(urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fires

[António Pedro Marques]

Matthew Knight wrote (11-04-2012 05:15):
> 2012/4/10 António Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com:
>> Only someone who thinks sharia has no business in Europe can consider
>> that the mention of sharia in Europe is objectionable politics. Who's
>> the xenophobe then? One might as well ask what effect does a
>> protagonist being black has on a story written by a white author, and
>> leap to the conclusion that the author is a white supremacist who's
>> subtly complaining that blacks may one day be protagonists of
>> something.
>
> Sorry, this doesn't ring true.  Sharia isn't just "mentioned" here, but
> framed in a specific way.  The kind of sharia we are presented with is
> far from the kind which has gone into effect in parts of the UK.  Rather
> than that form, restricted to certain issues of family law and civil
> disputes over things like inheritance, we are presented with
> sharia-as-bogeyman, where theft results in severed limbs, and (probably)
> blasphemy of the prophet or adultery lead to death by stoning.  Sharia
> law is about much more than violent punishment, but it's not usually
> presented with nuance in the West, including in this book.  At least, the
> part I've read thus far.

You probably know better than me that there is no such thing as 'a' sharia.
But we do know how it works in countries which have made a stance of basing
its laws on 'sharia'. Severed limbs are by no means a 'western' fantasy. Nor
are the real-world fatwas on (say) sexual themes, even by the most
'moderate' clerics. When 'traditionalists' in a country with a
non-sharia-based penal code (and only a handful of muslim countries claim to
base their laws on sharia specifically) demand that sharia become the basis,
they're not for sure thinking of inheritance laws.

How can you call something a bogeyman which actually exists and is there for
everyone to see?

I admit my opinion on islam is very unfavourable, to put it quite mildly. So
much so that in my view most muslims live by much *higher* standards than
those of their religion - the reverse of christians, who live by *lower*
standards than their own's. But it's not a prejudice. It's an opinion based
on some knowledge of the thing.

 From another angle: severed limbs and stoning is what you have in Iran or
Saudi Arabia, two of the few countries which claim to base their laws on
sharia. Now, if iranians or saudi arabians living in Europe claim for the
introduction of sharia into the european legal systems, how come is an end
result of severed limbs and stonings a bogeyman?