Shariah law is often not what Muslim judges say it is

Written by
Rafia Zakaria
The Indianapolis Star
23 October 2010

The Supreme Court in the United Arab Emirates ruled Monday that a man has the right to discipline his wife and child as long as it does not leave any marks -- a decision that came in a case where a man slapped and kicked his wife and daughter.

The decision overturned a lower court's judgment that the man was guilty of abuse and subject to a fine. The court justified the reversal by saying Islamic law, or Shariah, allowed the man to discipline his wife and daughter provided he had exhausted all other options.

The case is typical in that it represents the ease with which male judges in rich Arab nations take it upon themselves to justify male violence by packaging it as Islamic doctrine. These judges promote the deception that their edicts are entirely divine and completely unchallengeable by capitalizing on crucial misunderstandings about the meaning of the term Shariah and the divinity attached to it.

The confusion exists in the United States, too, where ballot initiatives to ban Shariah will be before voters next month in Oklahoma and Louisiana. But in Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Shariah is used to justify all manner of barbaric practices that have more to do with political theater than Islamic theology or jurisprudence.

If Westerners associate Shariah with wife-beatings, amputations and beheadings, the often-illiterate masses of the Muslim world are similarly duped into believing they must silently acquiesce to such barbarism if they want to be good Muslims. In the example of wife-beating, no mention is made of the fact that the entire ruling relies on a translation of a single Arabic word in the Quran that has been contested by several scholars.

Because the term Shariah has multiple meanings, opportunities for its misuse abound both in Western and Muslim political contexts. Literally, "shariah" means the path to water and, symbolically, the collective effort that Muslims must apply to discern God's will. It is also used to refer to Islamic law.

Here lies the trick: While two sources of Islamic law are divine, the remaining two are indeed human. However, this second aspect, the fact that large parts of Islamic law are subject to questioning, contention and disagreement, is often omitted by conservative Arab countries that espouse literal readings of the Quran and are committed to denying the plurality and diversity of Islamic law.

But Muslim women are refusing to be silenced. A global movement of Muslim women called Musawah is challenging edicts like this one and calling on reform to Shariah.

The movement is drawing attention to the central principles of justice, compassion and love that are at the core of Islamic belief and promoting the belief that violence against women has no place in Islam.

These women present a serious challenge to chauvinistic clerics and Taliban bandits who use Islam and women's bodies as a playground for their political ambitions.

The real battle, these women show, is not against Shariah but rather about who gets to define it.

Rafia Zakaria lives in Indianapolis and is associate editor of www.altmuslim.org.

SOURCE: http://www.indystar.com/article/20101023/LIVING09/10230374/Shariah-law-is-often-not-what-Muslim-judges-say-it-is