The Sad Silence about Muslim Wife-Beating
UPDATE: David Yerushalmi, a leading legal adviser to the anti-Sharia movement, brilliantly clarifies the legal issues involved here, courtesy of NRO columnist Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor and expert on Muslim terrorism.
Some leading conservative voices, notably Princeton law professor Robert George, denounce the anti-Sharia movement as an attack on religious freedom. Now Matthew Schmitz, the deputy editor of First Things (where I was senior editor from 2009 to 2011), abominates what he calls “anti-Muslim bigotry” in a commentary published June 14 at National Review. Mr. Schmitz can’t understand why there is such a fuss about Sharia:
Sharia, of course, does not grant all the rights that the U.S. Constitution does; neither does Christian canon law or Jewish Halakhic law (or English or French law, for that matter). But why should this fact prevent a court from honoring a contract made under the provisions of one of these “foreign” legal systems if the contract does not itself violate any U.S. or state regulations, laws, or constitutional provisions? Under one reading of the Kansas law, a contract that makes reference to canon law or sharia — but is otherwise perfectly legal — would be thrown out, while an identical one that makes no such reference would be upheld. The other possible reading of the law is that it only bars rulings based on foreign legal systems when the rulings themselves would violate constitutional rights.
If individuals want to settle civil cases under their own set of rules, why should anyone try to stop them? But there is a special circumstance in the case of Sharia that distinguishes it from Christian, Jewish, or French law. That is the problem of wife-beating .The fact is that Sharia does not recognize the universal principle of Western law that only the state has the authority to inflict violence, and specifically assigns to the male head of household quasi-state rights to inflict violence on his wife. No civil proceeding of any kind can be sanctioned under American (or any Western) law if the explicit or implicit threat of violence intimidates one of the parties to the negotiation. Yet violence is embedded in Muslim family law in a radically different way than any Jewish or Christian law. The difference is so extreme and so well-documented that comparison itself is invidious; as a Jew, I take offense when Sharia is compared to Halakha. There are superficial resemblances between Muslim and Jewish law, to be sure, because Muslim law is in large measure a lampoon of Jewish law, but the content is radically different.
Prof. George surely is correct to argue that anti-Sharia legislation and opposition to the building of mosques may infringe religious liberty. The anti-Sharia movement wields a blunt instrument that carries the risk of collateral damage. What are we do to, though, about a religion that explicitly sanctions domestic violence as a matter of first principles, because it denies the principle that only the state may employ violence? The Supreme Court has upheld the right of voodoo practitioners to sacrifice chickens, but American law cannot possibly tolerate wife-beating. Yet wife-beating is so deeply embedded in Islamic theology and law as to contaminate any aspect of Sharia that touches on family relations. How does one balance the Constitutional guarantee of religious liberty with the fundamental obligation of the state to protect individuals (in this case Muslim wives) against violence? This is not an abstract problem; according to Muslim women’s organizations, domestic violence is endemic in Muslim communities.
I am disappointed in my old colleagues from First Things, who have chosen to weigh in on the debate without so much as mentioning the elephant in the parlor, namely wife-beating. Shame on them.
This is not a secondary or accidental issue for Islam; on the contrary, the matter of wife-beating is definitive for Muslim understanding of the relationship between the individual and the state under Islam. As I wrote in a 2010 essay on the subject, there is no record of a recognized Muslim authority repudiating wife-beating. Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss Muslim scholar who purports to offer a Westernized version of Islam, notoriously defended wife-beating in a 2003 televised debate with then-French interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
In fact, Westernized Muslim scholars strive to justify the practice on Islamic legal grounds. Muslim traditional society is a nested hierarchy in which the clan is an extended family, the tribe an extended clan, and the state an extended tribe. The family patriarch thus enjoys powers in his realm comparable to those of the state in the broader realm. That is the deeper juridical content of the Koranic provision for wife-beating in Surah 4:34:[Husbands] are the protectors and maintainers of their [wives] because Allah has given the one more [strength] than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient and guard in [the husband’s] absence what Allah would have them guard. As to the women on whose part you fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them first, refuse to share their beds, spank them, but if they return to obedience, seek not against them means of [annoyance]: for Allah is Most High, Great. An essay by two Michigan State University Law students, Bassam A Abed & Syed E Ahmad, is cited often on Islamic web sites as a credibly modern interpretation of Surah 4:34. Abed and Ahmad begin with the legal principle that sanctions wife-beating, namely that the husband is the “governor” or “administrator” of the family.
The translator’s use of the term “protectors” in the first line of the aforementioned quote is in reference to the Arabic term of qawaamoon (singular:qawaam). Qawaamoon has been defined in various manners by different scholars and translators. Abul ‘Ala Maududi, has defined qawaamoon as “governors” and as “managers”. Qawaam ”stands for a person who is responsible for the right conduct and safeguard and maintenance of the affairs of an individual or an institution or an organisation [sic].”
The authors explain:
The majority of jurists hold that the language of the “Discipline Passage” itself reveals a sequential approach to the discipline authorized. For them, the conjunction wa (“and”) used between the various types of discipline signifies its chronological order. This approach guides a husband in disciplining his wife that is disobedient, regardless of how disobedience is defined. In following the disciplinary process, he must first admonish his wife, then desert her in bed, and finally physically discipline her as a last resort to marital reconciliation.
Beating is permitted, Abed and Ahmad explain, but only if it is done in a spirit of reconciliation:
The greatest controversy and misunderstanding of the “Discipline Passage” is in the final stage of the disciplinary process – “spanking” the disobedient wife. The reconciliatory purpose behind the passage’s “spanking” provision helps debunk the misconceptions surrounding this disciplinary stage. A husband is not to “spank” his wife if his motivation in doing so is other that such reconciliation. “Spanking” out of anger, for punishment, or for retaliation is prohibited, running contrary to the reconciliatory rationale. Similarly, a husband cannot “spank” his wife to humiliate her, cause in her fear, or to compel her against her will. Islam permits “spanking” to remind the wife of her disobedience and to bring her back to obedience so as to facilitate marital reconciliation.
Decisive in the above analysis of Surah 4:32 is the analogy between the husband and the head of a political subdivision or organization. The state in traditional society devolves its authority to the cells from which it is composed, starting with the family, which is a state in miniature, whose patriarch is a “governor” or “administrator.” Traditional society is organized like a nested set of Russian dolls: the clan is the family writ large, the tribe is an extension of the clan, the state is an alliance of the tribes, and the relationship of citizen and sovereign is reproduced at each level.
The president of the North American Council for Muslim Women, Sharifa Alkhateeb, estimated in a 1998 study that physical violence occurred in about 10% of Muslim marriages in the United States. “The rates of verbal and emotional abuse may be as high as 50% based upon international studies and preliminary research in the US,” Alkhateeb’s website states. It is no surprise that the efforts of Alkhateeb and other Muslim advocates for women’s rights get little help from Muslim clergy. “Certainly, it is wise for our religious leaders to be cautious in not passing quick, superfluous judgment when counseling couples on domestic matters,” the al-Muslimah website complains. “However, when a Muslim sister approaches the masjid [mosque] for help, in fear of her life and that of her children, our leaders need to seriously consider the repercussions, and possible legal implications, of their advice. It is never enough for sisters in abusive relationships to be told to ‘be patient’, ‘try harder’, or ‘your reward is with Allah’.” To direct these women to Sharia courts would be a betrayal; in many cases it would reinforce the abuse.
What are we to do about an epidemic of violence against women in which the violent offenders consider themselves legally and theologically justified in their criminal behavior? Conservatives surely do not want more government intervention in family life, but the government nonetheless has an obligation to protect women against domestic violence. Even in cases where devout Muslim women acquiesce to domestic violence on Koranic grounds, the state has an obligation to protect their children against the spectacle of an abused mother. To the extent that local courts may turn a blind eye to Muslim domestic violence on the spurious grounds of cultural relativism, legislatures have an interest in directing that the dilution of individual rights under American law is unacceptable.
These are difficult questions, and it is easy to find fault with specific proposals in the anti-Sharia movement. Conservative legal scholars like Prof. George are the authorities from whom we would solicit help on such thorny matters; it is all the more distressing to hear Prof. George denounce the anti-Sharia movement, rather than advise it.
I find Prof. George’s position baffling. He wrote on the First Things website on June 5th:
Catholics have two reasons to speak out in defense of the religious freedom of Muslims, Jews, Protestants, Latter-Day Saints, and other non-Catholics, as well as their own religious freedom. The first (and more important) reason is simply that it is the right thing to do. Faith and reason bear common witness to the profound truth that religious liberty is a right held equally by all. The second reason is that the denial of religious liberty for any one group erodes the foundations of religious liberty for everyone. If you value your own religious freedom, it is prudent to defend the other guy’s religious freedom when it comes under attack. A precedent established by people in, say, Murfreesboro, Tennessee who despise Islam and see it as a pernicious force, may prove very handy to people in, say, San Francisco who have a similar attitude towards Catholicism. (I hope it goes without saying that not everyone in Murfreesboro is hostile towards Islam and not everyone in San Francisco despises Catholicism.
I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with my Catholic friends on the infringement of their religious liberty by the Obama administration. But it is very strange to see a threat to Catholic or Jewish liberty in the anti-Sharia movement, which is supported by conservatives, and disproportionately by evangelical Christians. Evangelicals are enthusiastic allies of Catholics on the matter of religious freedom against the depredations of the Obama administration. Where the religious freedom of the LDS is concerned, it should be remembered that the government continues to suppress polygamy among deviant Mormon-derived sects, asserting the protection of individuals under the law over and above a religious doctrine. If the LDS had to abandon polygamy, Muslims a fortiori should abandon wife-beating.
Here is a challenge to Muslim religious leaders: Publicly abjure Surah 4:34 of the Koran, and I personally will join you in opposing the anti-Sharia movement. Any takers? I won’t hold my breath; no Muslim religious authority has ever abjured Surah 4:34, because Muslim theology states that it is the uncreated word of God, dictated to Mohammed by the Archangel Gabriel, and to abjure this one passage would call into question the divine nature of the Koran as a whole.
It is incredibly dispiriting to see people bowing and scraping before the violent twaddle that is Islam. You’d get more sense using the telephone directory as a basis for society.
Agree one thousand percent. A religion that rewards murder of innocents with sex alone makes issssssssssssssslam and moooooooooooooooooooslims worthy of contempt.
Any so-called religion, that as one of its’ tenets. encourages lying cannot be trusted by outsiders.
“So-called” is right. Islam is a religion in exactly the sense that Nazism is a religion. Islam is a totalitarian, all-encompassing worldview within which our concept of separating church and state is literally inconceivable. David quite rightly concludes his comments by pointing out that Islam can’t be “reformed” in the way Western religious institutions can be, because every letter (do they call them that in Arabic?) of the Koran is held to be the unchangeable fingerprint of Allah.
(Incidentally, that’s what got Salman Rushdie in such mortal trouble–he referenced the few verses Mohammed himself acknowledged were not in fact Allah’s, but Satan’s. That he titled his book The Satanic Verses tells us how much things have changed in a couple of decades, as regard’s the West’s dance with Islam. Rushdie clearly had no idea, when he wrote his book and selected its title, that his co-religionists would kill him for it. If he had not written the book when he did, but only came up with the idea today, I’d bet big money he wouldn’t dream of doing so now. These days, you can get yourself murdered for drawing a poorly rendered comic about Mohammed, for God’s sake.)
Moslems have learned in recent decades how credulous the West is, fully grasping how rude we find it to think that they would actually lie to us about their beliefs and motives. People who point out that deception to further the expansion of Islam is a central tenet of Islam are deemed ultra-rude, and we now have subversive groups like CAIR these days, who can be counted on to pile on whenever that happens, fully confident the cognoscenti of the Western World will pat CAIR on the back sympathetically, and promise to police these thought crimes more carefully from now on.
Islam, in other words, has found the chink in our armor. By pretending to be a religion, they can force us to submit (that’s the meaning of the word “islam” by the way), without having to chop off millions of Western heads like in the good old days. By agreeing to the false premise that Islam is a religion, we force ourselves to walk the plank.
It takes great courage for a prominent person to publicly announce that Islam should be treated exactly as Nazism is regarded; that is, one is free to be a Nazi in a free country, under the free speech clause of the 1st Amendment, but not the establishment clause, thus elevating it to moral equivalence with Judaism and Christianity. But that is in fact the only possible resolution to this sharia issue: lots and lots of the most visible voices joining to reeducate our people, correcting the false idea that Islam is a religion.
That is, to stop submitting.
…they lie to each other as well. a religion used to disguise deceit isn’t a good start for any society.
Thank you for your clear and reasoned defense of women. Thank you. and bless you.
God bless you, too.
David, there is a lot more wrong with Sharia than wife beating. There is the built-in devaluation of the word of a woman, the word of a “person of the book”, and worst of all an “idolater”, for which Hindus are especially selected. The same invidious hierarchy applies to damages in the case of a successful claim under Sharia.
Worse, in most Muslim majority countries, women are presumed guilty in all cases of rape – they are locked up, stoned or flogged while the man may attract a derisory sentence. And then there are “honor” killings, where the pride of a man is judged above the life of a woman.
Once you start to pick apart all this, and to realize that it is so deeply embedded in Islamic theology, such that to remove it would eviscerate Islam, you are forced to oppose Islam itself – all of it. Join the dots.
Alcuin,
The issue I sought to address is not what is wrong with Islam — about which I have written a great deal over the years — but rather about how American law should address the problem in the United States. There is no basis in American law to suppress Islam; on the contrary, American law requires the protection of Muslim religious liberty as much as it does the protection of Presbyterian liberty. The trouble is that Islam itself contains permanently-embedded precepts, especially about domestic violence, which ipso facto are inimical to American law. Just how should this be approached legally? It is not a trivial question. Those conservatives who criticize the anti-Sharia movement must propose a better solution rather than pretending that the problem doesn’t exist.
Surely the freedom of Religion only applies to proper religions. I don’t remember seeing any Mayan sacrificial temples in Texas – well not yet at least. I don’t see why Islam should benefit from a generosity that it is signally fails to extend to other religions in its own lair.
Let me suggest an alternative formulation:
***
Freedom of religion only applies to religions that recognize freedom of religion.
***
When Roman Catholicism came to America, there was open hostility–and sometimes armed violence– on the part of Protestants, lest Catholics restore the hated hierarchy with its presumed authoritarianism and alleged superstition. The Catholics had to prove their preparedness to practice their religion within the boundaries of American pluralism.
That is a hint that freedom of religion is not a universal principle, knowable through reason. Rather is a specific historic creation, a product of a particular culture. Only religions that share in that culture, or are willing to redefine themselves by participating in that culture (e.g., Catholicism and Judaism in America), have the right to participate in the fruits of the culture.
Under the above formulation: ISLAM NEED NOT BE GRANTED FREEDOM OF RELIGION, SINCE IT DOES NOT GRANT IT TO OTHERS. This gets us off the hook of alleged inconsistency. We do not compelled to give “freedom of religion” to Islam in order to preserve “freedom of religion,” since Islam refuses participate in “freedom of religion”.
Put another way: what we are trying to preserve is not a generic, abstract freedom of religion. It is a specific cultural and political practice (sometimes called a “thick” moral practice). Only those who are prepared to participate “in the game” get the credit of its benefits.
David, I don’t think it’s that simple. The English Separatists (Pilgrims) did not encourage religious freedom (that is why Roger Williams founded Providence). The notion of religious freedom comes a good deal later. In the case of Islam, there is no single Islamic authority at whose door can be laid all the sins of repression. The Imam of a Mosque in Denver has no hierarchical tie to the religious authorities in Saudi Arabia. American Muslims who wish to practice Islam have the same constitutional rights as anyone else. The situation, as I said, is more comparable to the LDS and polygamy. Then there is the problem of support for jihad; a mosque that collects money for terrorists, e.g. Hamas, can be viewed as a criminal conspiracy under American law (although so can a Catholic group that collects funds for the Provisional IRA).
Judaism does not recognize freedom of religion; in fact, this rejection may be considered the very basis of Judaism, the rejection of idolotry. However, we never tried to take over the world (unlike Christinity and Islam).
Similarly, in Jewish law a formal witness must be a male observant Jew. However, formal testimony in not very relevant today, except that for a wedding or divorce to be legal, two formal witnesses must be present. (Even under Biblical law, though, a woman may be a witness as to a matter of fact.)
However, Judaism (well, the prevailing opinion) does not allow wife-beating. We were actually ahead of the British regarding marital rape; an Israeli secular court found it could not convict a man of raping his wife under Western law (of the time), so it convicted him based on Halacha.
I find you suggestion very helpful the problem seems the failure to integrate into our society. integration in U. S. way of doing things would most probably resolve The issue. As does the universal language of English break down barriers between groups.
Shariah should be suppressed and its adherents persecuted for the same reason that we suppress and persecute people who crap in the street: it is not a mode of behaviour that is compatible with civilised society.
Let’s just call it what it is. Hypocrisy and cowardice.
Was was not touched upon was the Muslim demand: They say willy nilly we taught you to love us, now love our dog. I find that infinitely more repulsive than a guy in Timbuktu practicing the world’s oldest sport.
“Decisive in the above analysis of Surah 4:32 -”
Should read “4:34″ not “4:32″, please fix the typo, thanx!
“Muslim law is in large measure a lampoon of Jewish law.” To be frank, isn’t Islam in its entirety simply a bastardized version of what existed in Judeo-Christian and Persian philosophy at the time?
“Muslim law is in large measure a lampoon of Jewish law.” To be frank, isn’t Islam in its entirety simply a bastardized version of Judeo-Christan and Persian philosophy as it existed at the time?
A parody of revealed religion, according to Franz Rosenzweig..
Islam is to Judaism what Mormonism is to Christianity.
That is a slander on Mormonism! Mormon ethics are identical to Jewish and Christian ethics — not so Islam.
I agree with Dr. Goldman’s observation that the ethics of Mormonism and the ethics of Islam are very different. However, the historical parallels between Islam and Mormonism are remarkable: a Prophet (Joseph Smith, Mohammed), visited by an angel, given a message on the prophet can decipher, ridicule and scorn, a few followers join up nonetheless, the prophet and his followers flee, face persecution, eventually gain power and stability, get ever self-referential and prophet-friendly revelations on such things as multiple wives, a claim that the revelation is the latest chapter to earlier revelations.
This is just off the top of my head. Do I make any valid points?
It’s just Mr. Goldman, thanks. There are superficial resemblances, but the content of Islam and Mormonism are radically different. Although many Christians refuse to consider Mormons to be “Christians,” there is no doubt that Mormons embrace the same ethics as other Christians (as well as Jews); whatever the doctrinal differences between Mormonism and what might be termed mainstream Christianity, Mormonism is part and parcel of American Christian culture.
Mr. Goldman (I apologize for the mistake,
Yes, Mormons present a challenge to traditional Christians. Joseph Smith and his revelations are problematic in the extreme, and now that we have a Mormon running for our highest office, some of controversy surrounding Mormonism will necessarily be thrust into the foreground. But another commentator mentioned that the Bible implores us to judge (as God does) to judge people by their ‘fruits,’ by their actions. With that command as our guide, we can say many good things and few bad things about most Mormons. I’ve never met a Mormon I didn’t like and I’ve always admired their wholesomeness and their industry. Just don’t show too much interest in their beliefs, though. They may lay some pretty energetic prosletyzing on you if you do.
And shall we look for some pretty nasty comments about Romney’s religion from the left as we approach November?
The left thinks that all religions are equally crazy. I doubt they will single out Mormonism. There are a few evangelicals who will go after the Mormons, but I don’t think that will be an important factor.
This is not about Muslim immigration, it is about Muslim assimilation. I immigrated to the US in 1978, and I was asked whether I had any allegiance to communism, which was a perfectly wise and legitimate question. At that time, the cold war was still unresolved, and the question was tied to national security, and it would have been foolish not to ask it.
There may come a time when the American Muslim repudiate the supremacy of Sharia over American law, but in the meantime it is wise, legitimate and courageous to make it clear to our Muslim immigrants that we do not condone mistreatment of women, and transgressions will be judged, and retributed, under US laws. If we don’t do that, we are in fact accepting immigration without assimilation.
We should never forget that the Mafia was a particular cohort of immigrants refusing to assimilate, and thereby proclaiming their own code of justice, squarely overriding US laws. The way we accomodate Sharia infiltration these days instead of guarding against it is pure cowardice on the part of our intellectuals and officials who make excuses to make exceptions that can only create destructive precedents. It’s not just foolish, it’s criminal, because the Muslim women among us deserve protection against violence, whomever it comes from.
I’m reminded of the British response to the Indian practice of Suttee.
Upon learning of a woman’s imminent sacrifice to that practice, they said, “No.” The Indians replied, “It is our law”. The British said, “We will build a gallows beside the Bonfire. You can follow your law, and then we will follow ours.”
The woman was allowed to live.
That was back when Britain was Great. Try something like that today.
Mr. Goldman’s remarks reminded me of William Blackstone’s description of the evolution of the common law approach to “domestic chastisement.”
“The husband … by the old law, might give his wife moderate correction. For, as he is to answer for her misbehaviour, the law thought it reasonable to intrust him with this power of restraining her, by domestic chastisement, in the same moderation that a man is allowed to correct his apprentices or children…. But this power of correction was confined within reasonable bounds and the husband was prohibited from using any violence to his wife…. But with us, in the politer reign of Charles the Second, this power of correction began to be doubted; and a wife may now have security of the peace against her husband; or, in return, a husband against his wife. Yet [among] the lower rank of people … the courts of law will still permit a husband to restrain a wife of her liberty in case of any gross misbehaviour.”
“Those conservatives who criticize the anti-Sharia movement must propose a better solution rather than pretending that the problem doesn’t exist.” Well said.
Better solution? There is no “problem” to be solved. The whole controversy is redundant, given existing American law. American courts as it stands cannot uphold contract terms against American law. The singling out of Muslims here is foolish.
So honor killing of women and wife beating is not a problem.
Sorry, I was under the impression that wife beating and murder were currently already illegal under American law. Am I mistaken?
Thanks for this post. You are spot on. I, too, am perplexed by the philosophical meanderings over at FT. Good intentions, illogical performances at times. Would never expect to catch you keyboarding in your פיג’מה but for you PJM does seem a much better fit.
Modern women simply love the alpha male dominator, and modern politicians love the “civil disobedience” that drives all effective policy. Sitting back and whining about the winners is for women who secretly love them, and soft fools who are jealous of their power. They figure a good solid debate, an election, and a revelation of truth and all relevant information is all that’s needed to change the world. They’ve been going back to that well since 1964 with no success. Little white knight losers, failures in life. Probably don’t even own guns.
If you want to win, cheat. No one will take you seriously otherwise. The occasional excess aside, and legalistic squabbling aside, Muslims understand how to master and control women to a vastly superior degree than Jews or Christians. An occasional slap or very light jab to the side, or slightly painful aggressive sex, or a angry loud voice every once in a while makes women more comfortable with their man’s masculinity and virility. It works, if it’s controlled and in small doses. It has worked for thousands of years, times a couple orders of magnitude.
Evidence: their fertility. That is the bottom line. Deal with reality.
Just to beat this invidious fool on his own terms–he should make himself aware that the Moslem areas of the world are experiencing the same birthrate collapse as, for example, Italy and Greece.
They are imploding.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2159476/Tennessees-deadbeat-dads-The-men-81-children-46-different-women–theyre-paying-child-support-them.html
Take a look at that article and you’ll see who genetic winners are. Modern welfare states are perfect incubators for aggressive infiltrators. The decline in Muslim demographics is explained by moderate Muslims being outbred by fundamentalists. See Kurds replace Turks, or see the Taliban replace the more degenerate tribes of Afghanistan. Looking at total fertility absolutely does not tell the entire story. Actually, it obfuscates the issue. Reality is even worse.
The modern welfare state feeds this shift. Cars make it even worse. Very sedentary, well fed women take “provider” males utterly for granted and seek drama from high testosterone aggressors. They find the thuggish behavior more attractive in spite of (because of?) the occasional excess. Islam is the perfect religion for this.
Unless we succeed in slicing the government machine down such that the proper social safety net for a woman is a good man, and perhaps religious charity, the Muslim model will continue to thrive. There’s a reason why the Nazis loved this mysteriously fecund, yet undersexed religion, and there is a reason why so many historians mark Islam as the beginning of a proto-modernity.
This site is in dire need of a “report” button, so that offensive troll posts can be removed before they hurt the reputation of the site. Most sites have them ; I can’t understand why PJM is so remiss in creating one.
Your display of chauvinism & sexism is repulsive.
OOoooh please! Yess! Yessssss!
Above comment re: “An occasional slap or very light jab to the side, or slightly painful aggressive sex, or a angry loud voice every once in a while makes women more comfortable with their man’s masculinity and virility…”
The true measure of a person, a people, or a society is how it treats its women.
Not just women, but those who are in that instant weaker or defenseless. Thus how women, children, infirmed, etc. are treated says much about the person or society.
Higher Game.
I own lots of guns and know how to use them well. I also have an advanced black belt in karate. I have no need to assert by any means my “masculinity and virility” by verbally or physically bullying someone who is obviously weaker than I.
Nor do I have any need to “master and control” women in any way.
If you equate comfort with fear of a good beating (as opposed to an occasional slap or light jab) then, yes, Muslim women must be very comfortable.
As for fertility; it’s really difficult to say “no” to a fellow who’s inclined to break your jaw (with a very light jab of course) if you don’t comply.
Let Muslim men learn how to “master and control” themselves before applying their behavioral modification methods to their women folk.
Mr. Goldman:
Is something wrong with your spell checker? Throughout an otherwise enlightening article you consistently wrote “principal” when you clearly meant “principle”.
I will put this down to poor editing on the part of the staff of PJ Media. I cannot imagine a person of your obvious erudition making such a fundamental error.
Lots of glitches in blogging software…see this piece as an example:
http://www.dallasblog.com/201206141009099/dallas-blog/russia-today-and-the-u.s.-conservative-crack-up.html
Islam does not teach the same sort of compassion for the other that virtually every other religion including today’s “secular humanism” teaches. Muslims murder and torture each other without compunction and their own ummah, “brotherhood” has no condemnation to offer. That’s because they don’t value individual human life the way Christian westerners do. It’s not a concept in Islam, which means it’s not a concept in Muslims “hearts and minds”. Their hearts and minds instead understand what Allah teaches them in the Koran, namely, the Collective Will to Power.
When will our leaders understand this? And moreover understand that it is necessary in the end to treat Muslims in the way they themselves understand moral principles? Which ultimately means that they must be beaten back and vanquished and humiliated by a greater strength. That is clearly what they understand. Every move to win their hearts and minds only strengthens them, emboldens them to advance their own peculiar ethics of the world, which couldn’t give a damn about “hearts and minds”, as we understand the term. They will accept the shehada from anyone they can swindle and connive to recite it while at the same time are willing to kill anyone who leaves Islam. Whatever it takes to build the army of Islamic soldiers is what their ethics is about.
There is no way of avoiding the reality that the adults in this world are going to have to act like adults and step up and slap, and in a big way, Muslims who have made of their own societies the equivalent of “Lord of the Flies” and who now threaten to overrun every more advanced society with their mayhem. We’re going to have to come to terms this reality. Either that or it’s simply going to be cruel for all of us, with no kindness in sight, and possibly no one left to come and rescue us off an Island from Hell that in our passivity and cowardice we allowed to be taken over by moral pygmies.
David, I would think that you would be more concerned with the right of Muslim men to kill their wives, daughters and sisters. Has there been any rejection of that little problem yet by any prominent imman? Or how about the practice of polygamy? That too is legal under Sharia.
There is no “right” under Islamic law for honor killings, but they are lightly punished or not punished at all in most Muslim countries. Islam puts a veneer of monotheism on top of barbaric tribal practices; in some cases these practices (e.g. wife-beating) are explicitly sanctioned, on others they are not prohibited. The legal theory that makes the paterfamilias the equivalent of a provincial governor, a mini-state, implicitly sanctions honor killings. The question is: how should a free society deal with this? After all, we do have laws against murder. But if we have a large part of the population that is prone to honor killing, can we take pre-emptive measures? Obviously we should. But does that mean having an agent from family services sit in every Muslim household? Obviously not. I do not have a complete answer to the problem. But I am convinced that if we take on the issue of wife-beating in the right way many other issues will fall into place.
While their may be no “right” under Islamic law for honor killings, the reason they are lightly punished, or not punished at all rests squarely within orthodox Islam law. This provision would seem, at a minimum, to let parents know that they have a free hand, up to and including murder, when dealing with punishing their children. From Reliance of the Traveller, a classic manual of Islamic Sacred Law, certified as reliable by Al Azhar University, regarding retaliation for injurious crimes:
(o1.2(4)) The following are not subject to retaliation: a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring’s offspring”
There might be no right under the Koran to kill the female members of the family but it is so prevalent it might as well be and many imams support it. As you mentioned the crux of the problem is what to do to with killers of their female family members and the only answer I can come up with is to do the same as with non muslim wife killers; convict them of 1st degree murder and let them rot. I agree it is not possible to pre-emptivly deal with the problem but some good examples in the way of jail sentences will get a message across, maybe.
There is no “Thou shalt not murder” in Islam – nor the other nine commandments. The ten commandments exist only in Judaism and Christianity. So in Islam you can murder your wife and it’s not considered a sin.
I have had a lot of contact with young Saudi men who are studying here in the US. Occasionally I’ll meet a guy who says he has a dozen, fifteen, seventeen brothers and sisters. The siblings are mostly half-brothers and half-sisters because the father has three or even four wives. I jokingly ask them if they’d like to have four wives. Very few say yes. The young men occasionally hint of tension between the half-siblings and speak of how complex and difficult it is in a family which has multiple wives. I’m guessing a lot of young Saudis are ready and eager to break from a lot of the customs of the past. The married couples seem largely to be very happily married and devoted to their partners and children. The men don’t want multiple wives. How they treat their wives, though, is not known to me and I don’t really want to know. I can’t imagine any of these guys wanting to kill someone in an honor killing, but the issue has never come up. I do know however that they are pretty adamant about the demands and strictures of their religion.
I really wish the correct terminology for this practice would be employed, as it is indicative of the equivocal status of women in those social structures which practice it.
I believe the correct term for a society in which only the men are permitted to have multiple spouses is “polygyny”.
Likewise, the correct term for a society in which only the women are permitted to have multiple spouses is “polyandry”.
Polygamy recognizes and permits both genders to take multiple spouses.
Am I correct?
I think David’s point, and it is a crucial one, is how to find weak points in Sharia that will render it so incompatible with American legal tradition; that by applying pressure on these points, Islam faces the impossible choice of either renouncing core beliefs (impossible) or insisting US legal practice accommodate these culturally distasteful, and, most important, illegal, positions (bingo).
I think most of us are in agreement that Islam is not like Judaism or Christianity, and that Sharia is an anathema to western traditions, but what we need is a carefully crafted method to force Sharia to state its true principles openly, and, in doing so, declare its illegality. The alternative is for Islam to renounce a key part of itself, and begin the critical reformation of the entire edifice (I cannot bring myself to call it a religion).
Ask yourself, what would Lincoln the legalist do? He would not keep writing angry essays calling Islamists names; he’d listen carefully to their case, identify every point at which Islam is incompatible with the US legal system, and then proceed to hammer away at these points until Islam either capitulated or declared war; in either case, Islam as we know it would be destroyed.
If we are actually successful in getting Muslims to renounce verse 4:34 (very doubtful since Muslim theology believes that every word in the Qur’an is the direct word of Allah), we then have to deal with the problems of death for apostates, barbaric punishments including amputations and stoning, no retaliation for a Muslim who kills a non-Muslim, no retaliation for a parent or parents who kill their offspring, the treatment of non-Muslims unfortunate enough to live under Islamic rule, and many other anti-women tenets such as the requirement of 4 male witnesses to prove a charge of rape, a woman’s testimony being worth half that of a man, and a female heir only entitled to half that of a male heir. There is no freedom of speech, no freedom of religion, and no freedom of conscience within Islam. There is no way that we can persuade Muslims to drop all of these odious ideas that are all contained within mainstream, orthodox Islamic theology.
Islam is always claiming that it produces a superior society to that of the West. Let’s let them prove it – all by themselves. Stop all immigration from Islamic countries. Stop all student, medical, travel, or compassionate visas. Limit trade to the minimum necessary and stop all aid to any Islamic country. If the non-oil producers need aid, let them get it from their fabulously rich oil-producing Islamic neighbors. They need to feel the full impact of maintaining Islamic governments and their so-called “religion” without any help from us.
I agree that we should let the Muslim world stand on its own. We need to erect a barrier between the muslim world and ourselves, and were we to do so islam would soon collapse in much the same way as the Ottoman Empire.
All throughout the 19th century Britian and France propped up The Ottomans, even going so far as to literally fight their battles ( Crimean war). All we did was put the ottoman agonising on life support thereby delaying the inevitable outcome; the empire’s collapse.
With the Arab Spring ( salafist renewal) The West is now preparing to open the coffers and send billions in aid that will be used to prop up these wretched salafist dominated hellholes.
There should be no more immigration, no more exchange students…it was exchange students from Pakistan that helped the country develope its nukes… and no more foreign aid of any kind, not even foodstuffs.
If we force the Muslim world to rely on its own means, we will force muslims to wake up and take notice of islam’s countless faults, defects and errors. If we never force them to engage in some introspection and self-examination, something that forcing them back on their own means would inevitably bring about, then how can we ever expect them to reform?
Instead we give them life-support money, money that allows them to plaster over harsh realities and which permits, thus, the whole sick farce to continue.
It’s as though we keep handing money to raging drunk, in the hope it’ll be spent on detox.
24. George McCallum
Your last paragraph is the best solution.
We all miss the point about true relativism. Europe has no problem with wife-beating, because they believe that Islam is simply a permutation of culture that happens to permit it. Who are they to make judgments about the morality of wife-beating. Europeans of European extraction don’t beat their wives (in general), while Europeans of Islamic extraction do beat their wives (if they wish to do so). That make sense!
I don’t think George is proposing that Sharia ever trump the provisions of civil law – as in the case of wife-beating. The issue seems to be whether civil law can recognize sharia when sharia is not in conflict with public policy. An example, suppose two parties agree that any disputes under a contract will be resolved by a Muslim court. How is this different from requiring disputes to be settled by arbitration. Or suppose a Muslim wants his estate distributed according to the principles of sharia. Can a court honor such a provision in his will as long as it doesn’t conflict with civil law?
The issue with sharia seems to be judges and civil authorities who improperly allow it to trump civil law.
The trouble is that any application of Sharia to family law is corrupted by the threat of violence. Of course Robby George doesn’t want Muslim wives to be beaten. But the trouble is the implicit threat of violence: how can husband and wife stand as equals before the law if the husband has the “right” to beat the wife (and otherwise humiliate her, as the Koran makes clear)?”
As far as business law is concerned, Muslims can write contracts with any provisions they want, and no-one will care.
You start from a false premise, though. Islamic Law, even in the most conservative, traditionalist readings of it, does not give some blank slate right to a husband to use physical force against a wife without restriction, or on a whim, whenever he feels like it. There’s a whole detailed set of rules about this matter developed over the centuries, and it would have been helpful perhaps to familiarize yourself for some better precision and nuance before going off as you have.
Again, referring to the most conservative, traditionalist, classical readings, it is only for serious cases of “rebellion” by the wife – not for little irritants like cooking dinner badly or other trivial things that wifebeaters typically look to as excuses to go off.
There’s also a progression of steps before that, preliminaries, as the Quran verse you mentioned outlines, and the jurisprudential tradition explains in more detail. The Islamic Law doesn’t allow some heat of the moment actions.
So, no, the Muslim husband, according to the letter of the Islamic Law, does not have some blanket right to “beat his wife,” as you claimed. It’s much more proscribed, if we’re talking about letter of the law, and not the (not limited to Muslim populations) phenomenon of men beating their wives because they got angry and lost control.
So there is no basis for the claim that the secular law can’t support Islamic marital mediation “because the husband will threaten his wife or actually beat her to get his way in mediation.” At least there is no Islamic legal basis. An individual man might do that, in point of fact, but there’s nothing specifically “Islamic” about this. By your argument, we should forbid all mediation of marital disputes because a husband might use his physical advantage behind the scenes to pressure the discussion.
What is more, the Quran verse you quote in itself refutes your point, ironically. In that verse, mediation is the most serious step for resolving a serious marital dispute, just short of divorce. From the standpoint of Islamic jurisprudence, if the couple has gone to mediation, then this earlier step of “beating/spanking/whatever” has either been passed through or bypassed. If it has gone to mediation, that option has been given up. Another reason your point is invalid, if we are speaking strictly within what Islamic Law says and not on what random individuals actually do.
Yes, the husband has to humiliate his wife before eventally beating her. You are technically correct. You are also disgusting.
Thank you, David. Attempts to explain away and nuance this disgusting approach to women by “open-minded” cultural relativists are just that – disgusting. Apologists for this foulness should read some works of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and other women (current and former Muslims) who have lived through this misogyny.
I’m not “culturally relativizing” anything. I’m not defending anyone beating his wife.
I’m defending logical coherence. What is “disgusting” is people playing fast and loose with bad logic for purely political reasons. Goldman claimed that the mediation process is inherently “corrupted” because Muslim men have some blanket right under Islamic Law to beat their wives. They do not.
This was the ENTIRE PREMISE of Goldman’s argument. And it takes more than a lazy snark reply and personal insult to wave that away. Be certain that Goldman would throw a fit if someone played similarly fast and loose with such “merely technical details” of Jewish Law.
Thank you for the deflection via snark and insult.
However, I would be interested in hearing you elaborate how exactly, the mediation process would be “corrupted” if the husband does not in fact have some blanket right to wife-beating in Islamic Law. I am frankly not seeing it. The very idea of mediation is that a couple wants to bring in 3rd parties to resolve a heated dispute in a peaceful way.
Please make sure to explain in a way that doesn’t apply equally to any other group.
The reply button is gone on David P. Goldman’s reply at 7:42 pm of June 14, so I’ll reply here:
Yes, I agree I highly oversimplified. Your history is quite right, of course: freedom of religion did not exist in the America of the Puritans (or the Cavaliers of Virginia). It had to develop; and develop it did in response to the specific problems of American religion. It is precisely that emergent culture that we are trying to understand and defend. Parenthetically, precisely that fact shows that freedom of religion is not a universal, rationally necessary expression of certain human rights. Human rights exist in a particular culture. “Nature and nature’s God” is a historically specific insight.
Secondly, your analysis of the lack of a central religious authority in Islam is certainly valid. Muslims have a right to religion freedom; the question is in what sense and to what extent does Islam have that right. I think your analogy to Mormon polygamy is very helpful: The specificity of the right to freedom of religion means that generally (in a popular, not philosophical sense) Muslims participate in that right. However, it depends on how they attempt to express that right in our community. Had the Roman Catholics of 19th century America attempted import ultramontane Catholicism, Protestants would have certainly, and correctly, resisted.
Finally thanks so much for engaging this issue with your usual insight and verve, and helping me to clarify my own thoughts on the issue.
David,
What I’m trying to bring out is the sheer strangeness of the situation: Here we have a religious minority that surely deserves the freedoms accorded to all Americans but that is systematically prone to violate the law because its ethics and theology are radically different from Judeo-Christian ethics. Where does religious liberty end, and sanctioning of criminal behavior begin? Our friends at First Things have stumbled badly on this one, I think. But that does not place the anti-Sharia movement beyond criticism!
Publicly abjure Surah 4:34 of the Koran, and I personally will join you in opposing the anti-Sharia movement. Any takers? I won’t hold my breath; no Muslim religious authority has ever abjured Surah 4:34, because Muslim theology states that it is the uncreated word of God, dictated to Mohammed by the Archangel Gabriel, and to abjure this one passage would call into question the divine nature of the Koran as a whole.
Firstly, no I would never back law based on religion. I thought we had passed this point donkeys years ago. True, they may lobby but at the end of the day logic and common decency should rule.
Secondly, all religions need a good shove from behind to move them through the centuries. It suits them to stagnate in history. Just look at the Vatican (Isn’t it one of the richest corporations in the world?)
The Koran was born in the desert in a harsh environment with hard men in charge. Women were chattels, girls a nuisance, but times have changed. Even the desert has roads and camels are sold for meat rather than transport. The kids now go to school and learn that girls aren’t all stupid and have an opinion.
In any event, why is this conversation going on? The USA has its laws and anyone emigrating there must acquaint themselves with these laws and be prepared to abide by them. Just as we ex-pats everywhere must do.
You mention that in the West only the government has the right to commit acts of violence, and I wondered what laws you refer to. Perhaps you chose the word ‘violence’ wrongly and meant ‘force’, whilst accepting, of course, that acts of violence are carried out by Her Majesty’s servants quite regularly. Aha! But then there was G W Bush in the US and State violence became acceptable in ‘certain circumstances’.
I think the intensifier ‘violence’ over the word ‘force’, is apt. Violence is the removal of a person’s life either through a penalty of death or involuntary incarceration. ‘Force’ can simply mean the state’s interference with any personal whim or predilection through the use of law. Such as not allowing one to park in a handicapped space without proper certification, for example……..
“In any event, why is this conversation going on?” Because myriads of western elitist surrender-monkeys have expressed opinions along the line it “might not hurt” to give Sharia Law a chance in the US. Losers suggesting a losing strategy. Adults here understand this is a non-starter but the kiddies continue to push for some way to accommodate the poor oppressed Muslims so unlucky to live here. It’s a “feelings” thing, so it must have a great degree of validity.
Wife beating ?
What about the woman’s sharply regulated & reduced rights of inheritance, the near negligible weight of her testimony requiring 4 witnesses to support her, the fact that her children can simply be taken away from her with no recourse, the fact that the husband merely has to say “I divorce you” whereas she has to plead with courts and judges, sometimes years, to be set free ?
What about the cloistering, the restrictive rules, the ridiculous clothing and the accusations of enticement to rape if she dares show her face in public ?
A few words in the Koran about beating a woman lightly about the face and refusing to sleep with her until she behaves, and we get a whole slue of idiots feeling justified in beating the hell out of women.
Any accommodation of Sharia should be limited to contractual law if that suits both parties, but, beyond that, forget it.
It is precisely that emergent culture that we are trying to understand and defend.(David WL)
Which part of female abuse don’t you understand? And, how do you go about defending a culture you don’t understand?
The Supreme Court has upheld the right of voodoo practitioners to sacrifice chickens, but American law cannot possibly tolerate wife-beating (quote)
Are you seriously equating the two?
As to the women on whose part you fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them first, refuse to share their beds, spank them, but if they return to obedience, seek not against them means of [annoyance]: for Allah is Most High, Great.
This Surah specifically gives permission to a man to spank his wife. To me that’s an over-the-knee job with a sore butt to show for it, and in terms of wife-beating severity rates about a 1/10.
Allah permits you to shut them in separate rooms and to beat them, but not severely. If they abstain, they have the right to food and clothing. Treat women well for they are like domestic animals and they possess nothing themselves. Allah has made the enjoyment of their bodies lawful in his Ko-Ran.
- Tabari 4:113
The Prophet said, “Isn’t the witness of a woman equal to half of that of a man?” The women said, “Yes.” He said, “This is because of the deficiency of a woman’s mind.”
- Bukhari Vol 3 Bk 48 Nbr 826
Numerous US Imams have come out against wife beating…just do a youtube search on khutbah and domestic violence, and you’ll see results for Shayhkh Hamza Yusuf (one of the best known US imams). Suhaib Webb, Omar Suleiman, etc. over 30 Imams signed a fatwa against dv and honor killings. http://www.islamicsupremecouncil.com/fatwa-honour-killings-misogyny-domestic-violence.pdf
Pakistan of all places recentlypassed domestic violence laws which are more strict than those in the US…where a pro boxer was sentenced to only 90 days for beatingup his wife. A boxer! http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2012/06/10/city/islamabad/‘passage-of-24-laws-historic-achievement’/
Reality is that family violence is a problem throughout the world….and in the US affects at least 25% of women. They’re not all Muslims either. In your church, no matter how pious people appear…or their socioeconomic status, 25% of women are being abused. That affects not only them, but their children.
Can’t change the Quran…just as we can’t change some unsavory bits of the Bible. Remember not too long ago, DV was not a crime here…heck, it was joked about on “I Love Lucy” and “The Honeymooners.”. As somebody who actually workw with DV survivors (Muslims and nonMuslims), this piece is pointless if you really want to help these women. Donate your time and money to Muslim organizations that are fighting this …. Lobby your legislators for stricter laws.
I ageee with your point, but the last part is false. Wife-beating was certainly a crime in various (perhaps all) states; I even recall one state (colony?) where a man who beat his wife was lashed in turn.
As I noted elsewhere, Jewish Oral Law has the authority to interpret and even put into abeyance parts of the Written Law (classic example is Deut. 21:18-21). No such possibility in Islam.
“Can’t change the Quran…just as we can’t change some unsavory bits of the Bible.”
This comment reflects a core misunderstanding of the difference between Islam and religion derived from the Bible.
Christians and Jews are free to identify verses as “unsavory.” They might be wrong theologically, in any given instance, but it’s perfectly fine to question; doing so does not put you beyond the Pale. Not so with Islam. Allah wrote every bit of it, and to deny any of it is inexcusable. Moslems are stuck wi the text they have, and are not allowed to question it. Islam can’t, by definition, be “reformed.”
Thank God Allah is not God.
Allow me to get to the root of the problem, as I see it.
I am no Quranic scholar, but if my information is correct, Sura 4 is the sixth of the Medina Sura. That means it was composed at least a few years after the death of Mohammed’s first wife, who seems to have been a strong and stabilizing influence upon him.
Mohammed had entered a completely new phase of his life. The content of the revelations had changed, even radically. The idea of abrogation had raised its head, canceling out what had been presented as Truth before.
I have wondered (in my ignorance, to be frank) if perhaps those Medina Sura were forged by others, or severely corrupted. Pipes has long since pointed out that the opportunities for forgery were great. Spencer’s latest book seconds that.
One example. Abrogation as a logical principle in a college debate is one thing. To apply it to the Deity is absurd.
Do you want to say that over the span of several human years (a sneeze in God’s timeframe), the Deity changed his mind — about, for example, the status of women in marriage? Get a life.
Abrogation as a principle of Quranic scholarship posits a Deity, a Lord of the Universe, with the decision-making capacity of a John Kerry — for it before he was against it.
The Mu’tazili School asked questions, tried to use rational inquiry, and was hounded out of existence by those who wanted to preserve the Medina Sura as-is. That is a good part of why Islam is stuck in a Seventh Century culture.
Until Islam allows historical inquiry within the ranks, it is screwed.
Mohammed’s first wife, who seems to have been a strong and stabilizing influence upon him.
Khadija, 15 years Mohammed’s senior, didn’t wear no stinkin’ burka.
She brought wealth to the marriage, sponsored her guy so he could sit in the cave and receive from the Angel all day long.
The notion of abrogation, that later Sura take precedence over earlier Sura, is a convenient invention to rationalize some of the Koran’s contradictions.
As for the Deity and absurdity, all I can say is that Allah seemed preternaturally obsessed with Mohammed’s sex life and with laying out rules for the smooth operation of his complicated domestic arrangements.
Islam as we know it today is not interpretive. It is fundamentalist. All of it. As such it is utterly intolerant.
Jews and Christians have found it necessary to hold interpretive views of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. That is not the case with most of what people recognize as Islam.
The text in the Koran about beating wives is troubling in much the same way as Leviticus 20:13 is troubling. Jews and Christians realize that there is an apparent contradiction that we must learn from. However, we have yet to see anyone attempt to deal with this troubling passage in the Koran.
To become part of American society, believers in Islam will need to take a more common sense interpretive view of their religious texts. If (When?) that happens, I will stand shoulder to shoulder to defend their way of life. Until then, I have no choice but to regard them as savages.
No, I’m sorry, I have no problem whatsoever with Lev. 20:13. It is true that the death penalty in Judaism was temporarily suspended in 40CE, and that it is almost impossible to give a criminal penalty of any sort in Jewish law (except murder), but that doesn’t mean that we have a problem with the concept.
I do know of a case, in Israel under Muslim rule, where a man was found to be committing homosexual acts. (Given the time and place, in is probable today we would call this child abuse.) He was handed over to the Muslims, who beat him, to the approval of the community. He was made to leave Israel after divorcing his wife. We only know of thi scase because he calimed the divorce was invalid.
Perhaps you don’t have a problem with such biblical commandments. But I do. I still see homosexuality as a sin. However, I see this passage as indication that the Bible must be giving us allegorical instruction.
There are many sins that one can commit which do not incur the death penalty. As for Jewish Law, the degree of proof required for capital punishment is so overwhelming that it pretty nearly can not be met. A minimum of three witnesses must be present and one of them must, just prior to the crime, tell the aggressor that it is a capital offense, and the person must reply that he knows, doesn’t care, and is going to do it anyway.
Basically, what I learn from this is to leave what goes on in the bedroom alone. However, one must not flaunt homosexuality. It is so corrosive to society that it is almost on par with murder.
That’s what my interpretive view of this passage means.
If those who believe in Islam walk away from fundamentalist interpretations of the Koran and the Hadith, then I will consider their efforts as sincere. Unlike Spengler, I do not see such behavior as denial of the Koran’s wisdom or authenticity. If it were, I would have to admit that we no longer look to the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament as legitimate either.
In point of fact, any scholar who reads texts this old will encounter forgotten idioms, unknown nouns with insufficient context to determine what they are, and verbs that may not mean what we think they mean. There is no shame in recognizing that these texts are imperfect representations of God’s word. On the contrary, if these texts were meant to be taken literally, why do we have the intellect to interpret, to decide, and to judge?
The problem is not Islam. It is Fundamentalist Islam, which unfortunately, represents most of what people see as Islam. The fundamentalists are adamant and practically thuggish in their enforcement of this interpretation. This is why I look upon these people no differently than if they were members of any wide eyed cult.
Pity them, for they know not what they do.
To nit your pic slightly Lev 20:13 was given to whom and for what purpose? Hadn’t the receivers been living for a time among a scandalous population, absorbing all sorts and bits of other’s obscene cultures? Weren’t strict health laws part of His concern?
And didn’t the sudden fissure of a large curtain in an inner chamber years later change many things from the OT? I have no problem seeing the punishment specified in 20:13 as needed at the time for the welfare of His children.
Thanks. Excellent points.
And if every muslim dumped wife beating? No, you wouldn’t stand shoulder to shoulder with these people. I’m unaware that the Soviets or the Nazis ever endorsed wife beating. Hell, Saddam Hussein was Romeo compared to what these people are about.
You are picking around the edges, building a case over time, I suppose. But the conclusion that any westerner must reach is that islam is incompatible with the west in general, and the U.S. particularly.
And on a finer note, there must not be, nor can there be, any law which usurps constitutional law. We do not keep 2 sets of books.
You are missing the point. If they dumped wife beating, they would de facto deny the uncreated, divine character of the Koran. If Muslims are willing to give that up, I’m happy to work with them.
How do you feel about the Jeziah ?
There is no compultion is islam then, If you do not accept Islam then you have to pay the tax ie. Jeziah(tax), or fight and you will have to continue fighting until you are tired and give in… is it not like forcing someone..
Somebody needed to do that.
If I am correct, I will be able to stop the italicization of all the following text by placing an “end italics” HTML tag here in this message. I’ll be typing the less than sign, the forward slash, the letter “i,” and the greater than sign. Let’s see if this works:
If I’m right, this text should be plain (not in italics). Hopefully so will the rest of these comments which I believe were thrown into italics by the use of an open ended italics tag in an earlier comment.
A while back I had a conversation with an Egyptian Copt, fluent in Arabic of course. According to him the Arabic word Mr. Goldman has translated as “spank” is actually “to beat”. According to him the translation of the beating verse is a litmus test of just how prettied up any given koran translation is. I also seem to remember that under Sharia if the wife dies as a result of the beating, it is not considered a crime. Additionally, I have read (sorry, no citation) that according to surveys by Muslim women’s groups the incidence of wife beating ranges from 80% in Egypt to 90+% in Pakistan. Just tossing out a few factoids.
Geez? Wife beating? What about murder, rape, pedophilia, incest, lying, stealing? You plan to eat the elephant in the room one bite at a time? Islam, the religion of Satan, is not to be tolerated. Until we wake up to that fact there will be more hell to pay for millions of innocents.
For people who like to compare Islam to the Old Testament, just remember it is called “the Old Testament” You have to read the whole book to find out there is a “New Testament” in Jesus a complete clarification of the old. Don’t be ignorant like Obama and use the Old Testament as an example while ignoring the message of the New.
I’m sorry, but I believe secular law should ALWAYS take precedent over religious “law.” The religious have the right, as do all citizens, to speak and to petition the government regarding their special requirements. Legislators may choose to draft or amend laws so as to minimize their impact on religious groups. But we must never adopt a general policy of bending our laws and legal practices to accommodate religious doctrines. Our legislators, judges, and lawyers should be experts in American law – not religious scholars. That way lies insanity.
Well, Scalia, for one, disagrees with you.
This would also clear the defendants as Nuremburg, and vilify the Jewish women who gave up their lives to circumcise their sons.
“This approach guides a husband in disciplining his wife that is disobedient….”
Notice the “that” instead of the proper “who”. Either the writers of this justification do not understand English or they do and the wife is not a person but an object.
I remember a conversation I had with my Father many years ago – probably shortly after 9/11. I could not understand why Muslims hated Christians and Jews. After all, they worshipped the same One God. Jesus was sent to give Gentiles a path to salvation. I thought that Mohammed was sent to bring the Arabs and others the same. It was not until I actually began to read about Mohammed and Islam (thanks to people like Robert Spencer) that I began to understand what Islam was really about. The actions of Muslims around the world, including here in the US (not just the “extremists” but the supposed moderates) have justified my change of opinion and continue to justify it today.
There are good people who happen to be Muslims. However, based upon my reading (I attempted to read the Koran and I gave up) no good Muslim is a good person. Comparison of Sharia to Jewish law or Christian “laws” is ridiculous for two reasons: 1) show me where Jews/Christians are to be killed for converting to Islam or any of the other behaviors, 2) and where you see a parallel between the laws, how many Jews or Christians still behave that way?
Islam is hundreds of years behind Judiasm/Christianity in being civilized (hell, I just read about Saudi Arabia arresting witches). Look at the countries that are dominated by Islam – can you even consider them to be truly civilized? I think not. Islam is a political entity, not just a religion. The sooner people realize that the better.
I suspect the Inquisition would ahve killed a Christian who converted to Islam, as they would one who converted to Judaism.
“In any broad sense, Islamic Law offers the American lawyer a study in dramatic contrasts. Even casual acquaintance and superficial knowledge—all that most of us at bench or bar will be able to acquire—reveal that its striking features relative to our law are not likenesses but inconsistencies, not similarities but contrarieties. In its source, its scope and its sanctions, the law [i.e., Islamic Law, Sharia] of the Middle East is the antithesis of Western Law…Islamic law, on the contrary, finds its chief source in the will of Allah as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. It contemplates one community of the faithful, though they may be of various tribes and in widely separated locations. Religion, not nationalism or geography, is the proper cohesive force. The state itself is subordinate to the Qur’an, which leaves little room for additional legislation, none for criticism or dissent. This world is viewed as but the vestibule to another and a better one for the faithful, and the Qur’an lays down rules of behavior towards others and toward society to assure a safe transition. It is not possible to separate political or juristic theories from the teachings of the Prophet, which establish rules of conduct concerning religious, domestic, social, and political life. This results in a law of duties, rather than rights…”
~ Robert H. Jackson, Associate Supreme Court Justice of the United States (1941-1954) in his foreword to a treatise in Islamic law (Law in the Middle East by Majid Khadduri and Herbert J. Liebesny, 1955)
“Even in cases where devout Muslim women acquiesce to domestic violence on Koranic grounds . . .”
That does not prevent the violence from being a crime. Under criminal law, there is no such thing as consent to be battered as a defense. So, these muslim men are committing crimes, regardless of the poor, brainwashed muslim females who think they are obeying their ‘god’ by enduring this abuse. The State has a duty to prosecute, period.
Perhaps more fundamentally: a fundamental tenet of Judeo-Christianity is the equality of all people before God. While men and women have different roles in the family and in society, all people, regardless of sex or race, are equal before the Lord when it comes to salvation. This philosophy is reflected, in turn, in our system of government and in such efforts such as the abolition of slavery in the English Empire by Wilberforce and the anti-slavery movement in the 19th century, and subsequently in the U.S. and throughout Europe, and in the women’s rights movement.
Islam has no such principle. Women are not only secondary to males but are viewed as inherently sinful and evil, corrupting men with their beauty (thus the burqua). The principle of the secondary status of women in Islam is such that, if I understand it correctly, then cannot even enter paradise without a man to help them. Note that, as far as I know, all of the countries where slavery is allowed are Muslim.
In any broad sense, Islamic Law offers the American lawyer a study in dramatic contrasts. Even casual acquaintance and superficial knowledge—all that most of us at bench or bar will be able to acquire—reveal that its striking features relative to our law are not likenesses but inconsistencies, not similarities but contrarieties. In its source, its scope and its sanctions, the law [i.e., Islamic Law, Sharia] of the Middle East is the antithesis of Western Law…Islamic law, on the contrary, finds its chief source in the will of Allah as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. It contemplates one community of the faithful, though they may be of various tribes and in widely separated locations. Religion, not nationalism or geography, is the proper cohesive force. The state itself is subordinate to the Qur’an, which leaves little room for additional legislation, none for criticism or dissent. This world is viewed as but the vestibule to another and a better one for the faithful, and the Qur’an lays down rules of behavior towards others and toward society to assure a safe transition. It is not possible to separate political or juristic theories from the teachings of the Prophet, which establish rules of conduct concerning religious, domestic, social, and political life. This results in a law of duties, rather than rights…
~ Robert H. Jackson, Associate Supreme Court Justice of the United States (1941-1954) in his foreword to a treatise in Islamic law (Law in the Middle East by Majid Khadduri and Herbert J. Liebesny, 1955)
The sad silence about Muslim wife-beating…
The sad silence about Muslim incest…
The sad silence about Muslim homosexuality…
The sad silence about Muslim views of others as non-human…
The sad silence about Muslim agreement with terrorist bombings…
The sad silence about Muslim desire for global domination…
Are you getting the picture?
There is an alternative. I heard a (widely reviled by non-Moslems) video where the Muslim religious figure so minimized the wife-beating as to not be relevant. This is of course the only way it can be done; as a religious Jews, Mr. Goldman knows that if you deny one verse, you deny the whole thing. (Well, another way is to acknowledge that it would be dangerous for the community to defy the state.)
We Jews have an Oral Law that can put in abeyance the Written Law; for example, the right of parents to ask for the death penalty against a rebellious son has been under permanent suspension since the time of the Great Assembly (200 BCE).
“There never was, nor will there ever be, a child who meets all of the legal qualifications of the ‘wayward and rebellious son.’ Why then was this law written? That you may study it and receive reward [for the Torah learning, despite its lack of practical application].” (Sanhedrin 71a)
There is a dispute there, and I believe the opinion you are referring to (Rabbi Judah) is not accepted. The other opinion, at least if taken literally, says the law was carried out, althoguh it is so restrictive it could not have been applied often.
But even Rabbi Judah was simply saying that the Bible was giving a case that could not happen, not that the rabbis changed anything. So why mention it? Well, I have seen the rule use (Igros Moshe) as a argument agaisnt allowing (from a religious viewpoint) addictive drugs.
“At the end he will look for his habit (limudo) and will not find it, and will go out and act and rob (as a highwayman) the people. Said the Torah (in a very restricted case), let him die innocent and not die guilty (as a murderer).”
This is simply false. There never was any such right, and the “right” that did exist (the law of the junkie, more or less) was not suspended except insofar as all death penalties were in the year 30 (got the year wrong before).
David,
Thanks for picking a conversation with those past on NROs Corner.
Ii am Catholic (I guess,orthodox, pro-life, that sort of thing) but there is a temptation among us to overlook much about (political, imperialist) Islam since we so desperately need allies in our battle against relativism (say that rather than secularism). The other day the PM of Turkey was given a nod by an leading Catholic ministry for speaking out against contraception. Another Catholic NGO dedicated to UN issues gave great praise to a Muslim delegate due to his remarks about abortion. In that case the Catholic commentator implied the concern over Freedom of Religion should crawl into the back seat. There are others.
In both of these I did not detect that before any adulation was dispensed, the organizations took a time-out to reflect on the fundamentals. Such as, does Islam even come close to a definition of “personhood” (let alone “Being”) that is foundational to how Jews and Christians hold the notion of the human person, let alone the “person” of God.
If Islam does not adhere (even superficially) to the same concept of God’s BEING – which is cornerstone of any ethic – how can Islam be an ally in the cultural battles dear to the heart of orthodox Christianity (and Judaism)?
I would make the claim that even Islam’s notion of monotheism (as Political/Civilizational Totalitarianism)is that great stumbling block in the great game of making Islam an ally. No one discusses the consequences of Islam’s “monotheism”. We simply assume it carries no consequential outcome, since we too are monotheists (and, maybe, a bit envious of Islam’s suffocating, absolutist take on it).
I agree. Call on the ummah to abjure that verse on wife-beating. But will be the fallout from that. Abjure one Koranic verse others will be called into question. Bit by bit, verse by verse, the Koran will crumble under the scouring, searing eyes of both Reason and Logos.
Or, will such a call set off a different kind of alarm in the Muslim community (moderate or radical – that is, westernized or orthodox? Will be push for enacting Sharia honoring legislation be put on fast track. For there is only one certainty in Islam – the Koran can never be questioned, let alone placed under the scrutiny of Reason. If that is even remotely possible there is a cache of Koranic documents sequestered in a vault in Berlin that would have seen the light years ago.
Ii cannot imagine Islam even remotely giving a high-five to such abjuring (of even one verse). That is reason enough for anti-Sharia movement.
All the discussions you people like to have in previous comments shows me that there is a lot of denial going on. Keep it simple and understand what Sharia law is all about, and what the goal of that religion is, and what its mission is.
It’s not up for discussion, and non-negotiable.Believe it.Stop talking around it.
You are dealing with a core belief here, much as the Aztec regarded human sacrifice.
Further when Egyptian women demonstrated on the subject, they got seriously groped.
Here religious freedom stops when you place burdens on others, not willed chosen by them. Our debates are framed that way. In Islam you have the boot heel on the neck.
Why is this a problem for our society, for our culture? We are under no obligation to accommodate barbaric behavior. Get them the hell out of our country and raze their temples. Imagine their most holy book has instructions on how to beat your wife and yet we temporize with these people. Where will they go you ask. That is their problem. Staying here will some day be a much bigger problem.
After twenty centuries of struggle against Christian superstition, bigotry and tyranny we finally marginalise Christian zealots and institute secularism, only to find ourselves facing a similar struggle for our societal institutions against islam. Let’s keep it simple, wife beating is assault, murder is murder and no amount of self justification in the name of religion should prevent the full force of the secular law being used against the perpetrators.
Simpler yet to recognise that being a believer in the “religion” of islam precludes that person from membership in civilised society, they should all be deported and prospective immigrants should have to abandon islam before being eligible for residence in the USA.
Islam is ignorance, superstition, murderous bigotry and is a totalitarian political system that has no place in civilisation and further should be wiped from the planet.
“After twenty centuries of struggle against Christian superstition, bigotry and tyranny we finally marginalise Christian zealots and institute secularism,”
ridiculous statement.
It was your so called ” Christian superstition, bigotry and tyranny ” that made the western world and modern civilization.
You should be down on your knees thanking Christianity for the life you have, not bad-mouthing it.
gray man,
For starters, try reading “A World Lit Only by Fire” by William Manchester, for a history of the lengths to which christianity went to suppress education, science, philosophy, etc. to maintain the strict adherence to the official mumbo-jumbo known as Christianity.
You are a pathetic intellectual serf.
you read a book that was anti christian – big deal – I’ve read dozens with the opposite view.
I bet you make your mommy proud.
You insignificant little nothing.
Roger in Florida – the book you have quoted is a well known anti-Christian polemic with as much regard for facts as the Protocols of Zion. You could ask yourself – in all those centuries when the Church was (presumably) fighting against modern science, HOW DID THEY KNOW WHAT IT WAS? And of course, there must have been equivalent bad guys in ancient China and Ancient Egypt and Classical Rome and Greece and in India, because these places also failed to have a scientific revolution. In fact, modern science seems to have emerged only once – in Christian Europe.
We just went through a case here in Kingston Ontario where a man and his wife and son killed 4 women in an honour killing which is part of the sharia law.
They where given life without parole for 25 years…I know here in Canada we’re a little soft.
I’m not really sure how anyone with any common sense wants anything to do with sharia law and their disgusting treatment of women.
I live in the Muslim capital of Canada here in Scarborough and we see the women walking around 10 steps behind their husbands often with their full bee keeper out fits on and the husband dressed in full western attire.
This drives my wife crazy.
We do have one station that is covering this big time and that’s The Sun News Network which I’ve seen you speak on David.
We do need to stop with the PC crap and fight this sharia law stuff.
Our good Muslim friends which by the way are the majority of them need to speak up. And they are starting to.
Lastly I’m a common sense Christian and take huge offense to some folks above making like we are still stuck in the dark ages in Christianity.
Give me an industrial sized brake with that.
The problem is Muslim-on-Muslim violence — it’s hardly “anti-Muslim” to want to protect individual Muslims from violence!
Nicholas,
We
have freedom in spite of christianity, not because of it. If you are truly a “common sense Christian” then you know the nonsense that christianity preaches.
There is no god, and there is no heaven, wake up man, think!
“We have freedom in spite of christianity, not because of it.”
Complete and total nonsense – a product of a modern education I see.
gray man,
I will make it easy for you: There is no god, no holy trinity, no heaven or hell, there was never any such thing as an immaculate conception, and nobody was ever raised from the dead.
Reading your responses I am reminded of the Church of England bishops who, in the early 20th century, opposed mass immunisation because it thwarted the will of god, who intended all those children to die.
But then you are probably a priest.
May I point out that the subject of this discussion is NOT the truth of religion but rather the LEGAL problem of religious freedom in the case that a religion advocates illegal acts (e.g., wife-beating)?
A free society is not required to commit suicide in defense of freedom. Patently, there is no place for Islam in those societies. Endit.
Is this not proof that Islam is not only a gnostic religion but one heavily influenced by evil?
As you know, I share that view, but the point of this particular discussion is how American law should respond to Islam. There is no Constitutional basis to deny freedom to one religion as opposed to another because it is Gnostic, for example. Not a simple matter; as David Yerushalmi indicates, there are successful as well as failed efforts to address this.
Success and failure is generally in the minds and will of men who when confronted with an issue or problem react to it.
It says more about the men who confront, than the issue.
Spengler, thanks for pointing out the point of the essay; my mind tends to wander from time to time. Re: “There is no Constitutional basis to deny freedom to one religion as opposed to another because it is Gnostic, for example.” Quite true, there is also no Constitutional imperative, I’m aware of, that requires the protection of any religion or ideology that actively advocates and seeks the violent overthrow of the American Republic. Does Sharia Law or the oft stated objective of the World Caliphate not seek such a condition?
Sharia is based on Islam. Islam is a crime-syndicate based on the Qur’an, which was only the book of excuses created by Muhammad the bandit-king and crimelord.
Sharia deliberately avoids all legal principles of morality under the pretense that “god” can change his mind about anything, any time, but really only because they have to justify the criminal deeds and excuses that Muhammad personally committed and then made up to cover them.
Re: (the author’s contention that) “How does one balance the Constitutional guarantee of religious liberty with the fundamental obligation of the state to protect individuals against violence?”
…and:
“In fact, Westernized Muslim scholars strive to justify the practice on Islamic legal grounds. Muslim traditional society is a nested hierarchy in which the clan is an extended family, the tribe an extended clan, and the state an extended tribe. The family patriarch thus enjoys powers in his realm comparable to those of the state in the broader realm.”
Well if true, then that last bit should please the “Focus On The Family!” types who often post here. Sharia says the family patriarch has more power than the government! Whee!
But in reality, all Arabic individuals are suborned to the family, the family is subservient to the clan, the clan to the tribe, and the tribe to the ummah. In islam there are no individual rights, only group rights. Islam IS communism.
The reason men can beat their wives is to ensure tribal, not merely familial, survival: islam’s “morality” is only US AGAINST THEM, MIGHT-MAKES-RIGHT, AND BLAME THOSE VICTIMS:
When islame was originally created, it was modeled on the Jews monotheism (whosetwelve tribes are never at war with each other) because the pagan Arab tribes were always at war with each other; their so-called culture always was and still is only based on might-makes-right and us-against-them. Muhammad simply codified that nonsense for all time, said god still wanted them to commit those crimes, “but only” against a common enemy: against anyone and everyone who refused to join Muhammad’s new islamic war and plunder cult. And of course Muhammad really only set this up to enrich himself, so he’d have an excuse to commit every crime known to man, enthusiastically and often. Needless to say, when not united in common hatred of non-moslems, all moslem Arabs (and moslems in general) still gleefully indulge in waging war on each other.
“Honour” killings are demanded in the Qur’an’s Sura 4:89 for anyone who even gives a hint about attempting to leave islam – and that of course includes any women who show these signs by disobeying men and/or by wearing ‘Western’ clothing. And the only reasons they give for women having to wear “islamic” clothing in the first place is given in Sura 33:59 – the explanation being that they must cover up lest they “force” the moslem men to molest and rape them, like they “have to” do to all the non-moslem women (!)
;-(
In fact, islam’s overall premise is, according to the Qur’an, sahih ahadith, Tabari histories, Ibn Hisham’s version of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul allah (life of Muhammad) and of course as codified into the four Sunni and one Shia maddhab fiqhs of sharia crime (“law”) that all non-moslems are lying traitorous hypocrites, who all secretly already know that Muhammad is right, but have chosen to cover up the shiny-shiny truth of islam, and so are known as “The DIRT” (Kuffars, or al-Kafirun, as denoted in the Qur’anic chapter of that name).
So, all moslems are so “superior” to these traitorous non-moslems, that it’s not only their right, but also their holy duty to allah, to extort, enslave, and murder them all for being guilty of the crime of not being moslems!
So obviously, islam is ONLY an ancient, ongoing CRIME-syndicate, and the only “religious” part in it, is where they say:
“God told us to commit these crimes!”
(Capisce?)!
HONOUR KILLINGS EXPLAINED:
According to the books of such embedded cultural anthropologists as Rapheal Patai’s “The Arab Mind” and Carl Salzman’s “Culture and Conflict in the Middle East, Arab “culture” (which is codified in the Qur’an) glorifies the tribe over the individual, so each tribe engages in us-versus-them, might-makes-right wars all the time.
The best way to keep your tribal numbers up is to have each man marry four or more wives, which guarantees he will breed four (hopefully male warrior) children each year, while also depriving his enemy’s tribes of those same women and warrior-breeding ability.
This is also why they marry their own cousins all the time (so the enemy tribes can’t steal their women and potential warrior-children, thus weakening their own tribes) and it’s also why they have “honour” killings (because if they can’t control even their ‘weakest’ members, then they will invite attack from other tribes AND they’ll lost those women’s warrior kids to their enemies, too!
So if they don’t get to beat on and kill their own women, then those women’ s actions will eventually get them ALL killed!
PS: And the Arabic word used isn’t “spank” it’s BEAT (unless you want to pretend that all the other instances of that word used in the Koran encourage the moslems to SPANK their mortal enemies)!
One hears and reads about muslim misogyny and can’t help but be amazed that most converts in the West to Islam are women. It suggests that in the hierarchy of female dignity, secular fundamentalism is lower than islam.
So, if I understand your follow-up, you’re saying you’ll stand with these people when Hell freezes over? That is a point I WOULDN’T miss.
On another note, your comment reminds me of Abraham Lincoln’s letter to Horace Greeley (sp?) We have heard arguments, subsequent to its disclosure, which put into question Lincoln’s commitment on the slavery issue. A close reading reveals that Lincoln not only understands that slavery is, in his mind, evil, but that it is so metaphysically evil that the Union could not survive it.
No one has ever compared ME to Lincoln so I hope I made your day.
Yes wife beating is abhorant…but let us remember that the women being beaten are Muslim women who celebrate when their sons and daughters go into piazza joints and Passover Sedars and blow themselves up killing hundreds of Jews. Hard to feel sorry for them.
Am I to understand that in the entire wretched mess of text that is the Koran, there is only one Surah which proves that Islam is incompatible with civilization?
ref. David’s reply to num. 55……….
[i]As you know, I share that view, but the point of this particular discussion is how American law should respond to Islam. There is no Constitutional basis to deny freedom to one religion as opposed to another because it is Gnostic, for example. Not a simple matter; as David Yerushalmi indicates, there are successful as well as failed efforts to address this.[/i]
Islam is a religion of hate, Muslem men throw acid in the faces of their wifes in addition to beating and humiliating them in a thousand other evil ways.Little girls as young as ten are foreced to marry old dirty bearded sick men , who rape them!!
They say they are a religion of peace and if you disagree they will kill you!!!!.
These mindless idiots will cause the next world war
Allah is not God Allah is the Devil, Jesus said the Devil is a liar and was a liar from the beginning. God would never lie as Allah does in the Satanic verses of the Koran. Just try and read the evil rubbish in this fabricated book
This whole discussion seems to me to equate to how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
This is the United States of America. Those who wish to live in this country must abide by its laws. If Muslims will not abide by the laws then they must leave.
This should be made abundantly clear when Muslims are immigrating to this country. And it shouldn’t be the wishy-washy statement that our country seems to abound in these days. Examples would be given, including no beating of your wives and no burkas. Any infringement of these laws and your butt is grass and the USA is the lawnmower. If they persist in this behavior then cancel their citizenship and force them to leave. A few made examples of would either end in no Muslim immigrants or they would acquiesce.
I suppose this is very hard-hearted, but I don’t care if they never come here. Why should this be the cause of angst among Americans? Either assimilate or stay home.
My Weirder School #3: Mrs. Lilly Is Silly!
By Dan Gutman
This is a textbook for first graders in the American public schools!!! It starts off with a joke about a man having two wives and proceeds to a chapter that includes a headline “Mr. Docker beats his wife”. Nobody seems to be alarmed that this textbook exists. Mr. Docker beat his wife in a race, not with his fist, but my first grader did not understand the adult humor so she thinks that Mr. Docker beat his wife in a race and with his fist. The more I tried to explain the joke to her the more saddened she became about the beaten wife.
What a bunch of crap! Left, right, liberal, conservative, Christian, Jew and Muslim. All pointing fingers. I guess since Muslim textbooks promote suicide bombings then jokes about wife beatings will pale by comparison.
So there! Muslims are so bad that our bad can be overlooked.
I get your point about Sura 4:34 and asking for Muslim repudiation, uncreated word of God and all that, but I honestly think you’re putting too fine a point on this.
I don’t agree with moves of states like Oklahoma and Kansas to pass specific legislation in repudiation of Sharia. If the legal system in the United States isn’t already strong enough to forcefully deny every single domestic dimension of Sharia (and I have my doubts), then we’re screwed.
“Sharia, of course, does not grant all the rights that the U.S. Constitution does…”
~Matthew Schmitz
This U.S. Constitution may enshrine or guarantee rights, but it doesn’t grant them.
“A husband is not to “spank” his wife if his motivation in doing so is other that such reconciliation. “Spanking” out of anger, for punishment, or for retaliation is prohibited, running contrary to the reconciliatory rationale. Similarly, a husband cannot “spank” his wife to humiliate her, cause in her fear, or to compel her against her will. Islam permits “spanking” to remind the wife of her disobedience and to bring her back to obedience so as to facilitate marital reconciliation.”
~Abed and Ahmad
Good luck with all those fine lines when the husband becomes enraged and subsequently tries to justify slaughtering his wife in Islamic law.
“If the legal system in the United States isn’t already strong enough to forcefully deny every single domestic dimension of Sharia (and I have my doubts), then we’re screwed.”
I think that’s what half this board is saying. Check out #37. I’m almost to the point of thinking that legislators want the citizenry to do their work for them. Cowards, they remind me of the Saudis, who are just quietly salivating at the prospect of a bombed out Iran, courtesy of the great and little satans.
D’accord
– telling me Romney is leading the GOP War on Women. Trouble is, these neighbors wear Hajibs.
Mr. Goldman, you put the argument in a way I hadn’t thought of before. Because Muslim marriage includes, among other things, the right of the husband to beat his wife (“spanking” is a deliberately understated translation), and since American women have the right under our legal system NOT to be beaten, a Muslim marriage cannot really involve informed consent on the part of the bride. She is, instead, pressured by the culture to waive her fundamental personal right to safety.
On another note, I once had a conversation with a young, Westernized man in Cairo. I told him that Muslims are free to practice their religion in my country. He said, “But your law forbids polygamy, so you don’t really accept the religion, do you?” I had to answer, “No, Mohamed, I guess we don’t.” For Mohamed and most other Muslims, the family law is not severable from the other requirements of Islam. It’s a total package, take it or leave it in its entirety. There are a few Muslims in the U.S. who are genuinely attempting to reconcile Islamic belief and American life, but their numbers are very small. For most, as Mr. Goldman says, they are unable to drop even one line of their “eternal uncreated” book.
Truthfully, I think this ends in the U.S. when we acknowledge that islam is no religion as the west has ever or could ever understand it. It falls outside our Constitution because its self-described totality places it at odds with our country as a whole.
And, for anyone still willing to nibble at the edges, consider that ALL WESTERN CHRISTIAN NATIONS put up with this while Christianity, Judeism, and GOD knows what other belief systems are officially repudiated in islamic nations with extreme prejudice. Eventually right will make might.
Islam is a “pig’s ear” of a religion. Over time, the descendents of the first people to be fooled by Mohammed, many of them smarter and more decent than he ever was, have tried to to make a “silk purse” out of it. Hence the reams and reams of Islamic jurisprudence and whole libraries of apologetics trying to make it seem like something decent folk could well believe.
You are absolutely correct though. Try as these folks might, the discipline passage is a great rock that future generations of Muslims, hopefully more and more modern minded, will find themselves dashed against. This passage takes a lot of ‘splainin. Maybe someday, Muslims will get a clue and wonder why.
Mr Goldman,
I apologise for getting off topic.
It seems to me that this is quite simple; as a society we come together through our political institutions and collectively institute laws that we are obliged to obey regardless of whether we agree with them or not. I, for instance, believe that income tax rates are far too high, but the IRS doesn’t care and I make sure that my tax accounting is entirely legal. Where complications occur is in situations where individuals believe that God has given them a right or duty to act outside of the law and further that their duty to God overrides their duty to the society they live in. Islamic societies overcome this little problem by killing or banning any belief system that challenges islam, note the acute shortage of churches in Saudi Arabia. I believe that in the US we cannot and should not tolerate any religion based law breaking and that adherence to our secular law is a an indispensable condition of residence in this wonderful Country. Your example of Mormon polygamy is a good one, Mormons generally obey the bigamy laws. It is apparent that in spineless multicultural societies like Britain, despite polygamy being illegal muslim polygamists actually claim and receive benefits for multiple wives and the children thereof. In no way should the US follow this example, in a sense our ultimate temple is the House of Representatives, where our supposedly citizen legislators decide the Nations course for the common good.
I would bet everything I own that if the muslim rule is removed, which allows the death penality for leaving islam, islam would die in a year.
aren’t the beatings only part of the problem. what about the weight of testimony of an infidel ..or a woman. worthless or half that of a muslim.
there is just too much in sharia to try to make it workable, just like the whole of islam.
the muslims and the one world elitist clowns trying to drag us into the past (well the nasty parts of the past).
…besides even if they say they remove the verse ..you know they wont.
If individuals want to settle civil cases under their own set of rules, why should anyone try to stop them?
I suppose that is waht the pro-slavery movement told. Shariah contains provisions like murdering those who want to leave Islam (ansd BTW if you allow Shariasnh people born Muslim who don’ta want to abide by the Sharaih will be deemed to want to leave Isalm), women’s inherituing only half what men inherit or in case a muslim^has both christian and muslimp children the former will get nothing.
You beleive Islm is just anothrr religion like any other. It ios not. It ios the only religioon who is atr war with the whole world, who sets as its goal tyhe conquest opf the world and the ransoming of indidels. It is the only religion who allos no space neither for a private spghere nor for a state whose goals are distinct from its. Thetre is no “Give to Cesar what is of Ceasr”. But if evrything, ven how to poo is regulated (and yes, that is regulated in Islam) what place relmians for freedom?
> “notoriously defended wife-beating in a 2003 televised debate with then-French interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy”
Unless I’m mistaken, it was not the beating of one’s wives that Mr. Ramadan defended, but the execution of fornicatrices by stoning.
Without casting aspersions on Mr. Ramadan, to be fair one cannot ignore that he also called for a brief moratorium on the practice—though only after President Sarkozy had, quite unfairly, appealed to logic and common sense.
Mr. Ramadan’s meaning remains somewhat unclear. Some suggest that the call for a moratorium was a rare moment of weakness. Other argue that the temporary respite for loose women would not be entirely sinful, as it would permit jurists to codify the law of stoning, in those few, very minor matters for which consensus is lacks.
To illustrate, there is a long-standing and bitter debate as to the size of stones that Allah most enjoys. Being possessed of the attribute of justice, he sometimes gets mad when one uses stones that are too large, as the fornicatrix dies too quickly, which offends common sense and good morals. At the same time, in that he also has the attribute of mercy, he sometimes gets mad when one uses stones that are too small, as excessive prolongation of torture, however justly imposed, is a lot of work—or as the jurists would say, if one oughtn’t torture dogs before torturing them to death, a fortiori, those members of the species so unfortunate as to have been born without penises.
And of course, there are still other questions of moment, many occasioned by the challenge of modernity, as for instance:
* whether it’s permitted to use synthetic stones; or again,
* whether the size of the mandated stones varies with the number of gravities (e.g., how is one to stone women on the international space station); or again,
* in emirates where stoning is a seasonal pastime, who must throw out the first pitch.
While Mr. Ramadan’s call for a moratorium is widely regarded as a threat to Islam’s very existence, it may be that his critics misunderstand the subtlety of his position. In particular, he has never wavered in his commitment to the stoning of fornicators. He’s a progressive, after all, not a liberal. Or as he likes to say, in all things, one must avoid extremism and follow the path of wasatiya or moderation. And clearly, reexamining the stoning of both genders would be no less extreme than using stones too big or too small.
To my mind, Mr. Ramadan is perhaps right to call for a moratorium. Allah’s mad enough as it is, no sense making him madder.
Many thanks to Mr. Goldman, for his efforts to help non-Muslims appreciate the only medieval legal regime to survive in the modern world; and to recognize that even as one man’s terrorists are another’s fedayeen, so too, no legal system is better than any other; and to understand that those who claim otherwise are either suffering form a mental illness akin to the irrational fear of death by dismemberment, or, as is more likely, are under the control of a cabal of sinister Elders—all important matters to ponder as we begin the second decade of the long war.
JCL
JCL,
I checked, and you are correct: it was on the issue of stoning women, not beating them, that Ramadan called for a moratorium in his debate with Sarkozy; according to other sources he refuses to condemn wife-beating, e.g.,
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=5452
but I have do not (yet) have fully-attributed quotes. On some occasions he has said that wife-beating is permitted but “goes against Islamic tradition,” whatever that might mean.
I’ve not seen the entire debate, nor even a transcript. The portion on stoning did make its way to youtube, though (“Tariq Ramadan vs Nicolas Sarkozy ! Part 2″). [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuHFg5xiXYs ] The first part of the same is also found, in English, in Paul Berman’s “Who’s Afraid of Tariq Ramadan?” (New Republic, May 13, 2007), near the end.
It may well be that Sarkozy and Ramadan discussed both beating and stoning. Ramadan does treat both in his written works. And in either case, the main thesis of the present article stands. Sadly, while Ramadan claims to object to such practices, he is unable to declare them abominable — and this, so as not to offend his fellow Muslims, as he claims.
To my mind, Ramadan believes that he has but two options: either Muslims will regard him as an apostate, or non-Muslims will regard him as a coward. He much prefers to be thought a coward. I’m happy to oblige.
Ramadan is trying to fix up an old, beat-up and busted-down Vega, so he empties the ashtrays and hangs a pine-scented airfreshener from the mirror. Well, that’s a start, but….
I don’t envy Ramadan the position he’s defending. Were a Jew or a Christian to believe that the code of Justinian descended from heaven in final form, they’d have the same problem. They’d also believe that the testimony of slaves cannot be accepted unless extracted under torture. Fortunately, both Jews and Christians regard such laws as having been made not by God, but by some men for other men — or later, by the people for the people — and thus changeable.
Redde Caesari quae sunt Caesaris….
Dina d’malchuta dina….
While Muslim apologists point to Canon law as the counterpart of shari’ah, the example convinces only those who know nothing about either. The point’s pretty basic: Canon law is about running churches, not empires. I’m told the situation is similiar in Rabbinic law.
In their formative periods, Rabbinic Jews and Christians were religious minorities in the Roman and Persian empires. They thus tended not to confuse religion and empire. Islamic law was born of an empire. The same divine books that tell Muslims how to pray and fast also tell them how to adjudicate torts, form business partnerships, and execute criminals — and how to discipline one’s children and wives.
If reform of Islamic law is to happen, it’s not happening at the hands of Ramadan. He’s not just a coward. He’s also a capo in a shawdowy mafia, one that has Saudi clerics for consiglieres and a boss whom no man has ever seen.
JCL
In any case, if wife-beating is not a reason for opposing Islam, then this is:
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/06/18/salafis-warn-muslims-dont-eat-tomatoes-because-theyre-christian/
pass the whole wheat bread, Miracle Whip, tomatoes, and lunch meat, please!
I’ll pass on the lunch meat in favor of the kosher corned beef, thanks.
Spengler:
I know you dismiss this whenever I bring it up, but given the recent genocidal rhetoric coming from some MB leaders on Israel, combined with the desperation that is about to overtake Egypt; I have every reason to think that these Islamonazis will direct that anger against us Jews, and since Egypt cannot militarily defeat Israel, try to overrun it with millions of crazed, fanatic, desperately poor, hate-filled, genocidal Egyptian civilians walking on the Israeli border – either forcing Israel to gun them down by the tens of thousands at the border or nuking them in the desert – and unleashing worldwide massacres of Jews and a complete cut off of Israel from all economic and military assistance as a prelude to an Arab invasion and Holocaust – and since Islam has no regard for life, they will not care if 200, 300 or even 500 million Muslims die in all this.
How did my last post end up here? I meant to put it on your most recent post on Egypt.