Thursday, June 11, 2020

Highlights of Islamic Law ( Shari'a)

Let us take a closer look at the Sharia law. Former Muslim Nonie Darwish, author of Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law, in an article titled, Sharia for Dummies highlights a few of those laws. 

1. Jihad defined as “to war against non-Muslims to establish the religion” is the duty of every Muslim and Muslim head of state (Caliph). Muslim Caliphs who refuse jihad are in violation of Sharia and unfit to rule. 

2. A Caliph can hold office through seizure of power meaning through force. 

3. A Caliph is exempt from being charged with serious crimes such as murder, adultery, robbery, theft, drinking and in some cases of rape.

4. A percentage of Zakat (alms) must go towards jihad.

5. It is obligatory to obey the commands of the Caliph, even if he is unjust. 

6. A caliph must be a Muslim, a non-slave, and a male.

7. The Muslim public must remove the Caliph in one case, if he rejects Islam. 

8. A Muslim who leaves Islam must be killed immediately. 

9. A Muslim will be forgiven for murder of: 
1) an apostasy 2) an adulterer 3) a highway robber. Making vigilante street justice and honor killing acceptable. 

10. A Muslim will not get the death penalty if he kills a non-Muslim. 

11. Sharia never abolished slavery and sexual slavery and highly regulates it. A master will not be punished for killing his slave. 

12. Sharia dictates death by stoning, beheading, amputation of limbs, flogging and other forms 
of cruel and unusual punishments even for crimes of sin such as adultery. 

13. Non-Muslims are not equal to Muslims and must comply to Sharia if they are to remain safe. They are forbidden to marry Muslim women, publicly display wine or pork, recite their scriptures or openly celebrate their religious holidays or funerals. They are forbidden from building new churches or building them higher than mosques. They may not enter a mosque without permission. A non-Muslim is no longer protected if he commits adultery with a Muslim woman or if he leads a Muslim away from Islam. 

14. It is a crime for a non-Muslim to sell weapons to someone who will use them against Muslims. Non-Muslims cannot curse a Muslim, say anything derogatory about Allâh, the Prophet, or Islam, or expose the weak points of Muslims. However, the opposite is not true for Muslims. 

15. A non-Muslim cannot inherit from a Muslim. 

16. Banks must be Sharia compliant and interest is not allowed. 

17. No testimony in court is acceptable from people of low-level jobs, such as street sweepers or a bathhouse attendant. Women in such low level jobs such as professional funeral mourners cannot keep custody of their children in case of divorce. 

18. A non-Muslim cannot rule even over a non-Muslims minority. 

19. Homosexuality is punishable by death.

20. There is no age limit for marriage of girls under Sharia. The marriage contract can take place anytime after birth and consummated at age 8 or 9. 

21. Rebelliousness on the part of the wife nullifies the husband’s obligation to support her, gives him permission to beat her and keep her from leaving the home. 

22. Divorce is only in the hands of the husband and is as easy as saying: “I divorce you” and becomes effective even if the husband did not intend it. 

23. There is no common property between husband and wife and the husband’s property does not automatically go to the wife after his death. 

24. A woman inherits half what a man inherits. 

25. A man has the right to have up to 4 wives and she has no right to divorce him even if he is polygamous. 

26. The dowry is given in exchange for the woman’s sexual organs. 

27. A man is allowed to have sex with slave women and women captured in battle, and if the enslaved woman is married her marriage is annulled. 

28. The testimony of a woman in court is half the value of a man. 

29. A woman loses custody if she remarries. 

30. To prove rape, a woman must have 4 male witnesses.

31. A rapist may only be required to pay the bride-money (dowry) without marrying the rape victim. 

32. A Muslim woman must cover every inch of her body which is considered “Awrah,” a sexual organ. Some schools of Sharia allow the face and some don’t. 

33. A Muslim man is forgiven if he kills his wife caught in the act of adultery. However, the opposite is not since he “could be married to the woman he was caught with.” 

These laws are universally accepted by both Sunnis and Shiites and are the basis of the laws in Islamic countries. The Sharia derives from the Quran and the hadith. These are the laws that Muslims want to bring into the non-Muslim countries.

Thursday, June 4, 2020

Islam and Muslim's Backwardness

Although Islam has been a curse to everyone, Muslims are its primary victims. In a 2005 article titled “What Went Wrong,” Dr. Farrukh Saleem, a Pakistani writer,
wrote:
The combined annual GDP of 57 Muslim countries remain under $2 trillion. America, just by herself, produces goods and services worth $10.4 trillion; China $5.7 trillion, Japan $3.5 trillion and Germany $2.1 trillion. Even India’s GDP is estimated at over $3 trillion (purchasing power parity basis).

Oil rich Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., Kuwait and Qatar collectively produce goods and services (mostly oil) worth $430 billion; Netherlands alone has a higher annual GDP while Buddhist Thailand produces goods and services worth $429 billion.

Muslims are 22 percent of the world population and produce less than five percent of global GDP. Even more worrying is that the Muslim countries’ GDP as a percent of the global GDP is going down over time. The Arabs, it seems, are particularly worse off. According to the United Nations’ Arab Development Report: “Half of Arab women cannot read; One in five Arabs live on less than $2 per day; Only1 percent of the Arab population has a personal computer, and only half of 1 percent use the Internet; Fifteen percent of the Arab workforce is unemployed, and this number could double by 2010; The average growth rate of the per capita income during the preceding 20 years in the Arab world was only one-half of 1 percent per annum, worse than anywhere but sub-Saharan Africa.”

The planet’s poorest countries include Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Somalia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Mozambique. At least six of the poorest of the poor are countries with a Muslim majority.

Conclusion: Muslims of the world are among the poorest of the poor.

Fifty-seven Muslim majority countries have an average of ten universities each for a total of less than 600 universities for 1.4 billion people; India has 8,407 universities, the U.S. has 5,758. From within 1.4 billion Muslims Abdus Salam and Ahmed Zewail are the only two Muslim men who won a Nobel Prize in physics and chemistry (Salam pursued his scientific work in Italy and the UK, Zewail at California Institute of Technology). Dr Salam in his home country is not even considered a Muslim.

Over the past 105 years, 1.4 billion Muslims have produced eight Nobel Laureates while a mere 14 million Jews have produced 167 Nobel Laureates. Of the 1.4 billion Muslims less than 300,000 qualify as ‘scientists’, and that converts to a ratio of 230 scientists per one million Muslims. The United States of America has 1.1 million scientists (4,099 per million); Japan has 700,000 (5,095 per million).

Fact: Of the 1.4 billion Muslims 800 million are illiterate (6 out of 10 Muslims cannot read).

Consider, for instance, that Muslims constitute 22 percent of world population with a 1 percent share of Nobel Prizes. Jews constitute 0.23 percent of world population with a 22 percent share of Nobel Prizes.

What really went wrong? Muslims are poor, illiterate and weak. What went wrong? Arriving at the right diagnosis is extremely critical because the prescription depends on it.

The diagnosis is simple. The problem with Islamic countries is Islam. The more a country becomes Islamic the more backward it becomes.