Whose Shariah is it?

Publisher: The Bodley Head,London

Pages: 316

Price: £ 12.99

In the beginning,and for long thereafter,the pious men of Islam knew better than to play god. Obey me in matters of religion,but in worldly affairs remember that I am just like one of you,said Prophet Mohammed. In his acceptance speech immediately after being chosen the first Caliph of Islam,Abu Bakr told fellow Muslims: support me as long as I follow the teachings of Islam,oppose me if you find me going astray. The short-tempered second Caliph Umar seemed to believe that the egalitarian teachings of Islam should not be taken too far when it came to gender relations. Yet he had no qualms bowing to an old woman who challenged him in public. “When Allah and his Prophet have prescribed no limit,who are you,Umar,to place a ceiling on the amount of mehr a man must pay to his bride on marriage?” she demanded. “You are right and I am wrong”,the caliph meekly conceded,adding,“it seems everyone remembers Islam’s teachings better than me”.

This is common knowledge among Muslims. In his book,Heaven on Earth: A journey through Shari’a law,India-born Sadakat Kadri brings a fresh perspective. Example: “At the time of the Abbasid caliphate’s foundation,traditions of judicial restraint were so ingrained that scholars would weep in court rather than judge in the name of god”.

The concern was this: How do mere mortals act on god’s behalf? That’s simple; any Molvi Saheb will tell you today: follow the Shariah for that’s god-given law. But in his engaging and entertaining book where Kadri journeys between the classical texts of Islamic history and jurisprudence,engages with current-day custodians of the faith and chronicles the prevalent practice among the ummah today — in India,Pakistan,Iran,Saudi Arabia,Egypt and elsewhere — you realise it’s not all that simple.

The Quranic verses come in on the top of the Shariah corpus. The problem however is that the Quran is anything but a criminal procedure code. Allah commands the believer to do good,refrain from and prevent evil. But as Kadri notes,Allah has reserved to Himself the right to punish all sinners and reward do-gooders in the Hereafter,except for a handful of Haddood laws for “crimes against god”. These are theft (amputation); fornication or false accusation of the same (80 lashes); retaliatory justice (eye for an eye…); “waging war against god and his Apostle” or “spreading of disorder in the land” (exile,double amputation,crucifixion and decapitation). Besides these five,Kadri rightly highlights that though there is no reference to them in the Quran,two more offences appear in the Haddood list: intoxication (40-80 lashes) and adultery (stoning to death). Add to these seven the issue of jihad,apostasy and blasphemy and we have a near-complete picture of the minds of today’s Islamists who fantasise about the return of caliphate and Shariah laws. Since these together also constitute what many consider to be “the problem with Islam” much of Kadri’s book focuses on them.

Isn’t the idea of crucifixion or stoning to death obnoxious to modern sensibility? Yes,admits Kadri while also making two points. First,14 centuries ago such punishments were the norm. Second,the first four “Rightly Guided” Caliphs and classical jurists over centuries of Muslim rule were aware that for Allah “The Most Compassionate and The Most Merciful and his Prophet” — repentance took precedence over punishment.

A man once confessed the crime of fornication to the Prophet and asked to be punished as prescribed in Islam. The Prophet ignored him until he reiterated his crime four times. Only then was the punishment ordered but no one asked questions about the partner’s identity. Caliph Umar once acquitted an expectant mother of the charge of adultery when he told him that she was a “heavy sleeper” who had undergone intercourse without realising it. In the six centuries of the Ottoman Empire there is only one recorded instance of a stoning to death. Citing these instances,Kadri quotes figures to show that even today in most Muslim countries that claim to live by the Shariah,the Huddood laws are mostly of “symbolic value”.

Shouldn’t these penal laws that belong to another era be scrapped altogether? Kadri clearly doesn’t want to go there. He is however,unsparing in his criticism of current-day Muslim hardliners who are all too eager to play god. Arguing forcefully that for well over a millennia Muslims evolved legal systems (Shariah) that were consistently and significantly more tolerant and less violent than their European counterparts,he laments that in the last 40 years the freelance jihadis have managed “to associate the Shariah in many people’s minds with some of the deadliest legal systems on the planet”.

On a more hopeful note,Kadri points out that throughout Islam’s history,the overwhelming majority of Muslims have shunned the extremists. In our own technological era,he suggests,many Muslims are discovering Islam for themselves,through the online world,to discover what is right and wrong.