Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions about the World's Fastest-Growing Faith

by Robert Spencer

  Once again, this isn't some long-forgotten medieval law. It remains in force wherever the Sharia rules. Says Time magazine, "For a woman to prove rape in Pakistan, for example, four adult males of `impeccable' character must witness the penetration, in accordance with Shari'a."55 V. S. Naipaul reports that in that Islamic Republic, "a pir or holy man in a provincial town had been charged with raping the thirteen-year-old daughter of one of his followers. The case against him couldn't get far in the sessions court because the new Islamic law under which he was tried required four eyewitnesses to the act."56

  This law is based on a celebrated incident in Muhammad's life, when his beloved Aisha was suspected of adultery. A revelation from Allah cleared her name, and henceforth required four witnesses to prove sexual sin. Allah asked of Aisha's accusers, "Why did they not produce four witnesses? If they could not produce any witnesses, then they were surely lying in the sight of God" (Sura 24:13).57

  This law acquitted Aisha, but for other women it has proved a source of immense suffering. It is on the books in Malaysia, where Sisters in Islam, a Muslim feminist group, is trying to get a clear definition of rape written into Malaysian law. Right now, because of the rules of evidence and other factors, rape is difficult to distinguish from adultery and fornication (zina). Sisters in Islam points out, reasonably enough, that

  in the real world, rape is unlikely to occur in the open, such that four pious males can observe the act of penetration. If they actually did witness such an act, and have not sought to prevent it, then technically they are abettors to the crime. In reality, unless the rapist confesses to the crime, women can never prove rape at all if rape is placed under syariah [Sharia] jurisdiction as traditionally interpreted.

  Some officials are in agreement: in a spring zooo press release, Sisters in Islam notes with gratitude that they share "the concern expressed by the Deputy Prime Minister that the absence of a definition on rape in syariah law has led to victims of rape being charged for zina (illicit sex) .1158

  That is a genuine concern. A Muslim woman who is raped is often afraid to file a complaint with police, for in the absence of four corroborating male witnesses, her testimony can be taken as admission of adultery or fornication (zina)-a crime that could cost her her life. Thus, a seventeen-year-old incest victim was charged under the Sharia as a willing participant in the crime. Sisters in Islam points out that the Sharia legal officials who came to this determination fail to understand "the dynamics of power relationship" that prevailed between father and daughter in this case.59

  In a celebrated case in Nigeria, a Sharia court sentenced a woman named Sufiyatu Huseini to be stoned to death for adultery. She faced a grim fate:

  The method of execution? Sanyinna says the stones themselves will be the size of fists. The logistics, however, are up to the local judge. The villagers may tie Sufiyatu to a tree and stone her straight on, or they may dig a pit deep enough so that she cannot climb out, drop her in, and then rain stones down on her from above. Regardless, the execution is liable to be drawn out: The Sharia forbids the stone-throwers to aim for the head.G°

  Huseini, however, said that Yakubu Abubakar, a neighbor, raped her. Alas, Abubakar claimed not to have met her (a claim that wasn't farfetched, considering the fact that in strict Muslim society women are largely confined to their homes) and that someone else had fathered the child she claimed was his daughter.

  "Yakubu was exonerated," said Huseini after the trial. "I felt like dying that day because of the injustice." Huseini also claims that she had witnesses to attest to the fact that Abubakar was acquainted with her and admitted to be the father of the child. Says Huseini, "I don't know why they were not listened to."61

  They were not listened to because they didn't witness the actual act of rape. That is the only testimony that would have saved Sufiyatu Huseini under Islamic law, although ultimately an international outcry resulted in the overturning of her death sentence. Before that, however, the attorney general of the state where Huseini was tried, Aliyu Abubakar Sanyinna, was asked whether he thought the punishment was too harsh. He was dismissive: "It is the law of Allah. By executing anybody that is convicted under Islamic law, we are just complying with the laws of Allah, so we don't have anything to worry about."62

  Yet human decency and compassion were not entirely absent from the case. Before the death sentence was overturned, the story took a strange twist: Anthony Olubunmi Okogie, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Lagos, offered himself to Muslim authorities to be executed in Sufiyatu Huseini's place.63 Okogie's offer, incidentally, also illustrates how Muslims read their scriptures differently from Jews and Christians. Yes, the Old Testament prescribes stoning for adultery, but Jews today do not stone adulterers. For Christians, the New Testament imperative to mercy is paramount. How many people have been stoned to death for adultery in the predominantly Catholic states of South America recently?

  Meanwhile, as a result of the misclassification of rape, there are women in prisons all over the Muslim world who are actually rape victims. In the absence of male witnesses, their complaints were taken as admissions of guilt. Some estimate that as much as 75 percent of the women who now populate Pakistani prisons are there through such circumstances.64

  When it comes to rape, blaming the victim is all too common in the Islamic world. The Chicago Tribune reported,

  On May 31, 1994, Kifaya Husayn, a 16-year-old Jordanian girl, was lashed to a chair by her 32-year-old brother. He gave her a drink of water and told her to recite an Islamic prayer. Then he slashed her throat. Immediately afterward, he ran out into the street, waving the bloody knife and crying, "I have killed my sister to cleanse my honor." Kifaya's crime? She was raped by another brother, a z1-year-old man. Her judge and jury? Her own uncles, who convinced her eldest brother that Kifaya was too much of a disgrace to the family honor to be allowed to live.65

  Her brother didn't get off scot-free. He received a fifteen-year prison sentence, later reduced to seven years.

  "Honor killing" is, in fact, well rooted in the Islamic world. It is by no means unheard-of for a woman to be killed by her own family in order to "prosecute adultery." The absence of clarity about rape puts its victims at risk of being doubly victimized, while their killers go unpunished. "Just last year," it was reported in 2002, "the male head of a prominent Pakistani family murdered his daughter in a lawyer's office, only to be acquitted."66

  By one reading of Islamic law, she had been given justice.

  There is a sign of hope, however: in the spring of 2002, two Saudi Arabian men were convicted of abducting and raping a woman at gunpoint. The Arab News story doesn't say whether the classic Islamic standards of proof were required in this case, but from the circumstances it seems unlikely that they were. The men, however, tasted the severity of Islamic justice anyway: they were summarily beheaded."

  Is Islam Compatible with

  Liberal Democracy?

  "AMERICA COUNTS MILLIONS OF MUSLIMS amongst our citizens," said President George W. Bush in the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., just six days after terrorist attacks destroyed the World Trade Center and a portion of the Pentagon.

  Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms and dads.... This is a great country. It's a great country because we share the same values of respect and dignity and human worth. And it is my honor to be meeting with leaders who feel just the same way I do. They're outraged, they're sad. They love America just as much as I do.'

  No doubt this is true. A Muslim businessman I know-a kind and thoughtful man-proudly (or prudently) sported an "I love the USA" sweatshirt in the weeks following September ii. There is no indication that he received any flak for this at the mosque on Friday.

  But consider a thought experiment: what would happen if these Muslim citizens became a majority in the United States? Although such a possibility is several generations from having the chance t
o become an actuality, this is more than just idle speculation: Islamic advocates say that theirs is the fastest-growing religion in the world, and it is expanding very quickly in the United States as well. Muslim populations are growing rapidly in Western Europe, and practicing Muslims will shortly outnumber practicing Anglicans in Great Britain, the home of Anglicanism.

  Americans who have thought about Muslim demographics are not alarmed. After all, even if the Islamic population continues to increase at a rapid clip, it isn't likely to alter the flow of public discourse. Moreover, the idea of the separation of church and state is well established in the United States. Christians who have attempted to influence political debate in recent decades have learned through hard experience that they must avoid all appearance of trying to "legislate morality." A secular American republic with a Muslim majority would continue as before, no?

  It might. There have been notable attempts to establish democracy in an Islamic context. The great opponent of the Wahhabis, the Egyptian modernist Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905), tried to recast traditional Islamic categories to reflect those of the modern West:

  Arguing that Islam was not incompatible with the basics of Western thought, Abdu[h] interpreted the Islamic concept of shura (consultation) as parliamentary democracy, ijma (consensus) as public opinion, and maslah (choosing that ruling or interpretation of the Sharia from which greatest good will ensue) as utilitarianism.'

  But this doesn't mean that Abduh would have applauded Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation between church and state."3 His vision of parliamentary democracy was thoroughly Islamic. His influential disciple Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865-1935) emphasized that "the affairs of the Islamic state must be conducted within the framework of a constitution that is inspired by the Quran, the Hadith and the experiences of the Rightly Guided Caliphs [the leaders of the Muslim community right after the time of Muhammad]."'

  The Tunisian Muslim journalist and theorist Mohamed Elhachmi Hamdi concurs: "The heart of the matter is that no Islamic state can be legitimate in the eyes of its subjects without obeying the main teachings of the shari'a."5

  V. S. Naipaul explains, "No religion is more worldly than Islam. In spite of its political incapacity, no religion keeps men's eyes more fixed on the way the world is run."' He cites a typical article from the Tehran Times, published in the early days of Khomeini's revolution: "Politics is combined with religion in Islam." The writer of the article recommends that Iran and Pakistan join together in a political partnership "with reformation and adaptation to present needs in full conformity with the holy Koran and Sunnah." He concludes that "Iran and Pakistan with a clarity of purpose and sincere cooperation can establish the truth that Islam is a complete way of life."7

  Mohamed Elhachmi Hamdi insists that "Islam should be the main frame of reference for the constitution and laws of predominantly Muslim countries."8 According to journalist Dinesh D'Souza, the influential Muslim radical Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) argued that in an ideal polity, "it is God and not man who rules. God is the source of all authority, including legitimate political authority. Virtue, not freedom, is the highest value. Therefore God's laws, not man's, should govern the society."9 Likewise the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran rejected rule "based on the approval of laws in accordance with the opinion of the majority."10 Only Allah can make laws. In practice, of course, that makes for an autocracy under the Sharia, or pressure for such a political arrangement, wherever Muslims form a majority.

  Not only is the Sharia sufficient in itself for the governing of society; it extends to "the totality of religious, political, social, domestic and private life."" It governs personal conduct as well as the ordering of society. Islam has always prided itself on rejecting the distinction between that which is rendered unto Caesar and that which is rendered unto God. Muhammad, after all, was a political leader as well as a religious one. All aspects of life in an Islamic state are subject to religious authority. Everything is rendered unto Allah.

  An Empire from the Beginning

  Muslims count the beginning of the Islamic era not from Muhammad's birth or even from the time of his first revelation. Instead, they date it from the Hegira, when Muhammad left Mecca for Medina to become for the first time, if only on a small scale at that point, head of state and commander of armed forces at once.

  Muslims never shared the experience of early Christians, of being a persecuted minority within a hostile regime. (Some would say they tasted this during the period of Western colonialism, but even then they remained the majority in their societies, and the colonial governments generally dared not overtly confront Islam.) State power and religious power were fused in Islam from its inception, centering on the caliph as the leader chosen by Allah for his people. Even though the caliphate is no more since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 (although fanatical Muslims, including Osama bin Laden, call for its restoration), the Islamic world has always been marked by the centralization of theocracy.

  The Ayatollah Khomeini remarked, "What is the good of us [i.e., the mullahs] asking for the hand of a thief to be severed or an adulteress to be stoned to death when all we can do is recommend such punishments, having no power to implement them?" 12 This is why Islam resists democracy. The Qur'an presents the clear and absolute law of Allah (which the mullahs uphold). Why should Muslims be governed instead by fallible human judgment? A state ruled by Islamic law must therefore leave little room for representative government; God's Will is not to be established by voting or public opinion.

  V. S. Naipaul found these sentiments echoed all over the Islamic world. "In Islam," a prominent Pakistani Muslim told him, "there is no separation. It's a complete way of life."" The noted radical Egyptian Sheikh Muhammad al-Ghazali (1917-1996) even ruled in a fatwa that Muslims who advocated the separation of religion from politics were unbelievers, and pointed out that "there is no punishment in Islam for those Muslims who kill these apostates.""

  The Sharia is not designed to coexist with alternative systems of governance, including one in which consensus is achieved through the ballot box. Disputed questions are matters for the ulama, not for voters. According to Muslim scholar Abdul Qader Abdul Aziz, the Sharia is perfect in itself, and needs no augmentation by puny human legal theorists:

  The perfection of the Shari'ah means that it is not in need for any of the previous abrogated religions [that is, Judaism and Christianity] or any human experiences-like the man made laws or any other philosophy. Therefore, any one who claims that the Muslims are in need of any such canons is considered to be a Kafer, or a disbeliever, for he belied Allah's saying: "This day I have completed your religion for you." [Holy Quran, 5:3] and His saying.... Your Lord is never forgetful." [Holy Quran, 19:641. Equal in Kufr, or disbelief, is the one who claims that the Muslims are in need for the systems of Democracy, Communism or any other ideology, without which the Muslim lived and applied the rules of Allah in matters that faced them for fourteen centuries. 'I

  To conclude our thought experiment, this means that the values at the heart of American law and society would change with a Muslim majority. In Europe, increasing Muslim populations may herald a substantial change in those societies. Sharia advocate Mohamed Elhachmi Hamdi notes that "even in the United States and Europe, there are supreme values that are embodied in the constitutions and the laws of those lands," but the Muslim world has its own set of values. Islam "has been playing this role [i.e. giver of values and laws] for the last 1,400 years, mostly for the good of Muslims, and there is no need to replace it with a set of Western values."16 He is, of course, arguing against replacing Islamic values with Western ones in the Islamic world; but as Muslim populations expand in Europe, the call for Islamic values will be carried westward with them.

  Autocracy Even Without the Sharia

  The House of Islam today is still in disarray from the period of Western colonialism, and its governments range from Sharia-based Islamic republics to more or less secular regimes based on Western models. But the rule is autocracy.r />
  Searching for Islamic democracies, Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis uses political scientist Samuel P. Huntington's criteria for what makes a democratic state:

  [Y] ou can call a country a democracy when it has made two consecutive, peaceful changes of government via free elections. By specifying two elections, Huntington rules out regimes that follow the procedure that one acute observer has called "one man, one vote, once." So I take democracy to mean a polity where the government can be changed by elections as opposed to one where elections are changed by the government....

  [By this criterion] predominantly Muslim regions show very few functioning democracies. Indeed, of the 53 OIC [Organization of the Islamic Conference] states, only Turkey can pass Huntington's test of democracy, and it is in many ways a troubled democracy. Among the others, one can find democratic movements and in some cases even promising democratic developments, but one cannot really say that they are democracies even to the extent that the Turkish Republic is a democracy at the present time.17

  Lewis continues: "Predominantly Muslim societies (Turkey, as we saw earlier, being the great exception) are ruled by a wide variety of authoritarian, autocratic, despotic, tyrannical, and totalitarian regimes." These he classifies into five major types:

  • Traditional autocracies, "like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf sheikhdoms, where established dynastic regimes rest on the traditional props of usage, custom, and history." These are the states, aside from those in the fourth category below, that most explicitly base their legitimacy and law on the Qur'an and Muslim tradition. They are also, as we saw in chapter three, among the most repressive governments in the world-excepting only Marxist/Leninist dinosaurs like North Korea, Cuba and China.