Criticism #1:
Traditional Islam ties worldly success and legal justice to spiritual success.
Muslims for the past few centuries have witnessed something that is, really, an entirely alien phenomenon for us: success without spirit. The rise of the Western powers in nearly all worldly matters while speeding up its spiritual decline. Enormous wealth, scientific advancement, free education, plentiful food, have all become trademarks of the West. At the same time, the same people who are living in such success have become diseased spiritually, they look towards far-east religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism), or they look to far-out religions (Wiccan, New-Age, Scientology). Or, they resort to atheism. Yet, their success continues to exceed all bounds.
Traditional Muslims on the other hand are used to looking at our sad state of affairs, and generally blaming it on our lack of Islam or our spiritual condition otherwise. We often forget the verse that “Allah provides without measure to whom He wills.” We point to Andalus or other golden-ages of Islam and say confidently, “Look, when we practiced Traditional Islamic Law we achieved so much.”
This is true, but at the same time we have to recognize that the West has achieved worldly success in the absence of Traditional Islamic Law, and for that we should analyze their system and its differences with our own. Having created a system of government which rules without taking into account spiritual authority or spiritual levels, the Law for the West has become sacred. The law of the West is, in actually, much more rigid and hard to change (in application of individuals) than Traditional Islamic Law, whose basis is really the spiritual authority of the judge.
This malleability is problematic for Traditional Islam as much of the Traditional Law is ripe to be abused when implemented improperly or in piece-meal. We learn the value placed of the role of Qadi (Judge), from Hadith which state that the Judge who rules incorrectly is given one reward and the Judge that rules correctly is two. However it is important to remember that this presupposes that the Judge has intentions of judging by the Shariah, and not his own ego or desires.
What lesson can we learn from Umar (R) and the Hadd punishment? Umar (R) suspended the Hadd punishment during times of famine, and from his example we learn that those who are connected spiritually would know when it is appropriate to follow the letter of the law and when to take exceptions due to other considerations. What did he use to determine that he could suspend the punishment of stealing during a famine?
It seems he used his wisdom and spiritual authority. Could the West respond with such humanity? Katrina style executions of people looting for food tells us, “Apparently not.” At the same time, such flexibility opens up the Muslim population for abuse by the authority of one who is driven by his ego.
We learn from this that it is wisdom and spirituality of the Qadi’s that Muslims, under a traditional system, are really in the hands of, not legal codes, subsections or article D’s.
The answer of the West is to codify laws so that overt abuse becomes eliminated or, at least, hidden.
The answer of Traditional Islam, for the most part, is much more vague: work on the heart of the individual and society.
