Tariq Ramadan’s Call: Pros and Cons

Sheikh Al-Shinqiti

The following are some notes that I would like to introduce with regard to the call Ramadan issued on March 18, 2005, in which he called to freeze executing the Islamic hudud (prescribed Islamic penalties), including the legal penalty for murder and other corporal penalties.

Before talking about the points of disagreement, I would like first to point to some ideas concerning which I agree with brother Dr. Tariq Ramadan:

• He is right to criticize the behavior of some jurists and Muslim intellectuals of today, which is so dominated by fear and demagoguism that they tend to avoid discussing some sensitive subjects raised by people about Islam every day, or to give fabricated passive answers that neither assert a truth nor nullify a falsity. Some of them may also object vehemently to any opinion not consistent with what is familiar, even if this opinion is based upon something substantial in Shari`ah. An example for this is in the story of Sheikh Muhammad Abu Zahrah, who concealed his opinion that stoning is not an Islamic legislation for 20 years and did not declare it except shortly before his death. Sheikh Al-Qaradawi, one of the witnesses of that incident, said in his autobiography that when Sheikh Abu Zahrah revealed this opinion of his in the Islamic Legislation Symposium in 1972, “members of the gathering were agitated, most of the attendees were furious at him, and some of them stood and left. … It seems that this strong campaign Sheikh Abu Zahrah faced made him refrain from declaring his opinion, so he never recorded it written after that.” Sheikh Al-Qaradaqwi comments on this incident significantly saying, “I have thought deeply about Sheikh Abu Zahrah’s saying that ‘he concealed that opinion for 20 years’ and wondered why he concealed it and never declared it in any lecture, book, or article. The answer is that he feared that common people would rise against him and criticize him severely as happened with him in that symposium.”
  
  “I said to myself,” Al-Qaradawi continued, “How many are the good and courageous opinions whose owners conceal until they are buried with them without being known to anybody or reported from them to anyone.” We think that the time has come for the Muslim mind to be free from demagoguism and to allow the freedom of speech without restriction.

• Ramadan was right as regards his insistence on ensuring justice, freedom, and honor for Muslims before anything else. Those who want to execute the hudud without establishing the political and social system are like one who draws the borders of a country that does not exist. The concept of implementation of Islamic rules has been distorted in the minds of many Muslims and has turned to a mere penal concept. According to this new concept, the Shari`ah has become just a collection of penalties and restrictions; this concept has replaced the true concept: a positive way of living which achieves goodness, justice, and freedom, and is protected by deterrent legal penalties. This, in fact, is a result of the deterioration of our civilization which we are suffering these days. In other words, in the atmosphere of deterioration, caution and wariness prevail at the expense of initiative and positivism.

• Ramadan was also right when he criticized the political exploitation of the Shari`ah by some autocratic rulers who have made the Shari`ah under the control of their authority, in contrast with the natural and supposed situation. Those tyrants are for the Shari`ah so long as they can employ it to serve their desires and injustice, and, at the same time, they are against it as regards its call for justice, freedom, and respecting people’s honor. Among the late examples of this hypocritical attitude is the saying of a judge who was conducting the trial of political opponents in Mauritania and said justifying the torture they suffered, “I do not care for the New York convention against torture, as torture is permissible according to the Maliki School!” Another example is the prisons which are full of innocent prisoners in Saudi Arabia and other countries, who are described as Kharijites, wrongdoers, and suchlike attributes that are dishonestly derived from the Islamic terminology. Thus, if Ramadan’s call were for preventing torture and arbitrary arrest in the Islamic world, it would have been better and more profitable.

• I agree with Ramadan as saying that the attitude of permanent contradiction with the West is a passive one, for not all what the West calls for in our countries is an absolute evil. We think that the most proper attitude is to deal positively with the Western call for reform and freedom in Islamic countries, in spite of the hypocrisy and eclecticism involved in this call. Politically speaking, the most important thing in this respect is the results, not the intentions. Therefore, if the Western leaders call for freedom and democracy in order to absorb the anger prevailing against their policies in the Muslim world, or even for mere pretense before their nations and the world, we have no right to reject this call on the plea that it emanates from selfish motives. Though this is true, the fruit is much greater than any circumstantial motive. To clarify, if some of the Western people criticize some of the rulings of Islamic jurisprudence, then this should urge us to verify these rulings and to scrutinize their origin, and, further, to examine the strength and legality of our religious and cultural defense system. As for making a mere emotional reply to the Western criticism, it is of no avail.

The above are some important ideas which have been evoked by Ramadan’s call, and they are worthy of consideration. Still, there are some points of disagreement with Ramadan’s call that should be clarified:

First, I think that Ramadan should have differentiated between the penalty of stoning and other prescribed Islamic penalties. This is because stoning was not a matter of consensus in the past but rather was rejected by the Mutazilites and the Kharijites. According to Al-Bukhari, some of the Prophet’s Companions doubted whether the penalty of stoning used to be executed before the Qur’anic verse on lashing was revealed and, as such, it is abrogated by the verse, or it continued to be executed by the Prophet after the revelation of that verse. Some modern scholars have further raised some problematic and serious jurisprudential points with regard to stoning, including Sheikh Abu Zahrah, who considers it as not original in Islam; and Sheikh Al-Qaradawi, who opens the door for the judge to stop executing it. Moreover, most of the Prophetic hadiths on the penalty of stoning are not free from blemish either in the chain of transmission or in the text of the hadith, or even both of them. Some of these hadiths include things which are rejected in Islam such as the hadith of the sheep, which may implicitly denote that the Qur’an is liable to distortion, and the hadith reported by Al-Bukhari that `Umar stoned an insane woman. Such problematic points are sufficient to stop executing the legal penalty of stoning as an implementation for the Islamic legal rule: Legal penalties should not be executed in case of doubt. This also would be a means of protecting a Muslim’s life against being shed without decisive proof.

Second, I wish that Ramadan had differentiated between the sentence of death which is executed upon a murderer and that which is executed upon an apostate. Many prominent scholars have raised serious questions regarding the latter and differentiated between apostasy as an intellectual attitude and as a political treason committed against the legal elected authority. Had Ramadan based his opinion on this differentiation, and made use of the interpretations maintained by many scholars who argue against execution as a penalty for apostasy, he would have found a tangible ground for suspending this penalty without undermining the whole Islamic penal system. However, Ramadan based his opinion on generalization, so the logical and practical result of this is the incapacitation of conclusively proven texts in Allah’s Book and his Messenger’s Sunnah, namely the texts concerning the prescribed penalties for murder, theft, fornication, slander, and drinking intoxicants. Is that what Ramadan wants? I wish that he does not, because any Muslim who is serious about having the Qur’an and Sunnah as criteria will not bear this intention.

At any rate, I do not expect any Muslim judge who fears his Lord to shed the blood of a Muslim through the prescribed penalty of killing the apostate or stoning the fornicator while he knows that there are many different opinions concerning it, enough to stop its execution, regardless whether he agrees or disagrees with them. I wished that Ramadan had highlighted this specific point.

Third, I am afraid that Ramadan may have got too much involved in theorizing in his call and has gone too far from reality, for the legal prescribed penalties are inoperative in almost all the Islamic countries, while he calls for their freeze; and the legal texts connected to them are not implemented, while he calls for their reinterpretation. Moreover, discussing this subject in this way makes the foreign reader think that the Islamic nations today are like slaughterhouses full of cut hands and heads, while the fact is that nearly nobody hears about the execution of those penalties at all. Thus, Ramadan has aroused others against Islam, while he only is intending to assure them, and has presented a distorted unreal picture of the situation in the Muslim world, while he is the careful one about accuracy and conveying reality. Furthermore, he unfortunately has presented the prescribed penalties as arbitrary laws, not as a part of a general system of justice. He further has not disclosed his view about applying them in natural circumstances; that is, if we presume what he has implied at first, namely that the whole Muslim world is living in exceptional circumstances, which opinion is questionable anyway. If the pretext for freezing the prescribed penalties is the prevailing political condition, is that a standard in which the Tunisian dictatorship is equated to the Malaysian democracy? And if the pretext is economic misery, is that equally applicable in the United Arab Emirates and the Republic of Mali?

Ramadan should have instead acknowledged that the prescribed penalties are a part of the sought system of justice, not an opposite to it. He should also have not generalized in his talk about the political and economic state of the Muslim world, for there is a great variation in it.

Western values have clearly influenced the Muslim mind deeply. Such influence is not restricted to secularists only, but it has extended to the Islamists, especially those living in the West such as Ramadan and myself; and thus, the adaptation with other cultures has turned into a religious and ethical point of view. However, it will be useful for all of us to understand the Western ethical system and its development throughout history; no doubt, this is deeply understood by Ramadan. The Western ethical conscience now sympathizes with the criminal more than with the victim, and with the individual more than with the society. This, in fact, is due to many religious and historical reasons, among which is the Christian psychology that is saturated with the concepts of salvation, crucifixion, and redemption. But this ethical attitude in the West has opened the door to liberalism that is not restricted by any ethical restraint, and has finally led to the human and social catastrophes such as AIDS, which kills tens of millions today, and perversion, which demolishes the structure of human society. The reason for all this is the lack of moral restraint through the laws of society in the individual’s life, and the regarding of morals as something personal that is of no concern to the law. Although the West possesses admirable political values, it also possesses many moral and social vices that really need caution and reservation.

Finally, I would like to remind our revered professor Ramadan of Almighty Allah’s saying after mentioning the prescribed penalty for fornicators: (And let not pity for the twain withhold you from obedience to Allah, if ye believe in Allah and the Last Day. And let a party of believers witness their punishment) (An-Nur 24:2).

Sheikh Muhammad ibn Al-Mukhtar Al-Shinqiti is the Director of the Islamic Center of South Plains, Lubbock, Texas