Oklahoma citizens had it right when they voted to prevent Oklahoma judges from using Sharia law to decide Oklahoma cases. Sharia law contradicts rights granted to Americans in the Declaration of Independence and rights protected from government encroachment in the Constitution. When Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange grants CAIR’s claim that the practice of Sharia law is a constitutional right, she demonstrates ignorance of either the Constitution or Sharia law or both.
The Closing of the Muslim Mind (Robert Reilly)
– Highlight Loc. 2211-48 |
Nothing makes clearer how un-Islamic the notion of equality is than “The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam,” signed by forty-five foreign ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference on August 5, 1990. The Cairo Declaration was issued as an appendix to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights to make explicit Muslim differences with the UN declaration, which espouses universal, equal rights. The last two articles in the Cairo Declaration state that “all rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari‘a” (Article 24) and that “the Islamic Shari‘a is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification [of] any of the articles of this Declaration” (Article 25).Elsewhere it declares that “no one in principle has the right to suspend . . . or violate or ignore its [Islam’s] commandments, in as much as they are binding divine commandments, which are contained in the Revealed Books of God and were sent through the last of His Prophets. . . . Every person is individually responsible—and the Ummah collectively responsible—for their safeguard.”23
The source of human dignity, according to the Cairo Declaration, is God’s bestowal of a vice regency upon man (Qur’an 2:30). However, this is a delegated authority, not one inherent in man’s nature, and it is not clear that it obtains to anyone other than the vice regent (caliph). This understanding comports with the only other use of the word in the Qur’an, when God says, “O David, We have made thee a vice regent in the earth” (Qur’an 38:26).
The vast distance between this Muslim vice regency and the Judeo-Christian notion of man “created in the image and likeness of God” explains the gulf between the UN’s and the Cairo Declaration’s understanding of human rights.
Under the dispensation of the Shari‘a, what does respect for human rights look like? In June 2000, the grand sheikh of al-Azhar, the highest jurisprudential authority of the Sunni world, Muhammad Sayed Tantawi, offered Saudi Arabia as the model. He said: “Saudi Arabia leads the world in the protection of human rights because it protects them according to the shari‘a of God. . . .Everyone knows that Saudi Arabia is the leading country for the application of human rights in Islam in a just and objective fashion, with no aggression and no prejudice.”24
This is a stunning statement, because as Dr. Muhammad al-Houni, a Libyan intellectual living in Italy, says, “Islamic law was not familiar with equality or civil rights, because it was a product of its times.”25
How then is Shari‘a their protector? Shari‘a does not contain the concept of citizenship, for which there was no word in Arabic. In its terms, the inequality between believers and unbelievers appears to be unbridgeable. This is evident from the rigid discrimination against non-Muslims in Saudi Arabia, a Shari‘a state, and in the vulgarly expressed opinions of Islamists like Abu Hamza, who wishes to impose Shari‘a in Great Britain.
He declared, “Only the most ignorant and animal minded individuals would insist that prophet killers ( Jews) and Jesus worshipers (Christians) deserve the same rights as us.”26
As mentioned before, Islam is considered the din al-fitra, the religion that is “natural” to man. It was Adam’s religion and would be everyone’s religion were they not converted as children to apostasy in their upbringing by Christians, Jews, Hindus, or others. Therefore, restoring everyone to Islam is the only path to true “equality.”
An article by Dr. Ahmad Al-Baghdadi, titled “Defending the Religion through Ignorance,” gives a practical example of the consequences of the Shari‘a understanding of human rights. The author noted the intention of “the Kuwaiti Ministry of Education to omit Article 18 of the International Declaration of Human Rights from the human rights curriculum for high school students, since it stipulates that every individual has freedom of thought, which includes the freedom to change one’s religion and beliefs. The head of the technical council for the curriculum and professor of law, Rashid al-‘Anzi, said that the reason why Article 18 of the [Declaration of] Human Rights will no longer be taught is that it is contrary to the Islamic Shari‘a, saying that we [in Kuwait] are a conservative Islamic society, in which we must instill religious, Islamic beliefs in accordance with the Islamic Shari‘a, and thus this article is not in keeping with how we want the students to be.”27
Notes – Highlight Loc. 3819-30 |
23. The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, at http://www.religlaw.org/interdocs/docs/cairohrislam1990.htm.
24. Laurent Murawiec, Princes of Darkness (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 56.
25. “Libyan Intellectual Dr. Muhammad al-Houni: The Arabs Must Choose Between Western Civilization and the Legacy of the Middle Ages,” Middle East Media Research Institute Inquiry and Analysis No. 240, September 12, 2005, at http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=ia&ID=IA24005&Page=archives.
26. Abu Hamza, “Are They the People of the Book? Questions and Answers,” Al-Jihaad, no. 2, at http://www.shareeah.com/Eng/aj/aj2.html.
27. MEMRI, at http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP146007#_ednref2.
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