Should Islam be blamed for 'barbaric' acts?
By Spengler

Al-Jazeera television on March 9 apologized to viewers after a talk-show guest, Syrian-American psychologist Dr Wafa Sultan, described as "barbaric" the response of Muslims to a Danish newspaper's cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed. "The Muslims' barbaric reaction added to the value of these cartoons. It simply proved their rightness," said Dr Sultan on the Qatari network. "The Muslim is an irrational creature, and the things he learned overpower his mind and inflame his feelings. That is why these remarks have turned him into an inferior creature, who cannot control himself and respond to events in a rational way."

Despite the network’s hasty apology, Dr Sultan’s presence on the show is a sign of the times. The issue of Muslim "barbarism", including honor killings and other forms of violence against women, has risen in prominence in Europe's political agenda. The question appears to be: Do Muslims commit barbaric acts because they are bad Muslims or because they are good Muslims? Does Islam as such promote barbarism or suppress it? Within the vast collection of hadith, or apocryphal sayings of Mohammed, are to be found explicit support for female genital mutilation and wife-beating. Are such barbaric acts a residue of traditional society that persist despite Islam, or because of it?

I shall argue that this is the wrong question, for Islam by its nature cannot be separated from primitive life.

Many Muslims protest that Islamic law does not sanction honor killings, and that other ethnic groups (eg, Hindus in Britain) are guilty of the practice. Honor killings are a repulsive aspect of traditional society. We first hear of such an act in Genesis 34, when after Jacob’s daughter Dinah was seduced by a man of Shechem, after which his sons Simeon and Levi instigated the slaughter of the town’s men. But Jacob denounced the act and still reproached his sons for it from his deathbed.

The Hebrew Bible reports the practice of honor killing, but abhors it. Muslims remain divided on the subject. Strictly speaking, it is true that Islamic law forbids a Muslim family from killing an adulteress or a woman who has had relations with a non-Muslim man. But that is only because Islamic law specifies that Islamic courts, rather than families, should supervise the killing. It is not that women (and sometimes men) should not be killed for the crime of illicit sexual relations, but rather that the Islamic courts should arrange the killing.

For this reason, Islamic law views quite leniently honor killings that accomplish what the courts would have done given the opportunity, and many Islamic commentators do not see why families should wait for the courts at all. Until recently, Jordan gave "honor" killers sentences of as little as six months under Article 340 of the Jordan Penal Code, which stated: "Anyone catching his wife or one of his immediate family in a flagrant act of fornication with another person, and kills, injures or harms both or either of them, will benefit from the exculpating excuse ..."

Jordan's King Abdullah succeeded in revising this language, but as the Associated Press reported last year, "attempts to introduce harsher sentences for honor killings have been blocked in Jordan's parliament, where the predominantly conservative Bedouin lawmakers argue that lesser penalties [than honor killings] would lead to tolerating of promiscuity."

Islamic clerics, to be sure, tend to favor the idea that they rather than families should do the killing. According to a traditional ruling cited by Dr Mohammed Fadel and frequently posted on Islamic sites,
The prohibition against applying a legal penalty without legal authority (bi ghayri sultan) and without witnesses; cutting off the means to shedding the blood of a Muslim based merely upon the claim of his accuser, the one seeking the shedding of the accused's blood. [In this case] the truth of the claim would be known only by [the accuser's] own statement and Allah, may He be glorified and sanctified, has made the life of a Muslim a precious thing, and has made the sin in taking it great as well. Therefore, it [legal punishment] is permissible only under the conditions in which Allah has permitted it. [Application of legal punishments] is exclusively for the government so that it may apply that which Allah has commanded in His book or on the tongue of His Prophet.
There is no question that flogging and execution of adulterers is mandated by the Koran (eg, Sudra 4:15). As I observed in another context, this point is so clear in Islamic law that Professor Tariq Ramadan refused to condemn the practice in a televised debate with then French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.

All Islamic commentary on the subject, though, applies to the behavior of Muslims in a country under Islamic rule in which the only only law is Islamic law. If no Islamic courts are available, what should an individual Muslim do? Is it then permissible to take the law into one's own hands? We have no clear record of Islamic jurisprudence on the subject, for only in recent years have large numbers of Muslims come to live in non-Muslim countries. But the reticence of Islamic clergy in the West to denounce honor killings is noteworthy.

The rest is here:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JC11Ak04.html

soren,

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So what's the Bible's Halachic punishment for adultery?

You try to claim the Bible doesn't permit honour killings, in fact it abhors it, yet Islam permits it apparently, because the Islamic law considers adultery a capital offense. News: The Bible also considers adultery a capital offense.

Deuteronomy 22:22 "If a man is found sleeping with another man's wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die."

Leviticus 20:10 "If a man commits adultery with another man's wife--with the wife of his neighbor--both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death."

Leviticus 21:9 "And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire." (

This isn't honour killing???

)

locutius,

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These killings do occur in Muslim countries sadly, but not with the blessings of Islam, they do so out of their own tribalist ignorance and in direct opposition to Islam.

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What you quoted easel is not from the Hebrew Bible, it's from the Greek New Testament.

Abu - those quotes are form the OT, that's for jews.
The New T is for christians.

Thank you abu, my limited intellect and powers of perception have been rectified by your great insight.

Maybe you can use the same to show yourself that this is a discussion about Islam and it's alleged barbarism and taking the thread off course and on to a discussion about Judaism/Christianity is not the intended direction I assume this article was leading to.

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Anyway, back to Islam.

The acts of violence are sanctioned by Islamic spiritual leaders.

Christianity is not responsible for homosexuality, God is. If a Catholic condones homosexuality, is he/she speaking on behalf of the Church? Or is it only the clergy and the pope who can do that?

I'm pretty sure sodomy between two consenting adults is not illegal in Australia anymore, but I could easily be wrong. The Australian Defence Force accepts gays and lesbians and they were even officially represented at the Mardi Gras, so I think it has government backing in this country.

The article very, very briefly touched on aspects which were not Islamic, and admitted the acts did take place, which were then condemned within the same book, if you read the article.

abu_rashid wrote on Sep 18^th, 2008 at 12:30pm:


Interesting that the act of sex between two consenting adults of the same sex is a barbaric activity but killing someone for a misjudgement is acceptable. In fact righteous if decided by council.

Easel,

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They are? Can you bring me a reputable Islamic 'spiritual leader' who's condoned honour killings?

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That's precisely the point. Just because a government in a largely Christian country condones it, doesn't mean Christianity condones it. Likewise just because a government in a largely Muslim country has light punishments for murderers who commit these [dis]honour killings, doesn't mean it's condoned by Islam.

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Actually it mentions the Hebrew Bible alone, indicating it's just talking about Jewish books, not Christian books. You must remember the Old Testament is a complete and seperate book by itself, used by Jews for thousands of years, without ever attaching the New Testament to it. The story mentioned is that of Jacob (pbuh), and Jacob (pbuh) lived in the time of the OT, he knew nothing about Christians, nor about their New Testament.