Brunei, Sharia Law and Our Right to Talk about It
http://chersonandmolschky.com/2014/05/02/brunei-sharia-law-talk/
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Phase one of the Syariah Penal Code Order in Brunei became effective May 1, 2014. This may seem shocking, but as a Muslim-majority nation, Brunei is simply emulating Saudi Arabia, the original Islamic country which practices Sharia law exactly as it is meant to be.
The roll-out of the full Sharia punishment system will come in three phases. The first phase includes the punishments for such things as disrespecting Ramadan and not performing Friday prayers, and the offenders of these types of general crimes will receive fines or imprisonment or both.
The second phase will involve the corporal punishments of whipping and amputation for theft and other offenses, and the third and final phase will bring out the death penalty.
Prince Haji Al-Muhtadee Billah, the Crown Prince and Senior Minister at the Prime Minister’s Office spoke to a group of young people at a seminar designed to explain the new penal code for Brunei’s youth. He told them not to worry, that the system is just.
Really? This video highlights some of the “just” aspects of Sharia law:
Now let’s compare the death penalty under Sharia law to the death penalty in the United States.
There has been a lot of talk here lately about the death penalty and the recent lack of drugs for lethal injection causing states to find new drug concoctions in order to perform executions. As a result, Oklahoma death row inmate Clayton Lockett experienced a botched execution on April 29 in which he was reportedly writhing and clenching his teeth before eventually dying of a heart attack. This execution “troubled” President Obama. The state, however, ruled that he did not suffer.
Lockett was a four-time felon who was convicted for shooting a 19 year-old girl before watching two accomplices bury her alive. Still, everyone is concerned with his “cruel and unusual punishment.” Hmm… wonder how they would feel if he were beheaded or stoned to death.
Another execution occurred in Ohio, when Dennis McGuire took 25 minutes to die back in January. In 1989, he had raped and murdered a pregnant newlywed before trying to get his brother-in-law to take the fall for it. Still, everyone was up in arms about the execution taking so long.
The issue has been that the European pharmaceutical manufacturers which had once sold the drugs to US prisons for lethal injection are no longer willing to do so based on their objection to the death penalty. Consequently, changes in the drug cocktails have led to longer executions, and both Ohio and Oklahoma will now increase the dosage to prevent future problems.
All this controversy over lethal injection and capital punishment brings me back to one thing: Sharia law. If lethal injection is “inhumane,” what about death by a firing squad, beheading, hanging or truly, the absolute worst- stoning? And where is the logic of the West’s insistence on “freedom of religion” for everyone no matter what and shutting down any criticism or mere discussion regarding Islam, while simultaneously fighting for human rights?
This desire for human rights is incongruent with the demand to accept Islam as an equal religion. On one hand, we have the ideal to be accepting of everyone and movements like the push to legalize gay marriage. Ironically, the very same people who promote gay marriage are angered over any criticism of Islam. Yet here we have Brunei, which is simply following Islamic law as any “good” Muslim country should.
So how will Brunei’s new penal system handle gay marriage? Forget marriage! The previous system viewed homosexuality as a crime, carrying a maximum 10-year prison term, but now the new Sharia law will sentence homosexuals to death by stoning. There has been outrage, but it is concentrated on Brunei. It should open up discussion on Islam in general because Sharia law is based, not on some special Bruneian culture, but on Islam.
What about women’s rights? Here again, our liberal Western society does not dare criticize Islam. Female genital mutilation, honor killings, forced marriages, child marriages, pedophilia, institutionalized domestic abuse, fatwas against women, the death penalty for rape victims… I could go on and on- the only time these issues are ever addressed by our society is in the context of “a culture,” but never attached to Islam. And where exactly do they think these cultures come from?
Discussing these things in association with Islam will bring on the Islamophobia label and accusation of hate speech. It doesn’t stop there however. Now there are new “hate speech” laws that are being presented in the US Congress:
“Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), a member of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, introduced legislation to examine the prevalence of hate crime and hate speech on the Internet, television, and radio to better address such crimes. The Hate Crime Reporting Act of 2014 (S.2219) would create an updated comprehensive report examining the role of the Internet and other telecommunications in encouraging hate crimes based on gender, race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation and create recommendations to address such crimes… Congressman Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) introduced a companion bill in the House of Representatives, H.R. 3878.” (Senator Markey’s website)
He goes on to cite the tragedy in the Kansas City Jewish community center murders in the hopes of deflecting attention from the true motivation, which is to close off any discussion on Islam or anything else the government finds objectionable. What happened in Kansas City was the result of a hateful madman, who had been a white supremacist long before getting involved in any Internet hate sites.
While Pam Geller and others address the “anti-blasphemy” aspects of the proposed legislation, and rightly so, on The Blaze, Mary Ramirez shows that this law silences us all, whether we’re talking about Islam or anything else that “offends” someone. In “The Word Police: What You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You,” she writes:
“…what happens when your political or religious views prevent you from speaking, for fear of retribution? What happens when having a different point of view suddenly becomes considered ‘hateful?’
“… the problem with this bill isn’t the concept of ending hate crimes; it is the broad brush with which it paints government authority over speech in this country.”
Ramirez goes on to address the issues of gay marriage, global warming, creationism… Virtually any religious view that goes against what the liberal government considers acceptable could be under attack. And as the government already has the authority to prosecute threats being made, what is the point of this new legislation?
“Would the government really use its power to weed out and silence the ‘wrong’ view?” Ramirez suggests.
If we no longer have a voice, it will be impossible to fight the Islamization which has already taken hold of Europe. A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have. As our rights slip away, it leaves the door open for something more sinister to take control, and we cannot allow that to happen.
Softening the approach to the discussion about Islam, whitewashing the horrors of the “religion,” taking the good, ignoring the bad and discounting what ex-Muslims and even Muslim clerics have to say, are all a limitation of free speech. How can we on one hand, condemn Brunei’s new penal code as a violation of human rights while on the other, allow Sharia courts into our own nations? And how can we criticize the practice of Sharia law without being allowed to criticize Islam itself?
Sharia law is not “radical” Islam; it is Islam in its purest form.
By: Rachel Molschky
Related Reading:
Brunei: Death Penalty for Infidels
The Support for Sharia Law Around the World
‘Islamophobic’ Muslims Leave Islam After Reading the Qur’an
America Is Going Muslim
The Treatment of Women in Islam