Sharia Law or One Law for All
D Rosser-Owen 2009
Excerpt:
These relate to the legitimacy of the British Crown in appointing qadis and imams, and an Office to oversee these people and their professions. Although such legalistic niceties are commonly derided in fashionable circles and their newspapers, for this to be acceptable to Muslims in the UK, let alone world-wide, under their Shariah such a competence would have to derive directly from the Caliphate.
And, as a matter of fact, this is actually the case.
Towards the end of the 19th Century, two significant events took place.
One was, in 1889, when the Caliph, Sultan Abdul Hamid II jannat makan, appointed Abdullah Quilliam to be the “Sheykhu-l Islam of the British Isles”, and this was endorsed by the Emir of Morocco, the King of Afghanistan, and the Qajar Shah of Persia. The Office of Sheykhu-l Islam was the adminstrator of the system of qadis, imams, and muftis in the Ottoman Empire, and the implications of using this title for the bestowal on Quilliam cannot have been missed. It is legitimate to speculate that it was, in fact, intentional.
At about the same time, the Caliph, conscious of the vast Muslim population of the British Empire, appointed the Queen-Empress a beylerbeyi: in essence a tributary ruler over Muslims under the Caliphate.
The authority to make Islamic religious appointments, and to regulate the administrations of mosques and tribunals, including the appointment of the Office of the Sheykhu-l Islam, in the United Kingdom and Crown Dependencies rests with Queen Elizabeth II as the great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria. And, by residuary sovereignty, in the Republic of Ireland with the President.
Yahya Birt on Abdullah Quilliam
http://www.yahyabirt.com/?p=136
For Rabid NPR Fans -
The still-growing NPR “torture” controversy
There are several noteworthy developments since I wrote on Tuesday about the refusal of NPR’s Ombdusman, Alica Shepard, to be interviewed by me about NPR’s ban on using the word “torture” to describe the Bush administration’s interrogation tactics. Given the utter vapidity of her rationale (“there are two sides to the issue. And I’m not sure, why is it so important to call something torture?”)..
…
Also, along with her On the Media appearance this weekend, Shepard went on another NPR-affiliated show — Patt Morrison’s KPCC Southern California Public Radio program — in a quality segment that included several good questions from Morrison (and even better ones from callers); a very well-compiled, illustrative and cringe-inducing montage of NPR’s repeatedly going out of its way to avoid calling Bush interrogation tactics “torture,” juxtaposed with an excerpt where NPR explicitly accused Iraqis in Sadr City of “using torture” against detainees; and, finally, the inclusion in the discussion of a Berkeley Professor of Linguistics explaining why it matters so much what the media does in this regard and how virtually all media around the world — other than what he called the “spineless U.S. media” — call these tactics “torture” (the KPCC program credits my criticisms of Shepard for catalyzing the controversy and the segment can be heard here).
…
All of that was perfectly captured by penetratingly true satire back in August, 2004, from Jon Stewart and Daily Show “reporter” Rob Corddry [sent to me this week by a reader to illustrate what NPR is doing]:
Stewart: Here’s what puzzles me most, Rob. John Kerry’s record in Vietnam is pretty much right there in the official records of the U.S. military, and hasn’t been disputed for 35 years.
Corddry: That’s right, Jon, and that’s certainly the spin you’ll be hearing coming from the Kerry campaign over the next few days.
Stewart: That’s not a spin thing, that’s a fact. That’s established.
Corddry: Exactly, Jon, and that established, incontrovertible fact is one side of the story.
Stewart: But isn’t that the end of the story? I mean, you’ve seen the records, haven’t you? What’s your opinion?
Corddry: I’m sorry, “my opinion”? I don’t have opinions. I’m a reporter, Jon, and my job is to spend half the time repeating what one side says, and half the time repeating the other. Little thing called “objectivity” — �might want to look it up some day.
Stewart: Doesn’t objectivity mean objectively weighing the evidence, and calling out what’s credible and what isn’t?
Corddry: Whoa-ho! Sounds like someone wants the media to act as a filter! Listen, buddy: Not my job to stand between the people talking to me and the people listening to me.
Award winning blogger Sheila X of Higher-Criticism writes a review of Wahabi Islam by Delong-Bas
http://higher-criticism.com/2009/05/review-of-wahhabi-islam-natana-delong-bas.html
Appropriate honorifics have been added or adjusted to this excerpt:
Interestingly, DeLong-Bas herself provides ample evidence of Ibn Abdul Wahhab’s general deviation from mainstream Muslim thought. For example, she reports a religious edict issued by him, fatawa-wa-masa’il, in which [Abdul Wahab] discussed the actions of a close Companion of the Prophet, Abu Bakr (d. 634) (R). Abu Bakr (R) had been the first caliph of the Islamic community, and during his tenure (see The Political Careers of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs), had established the practice of the caliph serving as a paid guardian over the people. Ibn Abdul Wahhab expressed vehement disagreement with the decision saying that Abu Bakr (R) had mis-applied vague Quranic verses to justify the ruling. [Abdul Wahab] goes on to label Abu Bakr’s (R) decision as:
“…the most astonishing part of his ignorance 4“.
In the same edict, Ibn Abdul Wahhab described Abu Bakr’s (R) claim that such spending was for public good as:
…an awesome lie 5.
The last accusation is particularly ironic, since Abu Bakr (R)was so famous for his honesty that he was nicknamed The Truthful. Nevertheless, Ibn Abdul Wahhab’s harsh criticism of Abu Bakr (R) is a radical departure from the reverence that mainstream Muslims typically have of the Companions of the Prophet.
Whoever speaks well of the Companions of the Messenger of God, his chaste wives, and his purified progeny is absolved of hypocrisy. The pious scholars of the past and those after them who follow their path- the people of goodness and tradition, of understanding and profound scholarship- should be mentioned only in the best manner. Anyone who speaks ill of them has deviated from the path 6.
Experimental scientists, who struggle daily in the laboratory to understand the physical and biological world, are instinctively convinced that they are gradually, in spite of many difficulties, obtaining valid and enduring knowledge about a real, objective world. It is a familiar experience to be confronted by an apparently unintelligible phenomenon, to have an idea about what is going on, to base a theory on that idea, and then to sow that using it they can explain quantitatively what is already known and also make predictions about new phenomena that are subsequently verified. This is intelligible if we are gradually finding out about the world, but not if we are simply projecting our ideas on the world. Often scientists have struggled for a long time to interpret the world according to their own ideas, only to be forced by the evidence to adopt a different view. Planck’s discovery of the quantum is an example of this. -Theology and modern physics, Peter Edward Hodgson
The casual reader of the past series can now understand that physics has taken a tumble at the long journey of describing reality with reason and mathematics. At the smallest scales the reason and logic coded into our brains, the tools which have brought us much ‘progress’, fail to yield any further answers.
In a world where experiments and reason trump all, it seems experiments and reasoning have turned upside down and left us with experiments that boggle the mind and purely unverifiable ideas on how to explain them.
11th century Muslim saint and scholar, Imam Ghazali (R) underwent a similar crisis centuries ago. His recounting of his thought process in the matter is quite relevant.
—-
Then I said to myself, “My aim is to perceive the deep reality of things; I wish to seize the essence of knowledge. Certain knowledge is that in which the thing known reveals itself without leaving any room for doubt or any possibility of error or illusion, nor can the heart allow such a possibility. One must be protected from error, and should be so bound to certainty that any attempt, for example, to transform a stone into gold or a stick into a serpent would not raise doubts or engender contrary probabilities. I know very well that ten is more than three. If anyone tries to dissuade me by saying, No, three is more than ten, and wants to prove it by changing in front of me this stick into a serpent, even if I saw him changing it, still this fact would engender no doubt about my knowledge. Certainly, I would be astonished at such a power, but I would not doubt my knowledge.
Thus I came to know that whatever is known without this kind of certainty is doubtful knowledge, not reliable and safe, that all knowledge subject to error is not sure and certain.
However, when I examined what I know, I found myself lacking this kind of certain knowledge, except as concerned things I could confirm with my senses or necessary (self-evident) for reason.
So I said, “Now that despair has overcome me, there is no point in studying any problems except on the basis of what is self-evident, namely, the affirmations of the senses and the necessary truths of reason. I had to look clearly at the nature of my trust in what I could confirm with my senses, and my confidence in being safe from error by following the requirements of reason. Are these feelings similar to my previous trust in the opinions of authority and the feeling of most people regarding speculative knowledge? Or is it a question of a certainty without illusion or surprise?
I proceeded therefore most earnestly to consider the evidence of my senses and the requirements of reason to see if I could make myself doubt these. This led me to lose faith in the evidence of my senses. This doubt, which became completely pervasive, can be expressed as follows:
How can one trust the evidence of one’s senses? Sight is the most powerful of our senses, and we could stare at a shadow and judge that it is fixed and not moving at all. Yet, at the end of an hour’s watching, we find that the shadow has moved, not all at once, but gradually or little by little: it has been moving all the time, and never was in a state of rest. The eye looks at a star and sees it reduced to the size of a coin (dinar), whereas geometrical computations show it to be larger than the earth. This and similar cases exemplify how the evidence of one’s senses leads one to a judgment which reason shows irrefutably to be totally erroneous.
Thus, I told myself that there is no security even in the evidence of one’s senses. Perhaps such surety can be found only in intellectual truths which play the role of first principles of thought, such as: ten is greater than three; the same thing cannot simultaneously be affirmed and denied; nothing here below can be both created and eternal, existent and non-existent, necessary and impossible.
But the evidence of my senses replied, Are you sure that when you trust the requirements of reason it is not the same sort of trust that you had in the evidence of your senses? You trusted us, then reason accused us of being in error; without that word of reason, you would trust us still. Perhaps there is something beyond reason which would show that reason in turn is in error, just as reason showed the error of the evidence of the senses. The fact that this further intelligence is not manifest does not prove that it is impossible.
I remained for some little time speechless. Then the difficulty appeared to resemble the problem of sleep. I told myself that when one is asleep one believes all sorts of things and finds oneself in all sorts of situations; one believes in them absolutely, without the slightest doubt. When one wakes up, one realizes the inconsistency and inanity of the phantasms of the imagination. In the same way, one might ask oneself about the reality of beliefs one has acquired through one’s senses or by reason. Could one not imagine oneself in a state which compares to being awake, just as wakefulness compares to being asleep? Being awake would be like the dreams of that state, which in turn would show that the illusion (of the certainty) of rational knowledge is nothing but vain imagination.
Such a state might be the one that the mystics (Sufis) claim, for they assert that, when they become totally absorbed in themselves and completely abstract from their senses, they find themselves in a state of mind which does not agree with what is given by reason.
Perhaps this state is none other than death? Did not Allah’s messenger, peace be upon him, say: “Men are asleep; in dying they awaken.” Life here below may be a stream, compared with life beyond. After death, things would appear in a different light, and, as the Qur’an says, “We have lifted your veil, and today your sight is penetrating.”
Then these thoughts came to my mind and gnawed at me I tried to find some way of treating my unhealthy condition, but this was in vain. They could be dispelled only by reasoning, which is impossible without recourse to the first principles of knowledge. If these are not admissible, no construction of a proof is possible.
My disease grew worse and lasted almost two months, during which I fell prey to skepticism, though neither in theory nor in outward expression. At last, God the Almighty cured me of that disease and I recovered my health and mental equilibrium. The self-evident principles of reason again seemed acceptable; I trusted them and in them felt safe and certain. I reached this point not by well-ordered or methodical argument, but by means of a light God the Almighty cast into my breast, which light is the key to most knowledge.
His trust in reason was solved by faith.
The distinction between ignorance and agnosticism—a distinction which is often ignored in our time—is of great importance. The former is both natural and realistic; it knows itself and recognizes its own impotence. To be human is, in the first place, to be ignorant and to accept the fact that there is a great deal we cannot know and, for that matter, a great deal we do not need to know. Idle curiosity is certainly a vice—a lust of the mind—whereas acknowledgment of the fact that we have no intrinsic right to receive answers to all our questions is an aspect of humility as it is of realism. It is said that St. Augustine was asked: “What was God doing before he created the world?” “Preparing hell for those who ask unnecessary questions!”
Agnosticism however raises a personal incapacity to the dignity of a universal law. It amounts to the dogmatic assertion that what “I” do not know cannot be known, and it limits the very concept of what is knowable to the little area of observation open to the unsanctified and unilluminated human mentality. The agnostic attitude derives from a refusal to admit that anyone can be or ever could have been our superior in this, the most important realm of all: the true knowledge of what there is to be known. Religion is now seen exclusively in terms of faith rather than of supernatural knowledge. In egalitarian terms, faith is acceptable; you may believe in fairies if you wish to. But the claim to a direct and certain knowledge of realities beyond the mind’s normal compass excludes those who do not possess it and savors of presumption. The idea that a saint among the saints may have known God—not merely believed in him—suggests “unfairness” and implies the superiority of some men to others. It puts us in our place.
Squatting in this place, this little pool, and hungry for certainties, people hold on with a kind of desperation to the current notion of what is (or is not) “rational”; and yet, “the rationalism of a frog at the bottom of a well consists in denying the existence of mountains; this is logic of a kind, perhaps, but it has nothing to do with reality.” This rationalism is inextricably linked with the scientific point of view, which is advanced as the only logical interpretation of the world. Unfortunately nothing in this realm is as clear as it should be. The “facts” with which science supplies us are of quite a different order to those registered by our physical senses. What the scientist says, in effect, is this: you may take my propositions as proved, provided you accept all the assumptions which appear self-evident at this time, so long as you agree that the objective world exactly fits the patterns inherent in human thinking (or vice versa), on the understanding that the simplest explanation of a given phenomenon must be the right one and assuming that the physical world is sealed off from interference from any other realm. This adds up to a formidable list of qualifications.
Contrary to popular belief, science does not offer us certainties in the way that our senses provide a kind of certainty on their own level. Scientific hypotheses are not facts, and before the scientist can even begin to construct his theories he must make a number of very sweeping assumptions which most people may agree to take for granted, since they are in accordance with the present climate of opinion, but which can never be proved.
He must assume the absolute, objective validity of his own mental processes and believe that the logic of these processes is a universal law to which everything that is or ever could be conforms. Common sense tells him that this is so, but common sense is a variable factor which changes from one age to another. He can never be certain that the images which his senses present to his mind are a true representation of realities which exist independently and objectively. Not unlike the man who interprets the outside world in terms of what is taking place in his own entrails, seeing a bright day when he feels well and finding the world a dark place when his system is choked with waste products, he may in fact be applying to observed data the laws which govern his own mentality, an instrument constructed for the practical business of living much as the entrails are constructed for the digestion of food. Since inner and outer, subjective and objective, are, in the last analysis, two sides of the same coin, he is likely to find that the protean physical world provides the answers he expects of it (these answers being implicit in the phrasing of his questions) and experiment will confirm the theories he has constructed without, in fact, taking him beyond the subjective realm.
However complex the instruments designed to extend the range of our senses, scientific exploration is always to some extent dealing with patterns inherent in the exploring mind and meeting the mirror images it has projected. Nature mocks and eludes us, seeming to fit herself into our mental categories because our minds are themselves embedded in her structure. We imagine ourselves standing—or floating—above the natural world, competent to survey it objectively, and the intervention of scientific instruments between our naked senses and the objects of observation heightens this illusion; but a mentality which is part of the natural world can never escape and look down as a disembodied agent upon its own matrix. That element in man which does indeed transcend the natural world is in him but not of him, and the objectivity of its awareness is very different from the fictional objectivity exercised by one facet of nature in relation to another.
But while the scientist, in his increasingly private and abstract sphere, finds a marvelous concordance between his thinking process and the movement of a needle on a dial or the traces of radiation on a photographic plate, the ordinary man of our time faces a widening gulf between scientific theory and any kind of objective experience known to him.
No longer can men be told that the truth of things will be confirmed in their own intimate experience if only they will look and listen. The proofs and arguments of contemporary science are so abstract and so technical that they are no longer open to criticism by the non-specialist and cannot be tested against any kind of experience known to man as a living creature. Informed that the electron’s position does not change with time, but does not remain the same, and that, although the electron is not at rest, it is not in motion, Francois Mauriac remarked: “What this professor says is far more incredible than what we poor Christians believe!” The theories employed by modern physics have not merely by-passed the contours of the rational mind; they have gone beyond the range of human imagination.
“In those never-never, through-the-looking-glass abodes,” says Professor Huston Smith, “parallel lines meet, curves get you from star to star more quickly than do Euclid’s straight lines, a particle will pass through alternative apertures simultaneously without dividing, time shrinks and expands, electrons . . . jump orbit without traversing the intervening distance, and particles fired in opposite directions, each at a speed approximating that of light, separate from each other no faster than the speed of light.” After this no one has any excuse for finding obscurities or improbabilities in the higher reaches of theology and metaphysics. If the majority of people still imagine that the physical sciences relate in some way to their normal experience this can only be because they are living in the past, comfortably immured in the mechanistic science of the nineteenth century.
- Gai Eaton, “Knowledge and its Counterfeits”
the truth on 
m.a.kidwai,CME/IND.RLY.(retd.) on 