Sharia: A Rebuttal

Someone put this as a comment on my last post, and I felt it was important enough to give it its own post.

"Just a few issues for you:

a) polygamy (Sharia allows it, we don't)

b) divorce (Women do not have equal rights to sue for divorce)

c) physical violence (under Sharia, men are allowed to beat their wives in certain circumstances)

d) physical punishments (cutting off of hands, beating, flogging, all against the Geneva Conventions)

e) capital punishment for apostasy, homosexuality, adultery etc etc(clearly against the Geneva Conventions)

f) freedom of speech and association (under Sharia insulting the prophet or islam is illegal, as is public preaching of other religions, as is worship in pagan religions etc.)

g) The system of criminal law has unusual burdens of proofs, and a woman's witness is worth half - it also doesn't recognise rape as a crime within marriage.

There are plenty of others."

So let's pick this apart shall we?

For clarification, we'll build a basic vocabulary:
Sharia (Islamic law)
Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence)
Sunna (the doings of the Prophet)
Hadith (the sayings of the Prophet)
Ijtihad (to exert oneself, reasoning, judgement)
Ijma (consensus of the community, and at different points in history, consensus of elites)
Qiyas (analogical reasoning)

Sharia is not a monolith, there are many different interpretations. Yours sounds like the extremist interpretation, which according to the VAST MAJORITY of the adherents of Islam is the wrong one, but yes, has come to dominate quite a few societies. Though I believe it should be noted that their power lies in political and social circumstances, not in actual religious legitimacy.

Saying that, there are different schools of thought including the Maliki, Hanafi, Shafi'i, and Hanbali, all of which are a part of Sunni Islam. For Shi'a Islam, there are the Zaydis, the Ismailis, and the Twelvers. I hate to send people to wikipedia, but its a good starting place to become familiar with what these schools are. However, none of these schools and neither the Sunni or Shi'a are monoliths either. Islamic law, practice, tradition, even Islam itself, is an active process because of its long history and that it has spread to so many different peoples of ethnicity, culture, and language.

A quote about difference of thought in Islam from Islam and Conflict Resolution: Theories and Practices:

"To pious Muslims, such differences resulted from sincere efforts to discover those ordinances from the Divine Will and meant to bring about cohesion of the community. At any rate, the Prophet was reported to have said: 'Differences of opinion among my community is a sign of Allah's mercy'."

Polygamy

Laws on polygamy are subject to time and place for most religions, in my opinion. I don't like polygamy, but I can see how it was beneficial for pre-modern societies in the forming of political alliances and a protected status for women. But then societies change, and polygamy isn't really needed for those reasons anymore. From the Pakistani Commission on Marriage and Family in the 1950's:

"The Qu'ranic permission about polygamy was a conditional permission to meet grave social emergencies, and hevy responsibilities were attached to it, with the warning that the common man would find it extremely difficult, of not impossible, to fulfill the conditions of equal justice attached to it."

Polygamy isn't something that's supposed to be done just because the man wants to, but it remains a hotly debated issue across the Muslim world. So we'll leave it at that.

Divorce and Domestic Violence
Three people, John Esposito, Youssef Rapoport, and Leila Ahmed. Fantastic resources on women and marriage in Islam. I'm not taking the Women and Gender Construction course at my higher learning institution this semester, but two friends of mine have. I can get a hell of a lot more resources, hopefully electronic, from them. But just so you know, even though I am not as familiar with the topic as some other people, I know who the experts are.

Corporal and Capital Punishment
Absolutely completely subject to time and place. Back in the day, the practice of cutting off hands and stoning etc was pretty common umm...everywhere. Historians like John Esposito have noted that all of those practices were able to be justified for their context, and were under harsh restrictions, but many many legal reforms have been made since then, and so those practices are generally considered unacceptable for the modern world by the majority of Muslims. Of course, you get people continuing to do that, but they are operating under a very literal interpretation of the law. Every society has elements within it that are in contradiction to the Geneva Conventions, it doesn't mean those societies inherently violent, it means they're human.

Freedom of Speech and Association
Pssshh...I get frustrated when I hear people say there's no freedom of thought/speech/etc in Islam. The favorite example is Salman Rushdie, as if he's the only Muslim (or of an Islamic heritage at least) to have a thought throughout the whole of Islamic history. Look above at my quote about diversity in thought.

Read about Ibn Battuta's travels across the Muslim world, and all of the things he observed in different Muslim societies in the 15th century. He may not have agreed with some of the practices, like the ringing of church bells in Central Asia, or women going around topless in the Maldives, but the fact is, they happened, and they were tolerated. Read about famous Arab poets and all the scandals they got involved in, yet were tolerated.

It is in different periods of history when there are threats to the political institutions that we see a closing of the mind to different ideas and intolerance, and it has nothing to do with religion. Its just sh*t that humans do to each other, period.

That's now going to be new attitude towards historical travesties. Genocide in Rwanda you say? Ethnic cleansing in the Balkans? The Britney and K-Fed custody battle? Yeah, let's just file all of that under "Sh*t That Humans Do To Each Other".

And that ladies and gentlemen, is my rebuttal. Thanks for tuning in. Good night, and good luck.