CNN turns to hard-Left hate group Southern Poverty Law Center to define Sharia
August 17, 20162:34 pm By Robert Spencer 6 Comments
Why the hard-Left hate group Southern Poverty Law Center, which is not an Islamic group (although it certainly enables the jihad by smearing and defaming foes of jihad terror) rather than, say, a book of Islamic law? Could it be because the most comprehensive manual of Islamic law in English, Reliance of the Traveller, which has been certified by al-Azhar as conforming to “the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community,” lays out in precise detail the jihad imperative to wage war against and subjugate Infidels, and all the elements of Sharia — stonings, amputations, the death penalty for apostasy, the laws of dhimmitude, the devaluation of non-Muslims’ lives, and more — that CNN would prefer you did not know?
The article, as you would expect, is full of evasions, distortions, and half-truths. Much more below.
“What is Sharia law?,” by Gul Tuysuz, CNN, August 16, 2016:
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says he wants to test Muslims coming into America to make sure they don’t want Sharia law to supersede the US constitution. Meanwhile some states have passed, or are trying to pass, laws to curb the possibility of Sharia law making its way onto the books in the US.
With the rise in recent years of both radical Islamic terrorism and anti-Muslim bigotry, Sharia — or Islamic religious law — has become a hot topic of debate.
Some of its harsher versions can demand women clad in all black, adulterers being stoned and thieves getting their hands cut off. But Sharia governs many other areas of Muslim life, such as prayer. And many Muslims, turning to Sharia for moral guidance, have more moderate and varied interpretations….
In reality, all the principal Sunni madhahib (schools of jurisprudence), the Shafi’i, Maliki, Hanafi and Hanbali, agree on 75% of all their rulings, and all of them contain the mandate to cover women except for their face and hands, stone adulterers, and amputate thieves’ hands. Not all Muslim countries do this because they don’t all enforce Sharia, but wherever Sharia is enforced, we see these aspects of it. There is no Sharia state in the world today that doesn’t do stonings and amputations and mandate that women be veiled. While some individual Muslims may tell CNN that they have more moderate and varied interpretations, wherever we see Sharia enforced, whether it be in Sudan or Saudi Arabia or Iran or Pakistan or Afghanistan, it is pretty much the same. And there is a reason for that: Sharia doesn’t really have much in the way of moderate and varied interpretations.
“Sharia represents how practicing Muslims can best lead their daily lives in accordance with God’s divine guidance,” according to Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
What’s in Sharia?
Sharia is based on Islam’s holy book, the Quran, and the life of prophet Mohammed. The majority of it concerns the faith of the individual and how to practice Islam, along with guidance on when to pray and how to fast during Ramadan.
Shariah law, according to Muslims, includes “the principle of treating other people justly, of making sure that the financial system treats people fairly … and most importantly the basic principles of Islamic fate,” says Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman.
Feldman is a world-renowned Sharia “expert” who never gets around to explaining how Sharia institutionalizes discrimination against non-Muslims.
It encompasses things like marriage, divorce, inheritance and punishments for criminal offenses.
Is it one law, or many?
While the Quran and the life of the prophet make up Sharia, its interpretation is called ‘fikh’ and is done through Muslim scholarship. Most practicing Muslims take their cues about their faith from Sharia, but it is not practiced uniformly.
Of course. No law is ever obeyed uniformly. But that doesn’t change the character of the law itself.
Its implementation varies greatly across the Muslim world. A Pew religious landscape survey found that 57% of American Muslims say there is more than one way to interpret Islam’s teachings.
Terror groups such as ISIS are trying to implement a brutal version of Sharia law, but millions of Muslims are guided by a much more moderate interpretation.
In reality, ISIS is implementing classic and mainstream Sharia provisions. Saudi Arabia is also, which is why it does the same things ISIS does, as has often been remarked. Those Muslim countries that don’t do these things don’t have a “more moderate interpretation” of Sharia. They just don’t fully implement its provisions.
Where is it practiced?
Sharia has been applied in varying degrees and with great diversity in practice — both by individual Muslims and predominantly Muslim countries. While both Saudi Arabia and Iran claim to be ruled by Sharia, they differ greatly in how they implement its laws….
Not really. They both do stonings and amputations. They both oppress women, along with those who are not in the dominant Muslim group.
Most Muslims enjoy the religious freedom they need to practice their faith, which is guaranteed by the US constitution.
“It doesn’t consume my life that I want to make it the governing law of the country I live in. I am very content to live in the US under the constitution,” says retired Lt. Col. Shareda Hosein in an interview with CNN. “And for me the constitution affords me my freedom of religion, which is the most important thing for me and other Muslims.”
It would have been interesting if CNN had asked Lt. Col. Shareda Hosein if Sharia affords non-Muslims full freedom of religion, or only freedom of religion insofar as they accept subjugated dhimmi status. But CNN never gets that interesting.
Arrows indicate Jihad Qaddour and Mohamad Albadawi pictured; posted by MAS KC
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