Religion is the bane of mankind
Part 9 Book Review of Cruel and Usual Punishment , Nonie Darwish, and Commentary
(selected segments)Sharia is much in the news today. It is the subject of
Cruel and Usual Punishment, by author Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian woman now living in the U.S., and a second book, Now They Call Me Infidel to warn American citizens of the dangers of creeping Sharia law in the U.S.Just say NO to Sharia in the U. S., to paraphrase Darwish. She explains in great detail what Islam does for Muslim women in Cruel and Usual Punishment; she discusses Sharia in two categories, the family and the state. In Part I - Sharia: The Family she covers the roots of Sharia, and its effect on marriage, women and men. This review will dwell on Chapter 1, the roots of Sharia. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 of Part I will be reviewed in subsequent sections of Religion is the Bane of Mankind.
Part II - The State will be left for perhaps another review, or for the interested reader to pursue. This editor is concerned mostly with the dire effects that Sharia bodes for Western non-Muslims faced with the growing numbers of Muslim immigrants and converts in America.
In the Introduction and A Warning to the West Darwish tells what is in store for non-Muslims where Muslims immigrate.
To escape Sharia marriage laws, Darwish moved to America in 1978 to raise her family in the freedom of American life. She notes,
"Islam has annihilated every culture it has invaded or immigrated into." (p. xvi, Cruel and Unusual Punishment, Nonie Darwish, Thomas Nelson, publisher, 2008, Nashville.)Darwish quotes two statements, one of an Islamic theologian and thinker and one of a cofounder of CAIR, an American Muslim leader, in discussing "The Takeover Program" plan of Islam: According to one of the most influential theologians and Islamic thinkers of the 20th century, Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi (op.cit.,p. xvi-xvii):
"Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam regardless of the country or the nation which rules it ... (T)he objective of Islamic jihad is to eliminate the rule of an un-Islamic system and establish in its stead an Islamic system of state rule...(T)he aim of Islam is to bring about a universal revolution."
(ibid., p. xvi and p. 261, note 1: Jihad in Islam, Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, Beirut: Holy Koran Publishing House, 1980, 9.)Consider the words of Omar Ahmad, cofounder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR):
"If you choose to live here (in America)...you have a responsibiity to deliver the message of Islam.... Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant.... The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America,and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."
(ibid.,pp. xvi-xvii, and p.261, note 2, "American Muslim leader urges faithful to spread Islam's message," The Argus, Fremont, CA, July 4, 1998.)Legal Jihad
Darwish states that the jihad on the West comes from every angle, including the legal one.
Muslims are currently attempting to introduce blasphemy laws in Western countries and silencing critics of Islam, with death threats and intimidation coupled with attempts to take legal action against anyone who commits the blasphemy of insulting Mohammed or Islam, whether they live in London, New York, or Riyadhi. Some of these laws are already practiced effectively in Europe and Australia, where several Westerners were sued and lost cases for insulting Islam. The Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) has been actively attempting to Islamize international human rights laws and apply the Sharia "standard" for blasphemy to all nations.** (op. cit., pp. xxii-xxiii.)**[Editor's note: CBN News reported March 31, 2009 (originally aired March 27, 2009) that the U.N.'s top human rights body passed a resolution urging laws banning the criticism of religion. The resolution was proposed by Pakistan on behalf of all Muslim countries. CBN reports that the resolution is against the "defamation of religion" in general although the only faith mentioned specifically is Islam.
[This editor, who doesn't take lightly this news, wonders what effect it might have on this website, biblelore.com, which includes criticism of both Christianity and Islam, should the United States foolishly ignore the resolution and its possible implementation in the United Nations. Stay tuned!]
The Roots of Sharia (Chapter 1)
Dawish defines Sharia as the body of Islamic law, that deals with all aspects of day-to-day, including politics, economics banking, business law, contract law, marriage, divorce, child rearing and custody, sexuality, sin, crime. and social issues.... The Sharia laws are based on Qur'an and hadiths (sayings and example of the Prophet) as well as centuries of debate, interpretation, and precedent. There are literally thousands of Sharia laws. (Darwish, op.cit., p. 4)
"One of Mohammed's aims for the new religion," relates Darwish, "was to unify all the warring tribes of the Arabian Peninsula -- yet preserve their unique warring culture. The genius of Islam was that it found a way to reconcile these two competing goals, retained the superiority of the male, the submission of the female, slavery, and the culture of raiding and male violence by channeling it toward the outside world in an institution called jihad ..." Islam thus retained what made the tribe proud (raiding enemy tribes and their caravans) and transferred it to the outside non-Muslim world, says Darwish. (ibid., p.18)
Sharia Became the Answer after Mohammed's Death
The following extract is a brief summary of Darwish's account of Sharia:
After Mohammed's death, the struggle over his legacy saw many Muslims abandoning Islam. Muslim leaders used violent and bloody reddah (meaning "bringing back to Islam) warfare to reclaim the large number who had left the faith. Islamic warriors fought fiercely and brutally. Within two years, the rebellious Arabian desert tribes had all been won back for Allah. (ibid., p.20.)
Author Darwish summarizes the 100-year period after Mohammed's death, saying it was a time of bloody civil wars, assassinations, revolutions, counter-revolutions, and mass killings. Caliphs competed in linking their lineage to the prophet Mohammed to claim legitimacy and were killing each other and calling each other apostates. At the same time, the mighty armies of Islam were continuing Mohammed's mission to march across the known world conquering and converting by the sword. (ibid., p.20.)
(Note: For a comprehensive review of that 100-year period and more, see Chapter 11 of Koranlore; click on History of the Caliphs from 632 to 2006.)
Darwish reports that after a hundred years of fighting, the immense empire of the Caliphate was falling apart, and the leaders needed to legitimize their rule by holy divine laws. The Qur'an was an ambiguous, inconsistent and incomplete book and did not provide the foundation for an Islamic constitution.
They needed a brutal but divine law to guarantee total submission -- penalties of death, amputation of limbs, flogging, and stoning... Muslims went on a mission to collect the hadiths (sayings) of Mohammed in order to form their Sharia laws. (ibid., p.20f.)Under the Caliphate, states Darwish, Sharia was formulated by eight imams (religious leaders and authorities on Muslim principles of jurisprudence). Caliphs were exempted from being punished under Sharia for cases of theft, adultery, killing, and drinking. (ibid., p.21.)
According to Darwish's account, the eight imams all met their demise out of fear they might change what they wrote if they were set free: four were poisoned, two were imprisoned, one was punished by having his hand (writing hand, presumably) severed, and one was exiled!
Writing exemptions for the caliphs also brought the end of freedom in all countries conquered by Arabia. The most important aspect of Sharia law is total control of the empire, including everyone's behavior, loyalty, mind, and even soul . Sharia now gave the caliphs a "divine" tool to bring everyone into submission and total dependence. The result is today over 1.2 billion people around the globe must bend over five times a day, worshiping Allah in the direction of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. (Cf. ibid, pp. 19-23.)[Editor's comment: The current world population is now, by various estimates, between 6.7 billion and 6.9 billion people, so the Muslim population represents between 17% and 18% of the total number of persons that inhabit the earth.
[The first 100-year period of Islamization after Mohammad's death of the then known world of Europe, Asia and Africa were marked by conquering and converting by the sword. If the Pakistani resolution to Islamize international human rights laws before the UN should somehow be passed, that would hasten the Muslim push to conquer most of the rest of the world's population. We in the U.S. must do everything we can to control the growing influx of Muslim immigrants; at the same time we must resist Muslim demands to accommodate Muslim citizens and immigrants by changing American culture to suit their foreign cultural customs and habits.]