What are the basic principles of Sharia?

These are to see the will of God done on earth as it is in Heaven. How can we possibly know this will? By study of the revealed scriptures and by choosing talented, intelligent and far-sighted merciful people of excellent character as our judges. The whole principle of God's will is to bring about compassion, kindness, generosity, justice, fair play, tolerance, and care in general, as opposed to tyranny, cruelty, selfishness, exploitation etc. All the rules of Sharia are towards those ends.

The usual criticisms of Sharia - that it is so cruel as regards execution, flogging and cutting off hands, totally ignore all the extenuating circumstances that would lead to these penalties not being applied - they are known as hadd penalties (pl. hudud), the hadd being the extreme limit of the penalty. Thus, if a person was sentenced to having a hand cut off, he or she should not be sent to prison and/or be fined as well. People who regard these practices as cruel will never be persuaded otherwise, so Muslims usually leave that aside. Their point is that the cutting of the hand for theft is a very powerful deterrent - Muslims care less for the callous and continual thief than they do for the poor souls who are mugged and robbed and hurt by the thieves. The Middle East is certainly not full of one-handed people - as any traveller would tell you. In Sharia law, if a thief could prove that he/she only stole because of need, then the Muslim society would be held at fault and made to supply that need, and there would be no hand-cutting. Most thieves would think twice before risking a hand on mugging an old lady for her handbag!

Murder

Sharia law for murder allows the death penalty, but after judicial judgement has been made, appeals are allowed to the family of the murdered victims, and they are begged to be merciful. In Islam, it is always regarded as the height of mercy to forgive a murderer.

The form of execution is not specified in Islam - i.e. it is not usually a stoning. Beheading used to be regarded as the quickest and most merciful way; these days other methods may find approval. There are apparently far less executions in most Muslim countries than in the USA, for example.

Zinah (sexual offences)

There is some confusion over the meaning of the word zinah - this means a sexual offence, ANY sexual offence, and includes not only adultery but also sex before marriage and rape.

Dress

Sharia does not require women to wear a burqa. There are all sorts of items of dress which are worn by Muslim women, and these vary all over the world. The rule of dress for women is modesty, the word hijab implies 'covered'. Some Muslim women feel that they should cover everything from neck to ankle, and neck to wrist. Others also include a head veil, and finally some choose to cover even their faces, although there is no Islamic text requiring this extreme.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16