Sharia Laws–Heavy Deception With Abusive Divinity

Published in Daily News Monitoring Service on February11, 2004

The dogmas of Fatwa and Sharia Laws still dominate million of Muslim lives

No doubt, early Islam possessed many fine and noble attributes. But Islam couldn’t have swept Arabia and its adjacent lands so fabulously if Sharia Laws and Fatwa had been the models of Islamic edicts at that time.

It is an irony to iron-out the deep wrinkles of Islam, we know today. Corrupted beliefs are too profoundly ingrained in Islam. The dogmas of Fatwa and Sharia Laws still dominate million of Muslim lives and the vulnerable ones get succumb to Fatwa’s claws.

A year before his death and before the Koran was compiled, Prophet Muhammad made his last pilgrimage from Medina to Mecca. There He made a great sermon to his people. The sermon breathed a spirit of generosity. The Muslims created a society more free from widespread cruelty and social oppression than any society had ever been in the world before.

But that was then – the prophetic Islam. Today, Islam encompasses numerous fragments, interpretations and the dreadful echoes of Sharia Laws. The Sharia Laws are much heavier on one side. It is the side that is not the Koran but the Hadith. It might surprize the readers that “stoning to death” cannot be traced anywhere in the Koran, but it is profusely enshrined

in the pages of the Hadith. Obviously the Hadith narrators borrowed it from a famous story in the Christian Bible – the New Testament, and passed it in the name of Prophet Muhammad.

The story (John: 8 ) tells us that some Jewish crowd brought a woman who had been caught in adultery. They made her stand before Jesus, and then said to him: “Now, master, this woman has been caught in adultery, in the very act. According to the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women to death. Now, what do you say about it?’ After they persisted in their questioning, Jesus finally straightened up and said simply, “Let the one among you who has never sinned throw the first stone at her.”

The Hadith literature is imposingly believed to be the words of Prophet Muhammad, transmitted through his companions. A number of these sayings, purportedly made in the name of the Prophet, can actually be traced to Zoroastrian culture, the Christian Bible and even the laws and rituals of the Byzantine. Deeply merged in it, are the arbitrary laws, induced by the Muslim emperors and kings of their own. In a manner of speaking, the limited legislation in the Koran, occupy very little room in the whole canon of Sharia Laws. A vast bulk of it comes from the Hadith, and significantly from Bukhari, recorded about 200 years after the death of the Prophet

Islamic history, though not antique, is not immune from history’s rubbles. Within the rubbles are the remains that depict the truth behind the development of Islamic customs, creeds and laws. We have very little choice other than to join the events of Islamic rulers. This, in fact, is the only way to approaching the mysteries of the Sharia Laws.

While we take comfort in the strength of Islam as the torchbearer during the ‘Dark Ages’, the compilations of the Sharia Laws and their origins are merged with conspiracy and administrative convenience. History’s mystery is that the Sharia Laws never existed during the Caliphates of ‘Rashidun’. This period started with the death of Prophet Muhammad and continued about 30 years. Four Caliphs prevailed during this period.

The compilation of the Koran started with Omar, the second Caliph and completed by Othman, the third Caliph. Obviously, there was none who could claim to know more about Islam than these Caliphs. So what about Sharia Laws and Fatwa? Was there any Ulema superseding the Caliphs? Obviously the perception of Sharia Laws did not exist during their periods. Whatever they did, that too crept into Sharia Laws and gained the seal of Islam.

Then started the caliphates of the Umayyads in 660 AD and ended in 750 AD. During these 90 years of caliphate, there were 13 Caliphs ruling the Islamic domains from this dynasty. Caliph Abd-al Malik had “Dome of the Rock” built in Jerusalem. He then encouraged the shifting of the rituals of Hajj from Mecca to Jerusalem. His son, al-Walid, financed the building of the Mosque near the Dome in 711 AD. He named it al-Aqsa, and proclaimed its divinity to Prophet Muhammad in a brilliant way to attracting the pilgrims from Mecca to Jerusalem.

Business and economic interest topped more to their inspiration than the perspiration of introducing Sharia Laws. Their administrative centre was in Damascus but the centre of Islamic traditions was in Medina. Here Malik ibn-Anas, a companion of the prophet, had high respects as the authority on Islamic matters. But it was not a hesitation to Hazaz ibn-Yussouf, the governor of Iraq, to threat Malik ibn-Anas. He was bullied to have his skull crushed under a grinder if he complained too often about Umayyads’ way of doing things that deviated from Koranic laws. Obviously, when Malik ibn-Anas was not spared from threats of the Caliphs at that time, did the Umayyads care for any opinion of those impoverished Ulemas?

History tells us that the Caliphate of Harun ar-Rashid marks one of the great periods of Islam. Ironically, until the death of Harun ar-Rashid in 809 AD, there was nothing like ‘Fatwa’ or ‘Sharia Laws’ in the Muslim domain. Even when appointing Harthama as the governor of Khorasan, Harun ar-Rashid gave him a copy of the Koran and not a book of Sharia laws.

The crawling of Sharia Laws into Islam, spans over sever centuries. There is a long history behind Sharia Laws becoming Islamic paradigm. In short it started after 809 AD. About seven years before his death, Harun ar-Rashid, the Caliph of Baghdad, made a Will. His eldest son al-Amin, was given the caliphate and the Arab lands. His other son, al-Ma’mun, from a Persian concubine, got the Persian territories and not the Caliphate.

Al-Ma’mun could not compromise with his father’s Will. Consequently, with the help of Iranian army from Khorasan, he marched into Baghdad and had his brother al-Amin killed. As a result, this brutal murder caused severe antagonism between the Arabs and the Iranians.

Obviously, trusting the Arabs was totally out in Al-Ma’mun’s strategy. After realizing that it would not be safe to depend solely on the Khorasani army, Ma’mun decided to have mercenaries. The Central Asiatic Turks, the only people easily approachable and sufficiently numerous, were recruited into the army of the caliph including the administrative positions. Invariably, this provoked enormous tensions in Baghdad.

The rapid growth of Turkish influence in the administration, court ,and army eventually made the Caliph merely a puppet in the hands of the Turkish generals. He remained banished in Samarra – far away from Baghdad. With his absence from the power-point, Islamic laws started brewing in the cauldron of the Turks – basically, Nestorian Christians with extended ties to Rome. The Popes in Rome never viewed Islam with the ideals of Jesus. To them, Islam was a threat to Christianity and papal power.

The Turkish judges and high-ranking officers had very little knowledge about the new religion of Islam. Besides, corrupting Islam with the elements of Papal practices was conducive to their interest. To understand the scenarios of Islam’s Sharia Laws and Fatwa, it would be helpful for the Muslims to look at the Christendom and go back a few centuries of early Christianity.

Peter was one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. We find, in the development of Papacy, a hierarchy or ruling body of clergy headed by a bishop. And in time, the Bishop of Rome, claiming to be a successor to Peter, was acknowledged as the supreme Bishop – the Pope.

In fact, the Bishopric began to function in a kind of monarchical system. With the passage of time, an era of religious persecution resulted in abuses, murder, robbery, torture and the slow death of thousands who dared believe differently from the church. Freedom of religious expression was considered heretic and was brutally stifled.

A system of expressing Papal power was introduced. A dreadful power of the Pope was the issuance of the ‘Bull’ – a Papal ordinance to anyone in the Christendom to explain before a religious court.

Let us now return back to Islam. By the tenth century the traditional material of Muslims had swollen beyond all manageable proportions and critical sifting became essential for the administration of the empire. As a recourse, the Islamic rulers looked towards Europe and were thrilled to discover the effectiveness of the Roman Pope’s power in the name of religion. His instrument of promulgating the ‘Bull’ transformed into ‘Fatwa’ in the Sharia Laws.

Now the religious hypocrisy, borrowed from Rome, was more powerful in quelling down any decedent than the power of army. Any innocent people could have been charged and punished with treason or heresy. This atmosphere generated a class of professionals and was called the “Ulema” towards the dying days of the Abbasid dynasty.

The Ulemas often referred to Prophet Muhammad’s sayings and deeds in their Fatwa. After two hundred years after his death, there were no significant records of those sayings. As a result, a new investigative euphoria evolved and certain legislation was traced back to the sayings of the Prophet. Almost imperceptibly, these circumstances created enormous enthusiasm for the collections of Prophet Muhammad’s sayings by such men as Bukhari and Muslim.

During the period from 933 to 937, a number of small but influential mercenary leaders erupted around Caspian and Persian-sea. They were knows as the Buyids, Ghaznavids and Seljuqs.

The Buyids had taken over the power in Iraq at the invitation of the Caliph. Systematically, they had formulated their theological and juridical ideas in the name of Islam. And more than ever the ‘Ulemas’ functioned as the brokers for authenticating the Caliphs’ rule as consistent with the Prophet’s precedents.

The prevalence of the Sharia Laws, during the dying days of the Abbasid, deeply soaked the Muslim-minds with the beliefs that these laws are of divine nature. While in reality, the foundation of Sharia Laws owes its hallmark to some Papal dogma in Rome, marinated with the hearsay of the Prophet, befitting for the Buyids, Ghaznavids and Seljuqs.

Despite the fact that the Sharia Laws contain some references to the Koran, its entirety cannot be revered as the divine laws of Islam. The Koran says: “Verily We have coined for mankind in the Qur’an all kinds of similitude, that haply they may reflect” (Az-Zumar 27). Obviously, the belief that all the Koranic laws are static and universal, is not supported by the Koran itself.

[Sources: A Manual of Hadith, Maulana Muhammad Ali. The Muslim Creed, A.J. Wensinck. History of Islamic People, Carl Brockelmann. Classical Islam, Von Grunebaum. Muslim Theology, Duncan B. Macdonald. The Outline of History, H.G. Wells.]

mesbah_uddin@hotmail.com

Mesbah Uddin A researcher and a freelance writer has contributed this article from the United Kingdom.

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See Sunnah – The Misconceived Dogma That poisoned Islam By : Mesbah Uddin