Category Archives: Islamic Law

Shariah at the Kumback Café

Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islamic Law, Islamophobia, Orientalism

By Roger Cohen, The New York Times, December 6, 2010

PERRY, OKLAHOMA — They call Oklahoma the buckle of the Bible Belt. It’s the state where all 77 counties voted Republican when Barack Obama was elected and where 70.8 percent of the electorate last month approved a “Save Our State Amendment” banning Islamic, or Shariah, law.

So I decided to check the pulse of a resurgent conservative America at the Kumback Café. The Kumback, established 1926, is a cozy, memorabilia-filled joint that sits opposite the courthouse in downtown Perry, population 5,230.

Things work like this at the Kumback: The guys, average age about 80, arrive around 8 a.m. and get talking on “the whole gamut of life”; the girls, average age too indelicate to print, gather later at a horse-shoe shaped table toward the back. Ken Sherman, 86 and spry, explained: “We’ve got to come here every day to find out what’s going on. And by the time we leave we forget.”

I asked Paul Morrow, a whippersnapper at 71, how things were going. “There’s just too much Muslim influence, all this Shariah law,” he said. “We’re conservative here, old and cantankerous.” Continue reading Shariah at the Kumback Café →

Spiritual Malaria?

Ethics, Islamic Law, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Wahhabi


by Nadeem F. Paracha, blog.dawn.com, July 1
 
A recent fatwa from a ‘Saudi Council of Muftis’ has this advice for fellow
Muslims: Do not say [or write] ‘mosque.’ Always say ‘masjid’ because mosque
may mean mosquito. Another myopic case of Saudi malaria perhaps?

Certainly. But that’s not all. The grand fatwa goes on to suggest that
Muslims should not write ‘Mecca’ but Makkah, because Mecca may mean ‘house
of wines.’ I am serious. But then so are the Muftis. They certainly need to
get a life.

But I’m not all that surprised by such fatwas that usually emanate from
Saudi Arabia. While vicious reactionary literature originating in
totalitarian puritanical Muslim states impact and mutate the political
bearings of various religious parties and groups in Pakistan, ‘social
fatwas’ like the one mentioned above also began appearing in the early 1980s
to influence the more apolitical sections of Muslim societies.

Reactionary literature generated by the Saudi propaganda machine started
being distributed in Pakistan from 1979 onwards, mostly in the shape of
pamphlets and books.

Duly translated into Urdu, they glorify and propagate violent action (jihad)
not only against non-Muslims (or infidels) but also against those Muslims
who fail to follow the thorny dictates of a certain puritanical strain of
the faith. Continue reading Spiritual Malaria? →

Sikand on Qaradawi

Egypt, Islamic Law, Islamic Texts, Qatar


[Webshaykh’s note: The following is a book review by Yoginder Sikand, who maintains the blog Madrasa Reforms in India.]
 
Review of Global Mufti—The Phenomenon of Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
Edited by Jakob Skaovgaard-Peterson & Bettina Graf (Hurst & Co, London, 2009,
ISBN: 978-1-85065-939-6

Reviewed by: Yoginder Sikand
 
 
The Qatar-based Egyptian Yusuf al-Qaradawi is among the most well-known Islamic scholars on the contemporary global scene. It might be something of an exaggeration to label him as a ‘phenomenon’ and as the ‘global mufti’—which is what the very title of this book hails him as—but that he exercises an enormous influence in numerous Islamic scholarly and activist circles is undeniable.
 
This book is a collection of essays on diverse aspects of Qaradawi’s life, achievements and writings. In their introductory essay, the editors of the volume provide a broad overview of his life, against which they situate his scholarly and activist accomplishments. Born in a poor family in a village in Egypt in 1926, Qaradawi studied at Cairo’s Al-Azhar, then the largest seat of traditional Islamic learning, after which he shifted to Qatar as emissary of his alma mater. It was there, we are told, that Qaradawi established himself as a noted scholar and activist, traveling widely across the world and establishing a number of Islamic institutions. The editors provide a pen-portrait of a passionate, dedicated scholar-activist, seeking to revive the rapidly disappearing tradition of socially-engaged ulema, who Qaradawi believes, should lead Muslims in the twenty-first century. Continue reading Sikand on Qaradawi →

Covering Afghanistan

Afghanistan, Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Islamic Law, Journalism and Media, Photography, Taliban


August 9, 2010 cover of Time Magazine

As usual for the end of the week, my Time arrived yesterday. It seems a bit unusual that I should receive the August 9 issue a week early, but then Time is not always accurate. The cover photograph is startling, haunting, disturbing and an unfortunate example of sensationalized news reporting. I cannot help but compare this to the widely traveled National Geographic photograph of an Afghan woman. I have no objection to covering a human tragedy etched in the face of young Aisha, the 18 year old girl whose nose and ears were cut off by self-righteous extremists who practice a brand of Islam that would make the Prophet Muhammad roll over in his grave. But the cover’s prominent announcement of the article inside by Aryn Baker is in fact not the title of the article, nor the main message of the author. “What happens if we leave Afghanistan” is a lot more sensational than “Afghan Women and the Return of the Taliban,” which is why it graces the cover. Tragedies, like sex scandals, sell. The issue for me is how they should be reported responsibly.


Afghan woman holding 1985 National Geographic issue with her picture on the cover

Continue reading Covering Afghanistan →

Born Free, unless you are female

Gender and Sexuality, Islam in Europe, Islamic Law, Islamophobia

I opened my email this morning and back-to-back there was instant conflict: a posting about a new Indian Deoband fatwa ruling that veiled Muslim women should not ride bicycles and another about a female French lawyer who ripped the face covering off a young Muslim girl in a shopping mall near Nantes, the latter a pre-emptive strike for the pending anti-niqab law in the French parliament. Both rulings strike me as silly, both as overtly political. So now instead of the standard “Death to America” vs. “Muhammad is a child molester” chant wars we have entered the era of dueling over social mores through Fatwa Wars. Although not as erotic as the recent tit-illating fatwa controversy, also involving women’s bodies, the battle lines are still drawn over the same resource: what males do to control women’s bodies and minds.

Let’s start with the Deoband bicycle banning. The commentary by Nigar Ataulla, an Indian Muslim who happens to be female as well as a journalist who enjoys bike riding, called “Cycle Fatwa  Rides into My Re-Cycle Bin” reads:
Continue reading Born Free, unless you are female →

Damn the Vuvuzelas

Islamic Law, Travel, United Arab Emirates


For those of us watching the World Cup in South Africa the din of the vuvuzelas is muted by the voices of the announcers. I can only imagine the deafening roar experienced by those attending the games in what has to be the noisiest World Cup ever. Now, courtesy of a fatwa from the United Arab Emirates, Muslims no longer need to put up with the noise. In Fatwa #11625 of July 6, the verdict is in. All this noise really is haram. The fatwa quotes Imam Malik as saying he disapproved of a festivity with loud horns, a handy precedent for the current noise pollution in the sporting world. Of course, Imam Malik did not measure decibels, but we sure can today.

For those who are interested, here is the argument: Continue reading Damn the Vuvuzelas →

Eclipse of the Greater Jihad

Islamic History, Islamic Law, Qur'an, Terrorism Issue, Traditions (hadith literature)

Eclipse of the Greater Jihad
by Syed Manzar Abbas Zaidi, Journal of Religion, Conflict, and Peace, Volume 3. Issue 1, Fall 2009

[The following is a brief excerpt from an interesting article on the debate over the “greater jihad” in light of Quranic and hadith references. I recommend reading the entire article, which can be done by clicking here.]

The word jihad derives from the Arabic root jhd, signifying intense struggle or effort. It has the connotations of a moral struggle within one’s own self, besides denoting an armed struggle. It thus carries the hermeneutical meaning of a moral endeavour directed toward one’s own improvement or self-elevation on a moral plane, which Muslim jurists of eminence have been quoted as calling jihad-e-akbar, or greater jihad. On the other hand, preparations and participation for defense against an armed conflict that is the consequence of foreign aggression has been known as qitaal, or jihad-e-asghar, lesser jihad… Continue reading Eclipse of the Greater Jihad →

Understanding Islamic Feminism: Interview with Ziba Mir-Hosseini

Anthropology/Sociology, Development, Gender and Sexuality, Iran, Islamic Law

Understanding Islamic Feminism: Interview with Ziba Mir-Hosseini

Yoginder Sikand, Madrasa Reforms in India, February 7, 2010

Born in Iran and now based in London, Ziba Mir Hosseini, an anthropologist by training, is one of the most well-known scholars of Islamic Feminism. She is the author of numerous books on the subject, including Marriage on Trial: A Study of Family Law in Iran and Morrocco (l.B.Tauris, 1993) and Islam and Gender, the Religious Debate in Contemporary Islam (Princeton, 1999). She is presently associated with the Centre for Islamic and Middle Eastern Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

In this interview with Yoginder Sikand she talks about the origins and prospects of Islamic feminism as an emancipatory project for Muslim women and as a new, contextually-relevant way of understanding Islam.

Q: In recent years, a number of Muslim women’s groups have emerged across the world, struggling for gender equality and justice using Islamic arguments. Most of them are led by women who come from elitist or, at least middle class, backgrounds. Many of them seem to lack a strong popular base. How do you account for this?

A: I think the majority of the women who are writing and publishing about what is popularly called ‘Islamic feminism’ are definitely from the elite or the middle class. But then, globally speaking, feminism has always had to do with the middle class, at least in terms of its key articulators and leaders. I believe that Islamic feminism is, in a sense, the unwanted child of ‘political Islam’. It was ‘political Islam’ that actually politicized the whole issue of gender and Muslim women’s rights. The slogan ‘back to the shariah’ so forcefully pressed by advocates of ‘political Islam’ in practice meant seeking to return to the classical texts on fiqh or Muslim jurisprudence and doing away with various laws advantageous to women that had no sanction in the Islamists’ literalist understanding of Islam. Translated into practice, law and public policy, this meant going back to pre-modern interpretations of shariah, with all their restrictive laws about and for women. It was this that led, as a reaction, to the emergence of Islamic feminism, critiquing the Islamists for conflating Islam and the shariah with undistilled patriarchy and for claiming that patriarchal rule was divinely mandated. These Muslim women were confronted with horrific laws that Islamists sought to impose in the name of Islam, and so began asking where in all of this was the justice and equality that their own understanding of the Quran led them to believe was central to Islam. These gender activists, using Islamic arguments to critique and challenge the Islamists, brought classical fiqh and tafsir texts to public scrutiny and made them a subject of public debate and discussion, articulating alternative, gender-friendly understandings, indeed visions, of Islam. That marked the broadening, in terms of class, of the fledgling Islamic feminist movement. Continue reading Understanding Islamic Feminism: Interview with Ziba Mir-Hosseini →