How Can You Tell if Sharia is Right for You? The Thinking Person’s Quick Guide to Sharia
Executive Summary
- Muslims often misrepresent Sharia law, stating that non-Muslims don’t understand Sharia, without explaining what it is or deliberately misrepresenting Sharia.
- We cover some quick basics of Sharia.
Introduction
Sharia’s basics are important to know when discussing Islam, as one of the first critiques of those who say they do not want to live under Sharia is that.
“They don’t know what Sharia is.”
Understanding Sharia is important for the simple reason that if you do not know, Muslims will normally take advantage of this and then lie about Sharia and try to sugar coat, Sharia. That is why this article will help you determine if Sharia is for you.
See our references for this article and related articles at this link.
Some of the Rules Around Sharia
Most Sharia sources suffer from not being an enumerated list, making it difficult to keep track of exactly what is illegal and the punishments under Sharia.
The following table outlines some of the more common Sharia rules or laws.
Sharia Rules and Punishments
Rule # | Law | Punishment |
---|---|---|
1 | Apostasy | Death |
2 | Homosexuality | Varies between death and imprisonment. |
3 | Child Marriage / Pedophilia | Allowed |
4 | Rape | Rapist can often escape punishment through marrying their victim. |
5 | Women's Inheritance | Women can and do inherit property at roughly 1/2 stake to men. |
6 | Slavery | Allowed and still active in several Muslim countries. Borderline slavery is rampant in the Gulf states, and western countries are happy to keep strong relations with these countries. |
7 | Non-Muslims Cannot Keep or Bear Arms | Could not find what happens if a non-Muslim is caught bearing arms. |
8 | Dimmis (non-Muslims) are second class citizens. | Various |
9 | Non-Muslims cannot repair or rebuild their places of worship. | Various |
10 | Non-Muslims must feed and house any Muslim for three days in their house. | N/A |
11 | Non-Muslims can have their property taken by Muslims and no 4rth amendment protection. | N/A |
12 | Inconsistent criminal prosecution for Muslims versus non-Muslims | Various, in Gulf states criminal codes do not protect non-Muslims. |
13 | No Non-Muslim can bring testimony against a Muslim | Various |
14 | Supports cruel and unusual punishment. | Various, cutting off hands for theft, stoning, etc.. |
15 | Rape victims | Rape victims are punished for adultery, and sometimes killed. Any uncovered woman is normally interpreted as having brought the rape on herself. |
16 | Protection for fathers and brothers that commit honor killing. | N/A |
17 | Sharia denies participatory government. | Sharia environments simply have no voting. Imagine voting in Brunei or Saudi Arabia or Qatar |
18 | Alcohol is illegal | Between 40 & 100 lashes in Qatar (Not enforced against non-Muslims) |
19 | Muslim men can have 4 wives, and an unlimited number of slaves. | N/A |
20 | Women is accorded 1/2 the weight as men in court. | N/A |
21 | No separation between church and state. Sharia is in combined church/government law. All is unified under Sharia. | N/A |
21 | Adultery | Stoning is a favorite for adultery. Sometimes this is performed in a very impromptu manner, but on other occasions the adulterer is buried in sand up to their neck and their head is stoned until they are dead. "Article 88 of Qatar's criminal code declares the punishment for adultery is 100 lashes. Adultery is punishable by death when a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man are involved." - Wikipedia |
22 | Blasphemy | 7 Years in prison in Qatar |
23 | Proselytizing (i.e. trying to convert Muslims from Islam) | 10 years in prison in Qatar |
24 | Wearing immodest clothing | Flogging in Qatar |
25 | Non-Muslims are subject to the Jizyah, a tax on non-believers. | Unclear the Hadith states they should be fought. |
26 | Divorce: It is very easy for a man to divorce his wife, but often close to impossible for a woman to divorce their husband. | In most cases, the court and the Imans will order women back to their husbands, even if they are abusive. |
27 | Wife Beating | Allowed, According to Mohammed, even if the woman's skin is green from the beating. |
Examples of Sharia
This video describes how Brunei has implemented Sharia. The Sultan of Brunei asks only that you respect their right to implement the Sharia as it is their religious freedom after all. George Clooney critiqued Sharia’s passage but stopped short of saying anything “racist and gross” about Islam. George Clooney may not be aware that Sharia is in some way related to Islam.Â
The following transgressions can receive the death penalty.
- Adultery
- Homosexuality
- Apostacy
- Blasphemy
- Insulting Islam
- Murder
- Terrorism
- Kidnapping
- Rape
- Arson
Sharia as Enforcing Muslim Supremacy
Sharia is far more lenient, even allowing slavery, child marriage, and legalized pedophilia. However, if you are a non-Muslim who has suddenly become extremely excited about being allowed to own slaves, you must first convert to Islam. And you can only own non-Muslims as slaves.
Sharia as Setting Up a Double Standard of Law Based Upon Religious Affiliation
Sharia sets up a double standard where Muslims are superior to all other groups. Normally, Muslims who perform crimes against non-Muslims are either not punished or given extremely lenient penalties. And Muslims are very serious about this. The Gulf countries do not investigate murders if the victim is a non-Muslim.
This would be the same as allowing all Mormons to do anything they want and then unleashing them on the rest of the US society, with each of the Mormons knowing that they essentially either cannot be prosecuted. Muslims call the ability to do anything against non-Muslims in Muslim counties while demanding equal protection under the law, and even superior protection as “respecting Islam” and being not Islamophobic.
Conclusion
The more dominant Islam is in any country, the worse the outcomes for the country. And one of the negative features of Islam is incorporating part of the Sharia into its legal system. Sharia is implemented to a varying degree in Islamic countries.
Are Muslims Right that it is Time for Sharia for Western Countries?
Many Muslims often present Sharia as a magic solution to society’s problems. Many Muslims who have immigrated to the west proclaim that it is only a matter of time until Sharia is the land law in these countries. However, Muslims often mislead western audiences into thinking that Sharia is just doing small things like not eating pork and not paying interest on loans.
Here is one such example from Linda Sarsour, who makes a living from lying about Islam and calling anyone who would question anything about Islam as an Islamophobe.
Striking At the Patriarchy With Sharia?
Linda Sarsour was given a prime speaking role at the 2016 Women’s March, even though she supports Sharia’s adoption in the US. Western audiences are typically very hesitant to critique Sharia because critiquing anything Muslim is “racist and gross.” Feminism in the US has aligned itself with Islam, apparently attempting to fight the patriarchy and its oppression in European based countries.
The Basis of Sharia in the Islamic Sources
Muslim societies cannot make progress in reducing these practices you just read in the table because they are supported in the Koran, Hadiths. The Sharia is firmly established in Islamic society.
Both ISIS and Boko Haram were/are strong adherents to Sharia. And over 1150 years ago, Islam went through a process whereby they rejected rational thought, and they concluded that everything in Islam was fixed. After this time the focus went to work out the details of Sharia, or to apply the already agreed-upon interpretation of the Koran and Hadith.
See the following quotation.
Interpretation (ijtihad) of the Qur’an and the Sunnah, insofar as it was needed, was accomplished by these four imams by the early ninth century. By twelfth century, it was thought that there was no need for further interpretation or elaboration, just application; the door to ijtihad closed. After the fixation of the law, taqlid (the opposite of ijtihad), or imitate of the recognized rulings, became the norm. This is why, according to British scholar W. Montgomery Watt, “the central discipline is Islamic education was not theology but jurisprudence.” The right path has been set. Within it, all human actions were categorized as: obligation, “duty”(fard); “recommended” (mandub); legitimate or indifferent, “permitted” (mubah); discouraged, “reprehensible” (makruh); and “forbidden” (haram). There was nothing one could do for which guidance was not available and necessary. One needed only to follow the prescriptions as instructed by the ulema (Islamic jurisprudence scholars). There was no need to look beyond sacred scripture.
This was obviously not an orientation conducive to philosophy, ethics or natural theology. In fact, the subject of philosophy was removed from the curriculum of the famous al-Azhar university in Cairo and was not reinstated until late in the nineteenth century at the insistence of the Egyptian reformer Muhammed ‘Abduh. (emphasis added)
The door to ijtihad was shut was decisively that even efforts to open it in the early nineteenth century were rebuked. When Muhammed Ali as-Sanusi (1787-1859), known as the Grant Sanusi, attempted to reopen the gates to ijtihad, he has rebuked in a typical fatwa by the mufti of Cairo, who said, “For no one denies the fact that the dignity of ijtihad had long disappeared and that at the present time no man has attained this degree of learning.” – The Closing of the Muslim Mind
Did You Find Sharia Appealing?
If you found any of the rules and punishments in the table appealing, you are either Muslim, and this is perfectly expected — as a denial of Sharia would mean under Islam that you deny Mohammed as the perfected Muslim. This means you are an apostate. (See the table for what happens to apostates).
But if not — reach out to us because we have the phone numbers of highly trained mental health professionals, and you need to be put into contact with one of them.