Sharia and Islamic law
I have joined a course about sharia and Islamic law. I had learned some new information which struck me. I already knew about Hudud as a part of Islamic law, for example, the punishment for adultery is hundred lashes and for theft is amputation. However, what I didn't know is that such offenses were rarely applied in practice. So why do you have laws if you don’t implement them?
It's said that 'harsh punishments were more like a deterrent, to scare people into not committing these crimes and a statement of the social values they considered important.' I quote this paragraph; '.. the English scholar Edward Lane in Egypt in the 19th Century reported that the hudud punishment for theft had not been carried out in recent memory. In the Muslim world more generally, historical records suggest that on the rare occasions when thieves did have their hands amputated for theft, these instances were recorded as shocking to the local population, implying they rarely occurred.'
As well as that, I learned that frightening punishments were included in the premodern British and American legal code. 'The colonial Virginian law code prescribed the death penalty for the stealing of fruits and vegetables from someone else's garden.'
Another important point I gained from the course is about the British intervention in the Islamic legal system. When the British colonized India where the Islamic laws were applied on a large scale, they directed their efforts to create formal fixed laws. 'The British took a text called the Hedaya out of all the texts they could have chosen from the vast array of Islamic legal texts. And this particular text is concerned with a wide array of social life, such as particularly ritual prayer, ritual purity, fasting, and so on, which Islamic law is particularly concerned with but the British weren't just recognizing areas such as prayer and fasting ritual as law. Concerning that translation, they're cutting out that entire section of this legal text. And at the same time, we've already seen so far how if Islamic legal texts are constantly changing and Islamic law is constantly changing in response to a particular situation. By choosing this one text to make into a law code, that's a very artificial process… That kind of legal reasoning where you're trying to accommodate divine rules with social progress and innovation, all of that happens in the areas of law books concerned with ritual worship. That's the part that's been left out. And so what appears to be Islamic law as translated by the British is a very inflexible, static, rarefied version of a system of dead rules.' 'As a result, Islamic law’s indigenous flexibility and capacity to adapt to social change was lost, and when the call came when colonialism ended in South Asia and elsewhere, the vision of Islamic law that was to be applied was something very different, and far closer to the British version.'
This is interesting but it doesn't mean that the whole Islamic law was a good one and it was only distorted by the British. It has its dark sides. Another point, why would there be a punishment in current life for something private like fornication if people would be held accountable in the afterlife? Why would God make laws which only suit a specific era? Wouldn't God know that time would change and laws would need to be changed as well? Why didn't God make laws flexible and adjustable for all times? Or it would be better if God said that these laws won't be valid when time changes!
It's said that 'harsh punishments were more like a deterrent, to scare people into not committing these crimes and a statement of the social values they considered important.' I quote this paragraph; '.. the English scholar Edward Lane in Egypt in the 19th Century reported that the hudud punishment for theft had not been carried out in recent memory. In the Muslim world more generally, historical records suggest that on the rare occasions when thieves did have their hands amputated for theft, these instances were recorded as shocking to the local population, implying they rarely occurred.'
As well as that, I learned that frightening punishments were included in the premodern British and American legal code. 'The colonial Virginian law code prescribed the death penalty for the stealing of fruits and vegetables from someone else's garden.'
Another important point I gained from the course is about the British intervention in the Islamic legal system. When the British colonized India where the Islamic laws were applied on a large scale, they directed their efforts to create formal fixed laws. 'The British took a text called the Hedaya out of all the texts they could have chosen from the vast array of Islamic legal texts. And this particular text is concerned with a wide array of social life, such as particularly ritual prayer, ritual purity, fasting, and so on, which Islamic law is particularly concerned with but the British weren't just recognizing areas such as prayer and fasting ritual as law. Concerning that translation, they're cutting out that entire section of this legal text. And at the same time, we've already seen so far how if Islamic legal texts are constantly changing and Islamic law is constantly changing in response to a particular situation. By choosing this one text to make into a law code, that's a very artificial process… That kind of legal reasoning where you're trying to accommodate divine rules with social progress and innovation, all of that happens in the areas of law books concerned with ritual worship. That's the part that's been left out. And so what appears to be Islamic law as translated by the British is a very inflexible, static, rarefied version of a system of dead rules.' 'As a result, Islamic law’s indigenous flexibility and capacity to adapt to social change was lost, and when the call came when colonialism ended in South Asia and elsewhere, the vision of Islamic law that was to be applied was something very different, and far closer to the British version.'
This is interesting but it doesn't mean that the whole Islamic law was a good one and it was only distorted by the British. It has its dark sides. Another point, why would there be a punishment in current life for something private like fornication if people would be held accountable in the afterlife? Why would God make laws which only suit a specific era? Wouldn't God know that time would change and laws would need to be changed as well? Why didn't God make laws flexible and adjustable for all times? Or it would be better if God said that these laws won't be valid when time changes!
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