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Who Are The Barbarians?
By Haroon Cambel
Paying prostitutes to give up their lifestyle and get married? Forbidding alcohol and drugs publicly and privately? Protecting women from spousal abuse? Are these bad ideas? Believe it or not, the recent implementation of Shari'a law in Nigeria - to do just these things - is causing quite a stir there. Muslims worldwide watch curiously to see what this code of Islamic law will develop into. At the same time, Christians in Nigeria are cautious, and some are violent, concerned that Shari'a will affect them in a negative way. However, government officials reassure the Christians of the northern state of Zamfara that Shari'a is only to be applied to the majority of Muslims that are its inhabitants. Personally, I am excited about this move for many reasons. We get the opportunity to see the code of Islam in its practical form, not simply in the theoretical form that so many places claim to have. So far, we have seen three rulings made in the state. In the first ruling, there was a punishment for a man who was found guilty of being under the influence of alcohol in public. His punishment: 100 public lashes. The second ruling came in the case of a woman whose husband had knocked her teeth out in a domestic dispute. The judge ruled in favor of the woman. The man's punishment: Either pay his wife 157,933.70 naira ($1,500) or have the same teeth that he knocked out of his wife be pulled out of his mouth. Here's the kicker: The judge also said that the wife could forgive him and all punishments could be revoked. To me, that gives us a good example of how to look at Islam and how just and merciful the laws of Allah really are. Think about it, a guy knocks his wife's teeth out during an argument. She takes him to court and gets the ruling in her favor. The husband is given the choice of paying her money, getting his teeth pulled or hope that she will be more merciful with him than he was with her. Amazing! In the third case, two teenagers were found guilty of fornication. The unmarried couple was sentenced to 100 lashes publicly. The boy already received the punishment while the girl looked on. She will receive the punishment after she recovers from an undisclosed illness. I was thinking about the second example (teeth-knocker) a few days ago. Imagine something like that ever being applied in an American court. It seems practically impossible, because the laws are so different. More importantly, how many times would the plaintiff forgive the defendant after the ruling is issued in the plaintiff's favor? In many cases, Americans go to court to take advantage of the system and rip somebody off. The American court system exudes more vengeance than it does mercy. Think about all the American court cases where a wife was beaten and she sued and tried to empty the husband's bank account out of spite. Sure, he was clearly wrong for what he did. However, I can't see a judge in America asking the wife if she wanted to forgive her husband for what he did after she went through all the trouble of hiring a lawyer, going to court and putting up with all the bureaucracy that comes attached to the American court system. The reason for that is because the laws of God do not guide the system in America. In the request by the government of Zamfara state to prostitutes to mend their deviant ways, we have another example of the mercy and justice of the laws of God. Women participating in a dishonorable act are being handed a way out. Most probably these women were poor or were forced into their profession. But now a real solution is being given. By contrast, several months ago, Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura came up with a different solution to end prostitution: make it legal. Compare the two solutions. On one hand, you have the Zamfara ruling (give up prostitution and the state will not only pay you, but it will help you find a suitable husband to take care of you). On the other hand you have Ventura's idea (legalization). One offers a way out; the other makes it a permanent institution. One gives women their dignity back while the other makes prostitution their official career. When looking at the case of the man who was found guilty of being under the influence of alcohol, the ruling posed by the Shari'a judge might frighten many people. However, we must all consider the amount of wrongs that are done to individuals and society at large because of people who were either drunk or high. Besides killing themselves via drug abuse and alcoholism, other, innocent people are killed in car accidents caused by people that are drunk. Drunken fathers beat their wives and children. What do we use to fight all this? Advocacy groups like MADD? Campaigns like "America's war on drugs"? None of these poses a viable way to end the problem here. Imagine if the government used the same fervor to stop drug traffickers that it has used against Saddam Hussain and Osama Bin Laden. The American military bombed Sudan and Afghanistan because they were so determined to get Bin Laden. But drugs and alcohol take the lives of millions every year. Doesn't that warrant enough concern to be more serious about putting a stop to it? Killing an estimated 500,000 innocent men, women and children was proclaimed necessary by Secretary of State Madeline Albright when asked about bombing Iraq. Well, what about using the same mentality on the drug runners who are supplying America's people with their poison? To some westerners, Islamic Shari'a laws may seen too harsh or even draconian, but what has to be kept in mind is that these laws are set up as an institution to establish the best possible way of living within a society as a whole. They are not some haphazard laws imposed by a despotic dictator. In some cases, crimes against the self or others need to have harsh punishments in order to make people who otherwise would not care fear the consequences. In American culture, fornication, adultery, drugs and violence have been rampant for a long time. As the years pass, each generation seems to push these vices to new limits. It is high time that people reevaluate their approach to life. It is about time for people who live in a society where sexually transmitted diseases, alcoholism, drug overdoses and extreme levels of violence to admit that their systems do not work.
Some may view the rulings handed down recently in Zamfara state as despotic, an attack on people's civil liberties. However, we in the west should look in the mirror and check ourselves first. We may find that we are the ones who are the barbarians
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