, Iran and others throughout the world.

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I don't know why he has to make such a bone of this. Sharia is simply a moral code/behavioural guidelines extrapolated from Islam's holy texts. As there are many interpretations of these texts, there are many differing conceptions Sharia.

"Extreme Sharia is central for all Islamists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood or Hizbut al-Tahrir, whether or not they are terrorists. Some groups, like Hamas, will campaign in elections if they think they can win."

This is silly. Extreme Sharia is central to all extreme Islamists. There are Islamists who are sincere about elections, have no interest in stoning people and so on eg in Turkey, Morocco etc.

"political opposition can be treated as apostasy or blasphemy and are potentially punishable by death, either by the state or by private bodies. In Iran, where all political office and activity is conditioned on “compatibility with standards of Shari’a,” Mehrangis Kar, who wrote the chapter on Iran in Radical Islam’s Rules, was sentenced in 2000 for “spreading propaganda against the regime of the Islamic Republic” under articles 498 and 500 of the Law of Islamic Punishment. In July 2004, Hashem Aghajari, a history professor, had his death sentence for blasphemy overturned but was sentenced to five years in prison, two of them suspended, for “insulting Islamic values.”"

This is a good point, but to clarify it/reiterate a bit, these things don't really have anything to do with religion or Sharia. These people were being persecuted on purely political grounds under the cover of religion.

[ACPlayer]

Usually links from 6M on Islam are like the links a fox might post on how to protect of sheep. However, this one is a bit better than the usual.

Specially if the main take away is that in the West we need to better understand Sharia, Islam and what exactly the Jihadists are all about, rather than react based on fear and emotion -- as the present administration is doing. Pretty much what I have advocated for a long time.

A clear understanding of the present state of Islam would lead one to identify Saudi and Egypt as the main culprits. Iraq and Iran would then be relegated to the relatively minor player. We are needlessly giving Iran too much weight and of course have completely wasted time, money and people in Iraq.

[Jdanz]

just as an aside, i really wish we had some muslims on this board posting in politics (if in fact we don't?)

my very good friend and roomate happens to be muslim, and i'd say he's my most religious friend at school, and of course he's a completely "normal" guy. There are certainly as many crazy christians or jews as muslims. Just that some people we don't like happen to be muslims, and use islam as a justification for action doesn't mean much.

wacky christians /= christians having no value
wacky muslims /= muslims having no value

however people = people

that doesn't mean we can't have different desires and goals, as do many americans, engineers, jews, young and old. People have ideas about what life means and what makes it worth living, and without fail these ideas don't line up neatly along any group lines, regardless of certain preponderances.