Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now by Ayaan Hirsi Ali Page A
Authors: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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had previously shouted that she hadn’t done the assigned reading declared: “It really doesn’t matter what you write in the constitution of Egypt. It’s not going to change anything. We are just going to carry on living the way we live.”
Sadly, what she says is true. In Egypt, people rely on religious Muslim judges to decide contractual disputes and inheritance issues. When the military government wanted to condemn more than five hundred political prisoners to death—many of them members of the Muslim Brotherhood—it still needed a sharia court to sign off on the sentence.
At the other end of the spectrum are groups such as Boko Haram and IS, which believe they are reviving sharia as it was enforced by Muhammad and the first generation of his followers. When they stone, amputate, crucify, sell into slavery, or force religious conversions, they claim to be following the pure sharia code, and they can and do cite lines from it to justify their actions.
Global Sharia
“I did not kill! I did not kill!” a woman shrieks as Saudi police wrap her head with a black scarf.
“Praise God,” a Saudi executioner dressed in white tells her.
He lifts his long silver sword and strikes her neck—a gasp, then she falls silent.
Twice more the hangman hacks at her neck, before stepping away to carefully wipe the blade.
Ambulance workers immediately start placing the woman’s remains on a stretcher as charges against her are hurriedly read out over a loudspeaker in the Muslim holy city of Mecca.
She was accused of raping her seven-year-old stepdaughter with a broomstick and beating her to death. “A royal decree was issued to carry out the sharia law, in accordance with what is right,” the statement says. 7
It is a remarkable fact that, after Friday prayers in Saudi Arabia, many men flock to the central squares to watch the implementation of Islamic justice: the cutting off of robbers’ hands, the stoning of adulterers, and the beheading of murderers, apostates, and other convicted criminals.
Can anyone today imagine a congregation of Catholics leaving mass or Baptists leaving church or Jews leaving synagogue to go and spectate at a lethal injection or an electrocution? Though the death penalty is still inflicted in some U.S. states, we in the West have come very far since the days when public executions were the norm and religious offenses were punishable by death. Far from diminishing, this legal divide between Islam and the West is growing wider and deeper, and is increasingly global in scope.
When eighteen Palestinians in Gaza were shot dead in the summer of 2014 for allegedly collaborating with Israel, the immediate justification proffered was that these men had been found guilty by “local courts, supported by religious clerics.” (Palestinian law makes collaborating with Israel a crime punishable by death, although the Palestinian president must give his approval before the sentence is carried out.) In other words, they had been tried and convicted under some version of the sharia system. And while human rights activists protested against the killings, there was no challenge to the underlying religious justification, or the role of Muslim clerics in approving these sentences.
In Pakistan, blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad is punishable by death. 8 More than thirty countries around the world have similar antiblasphemy laws, including some Christian ones. But it is in Muslim countries that such laws are enforced. In 2014, a Pakistani court sentenced a twenty-six-year-old Christian man to death on the ground that he had spoken ill of the Prophet. He argued that he was merely the target of fabricated accusations made by disgruntled local businessmen seeking to build an industrial center in his neighborhood. When his sentence was handed down, thirty-three other Pakistanis were already on death row for the crime of blasphemy.
What is more, with or without a formal court verdict, vigilantes are happy to
Sadly, what she says is true. In Egypt, people rely on religious Muslim judges to decide contractual disputes and inheritance issues. When the military government wanted to condemn more than five hundred political prisoners to death—many of them members of the Muslim Brotherhood—it still needed a sharia court to sign off on the sentence.
At the other end of the spectrum are groups such as Boko Haram and IS, which believe they are reviving sharia as it was enforced by Muhammad and the first generation of his followers. When they stone, amputate, crucify, sell into slavery, or force religious conversions, they claim to be following the pure sharia code, and they can and do cite lines from it to justify their actions.
Global Sharia
“I did not kill! I did not kill!” a woman shrieks as Saudi police wrap her head with a black scarf.
“Praise God,” a Saudi executioner dressed in white tells her.
He lifts his long silver sword and strikes her neck—a gasp, then she falls silent.
Twice more the hangman hacks at her neck, before stepping away to carefully wipe the blade.
Ambulance workers immediately start placing the woman’s remains on a stretcher as charges against her are hurriedly read out over a loudspeaker in the Muslim holy city of Mecca.
She was accused of raping her seven-year-old stepdaughter with a broomstick and beating her to death. “A royal decree was issued to carry out the sharia law, in accordance with what is right,” the statement says. 7
It is a remarkable fact that, after Friday prayers in Saudi Arabia, many men flock to the central squares to watch the implementation of Islamic justice: the cutting off of robbers’ hands, the stoning of adulterers, and the beheading of murderers, apostates, and other convicted criminals.
Can anyone today imagine a congregation of Catholics leaving mass or Baptists leaving church or Jews leaving synagogue to go and spectate at a lethal injection or an electrocution? Though the death penalty is still inflicted in some U.S. states, we in the West have come very far since the days when public executions were the norm and religious offenses were punishable by death. Far from diminishing, this legal divide between Islam and the West is growing wider and deeper, and is increasingly global in scope.
When eighteen Palestinians in Gaza were shot dead in the summer of 2014 for allegedly collaborating with Israel, the immediate justification proffered was that these men had been found guilty by “local courts, supported by religious clerics.” (Palestinian law makes collaborating with Israel a crime punishable by death, although the Palestinian president must give his approval before the sentence is carried out.) In other words, they had been tried and convicted under some version of the sharia system. And while human rights activists protested against the killings, there was no challenge to the underlying religious justification, or the role of Muslim clerics in approving these sentences.
In Pakistan, blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad is punishable by death. 8 More than thirty countries around the world have similar antiblasphemy laws, including some Christian ones. But it is in Muslim countries that such laws are enforced. In 2014, a Pakistani court sentenced a twenty-six-year-old Christian man to death on the ground that he had spoken ill of the Prophet. He argued that he was merely the target of fabricated accusations made by disgruntled local businessmen seeking to build an industrial center in his neighborhood. When his sentence was handed down, thirty-three other Pakistanis were already on death row for the crime of blasphemy.
What is more, with or without a formal court verdict, vigilantes are happy to
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