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Comment by semanticist | Hacker News Reader

While I'm as against Sharia law as the next privileged westerner/godless heathen, I found the complaint that the rules weren't in English really amusing.

Why should a country's national ccTLD rules be in English? It's a domain space for that country, not for making convenient short URLs for Americans to use on Twitter.

Why would a country run under Sharia law want to allow services like bit.ly and others to use their ccTLD to link to porn and other things they find offensive? Why is there an automatic assumption that ccTLD rules should conform to Western expectations?

The only explanation I can think of is that in the back of people's heads is the idea 'it's our internet and we're just letting you weird foreigners use it'. Apart from not being true any more, I wonder how deeply that sort of thinking affects other interactions online?

Or maybe I'm overthinking it all and this guy's just pissed off and ranting because he lost his domain.

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I will only comment on your use of the term Sharia law. The term's widely misunderstood, especially after the events in NYC this summer.

Just so that you know, Sharia "law" is just six principles:

1. The right to the protection of life. 2. The right to the protection of family. 3. The right to the protection of education. 4. The right to the protection of religion. 5. The right to the protection of property (access to resources). 6. The right to the protection of human dignity.

That's it. At its base, eerily similar to the bill of rights. The term "shariah law" is a misnomer, because shariah is not law, but a set of principles.

Controversial laws like stoning people or requiring women to be totally covered aren't in the Sharia. Those are custom interpretations by certain sects. That's why say Islamic-based laws in Saudi Arabia are radically different from those in Egypt.

Just thought I'd share that. It really irked me this summer when everyone was throwing around arguments against "infecting the constitution with Sharia" even though no one actually knows what Sharia is.

Thanks for sharing this, I'll no longer use "Sharia" as a denigrating term, as I probably have in the past.

Is this at all representative of the way sharia exists in practice? Can you provide, say, 5 examples of Islamic countries practicing sharia according to this strict interpretation that aren't overwhelmed by the influence of religous and ethnic traditionalism? If not then aren't you just arguing semantics? If the way sharia is practiced conforms to a certain well delineated set of patterns and that differs from some ideal definition of sharia which is the correct definition?

I disagree. If in fact, that's what the original text says, then I don't think it's just semantics to avoid slamming the original text.

I think it's important to distinguish between a religion or ideal - say, Christianity, or democracy - and what people do under that name. If church X doesn't follow the clear teachings of Jesus, that doesn't reflect poorly on Jesus, but on church X. If nation Y has rigged elections, that doesn't reflect poorly on democracy, but on nation Y.

It is important to be able to ask theoretical questions like "is capitalism inherently flawed?" and separate them from "how is it being practised in this situation?" If capitalism + government meddling = failure, it's unfair to say that capitalism failed. Rather, we should say that capitalism wasn't practiced.

I think the poster is just asking for the same kind of logical distinction.

Sure, if one specific church is being heterodox, you can blame that on the church. And if it were one specific nation implementing shariah law as being all these nasty things, you could say it's just that nation. But what happens when _every_ nation that implements shariah law oppresses women, prohibits freedom of religion, and in general is a repressive society? 'Shariah' is a label. If all the nations that apply that label to their system have more or less the same repressive policies, it is not very helpful to say that none of them are correctly applying the label; the point is it's a label adopted by repressive societies.

Perhaps you should educate yourself about moderate islamic countries?

Which would those be? Even the most moderate islamic countries are still way behind modern countries on the status of women, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, and other such democratic values.

Granted, many of them limit shariah law, such as in the case of Jordan, which limits it to "matters involving personal law such as marriage, divorce, inheritance and child custody." But they still have it.

> Even the most moderate islamic countries are still way behind modern countries on the status of women, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, and other such democratic values.

I wouldn't say countries like UAE, Kuwait, Turkey and many Mediterranean islamic countries are way behind. It also helps that Western countries are eroding mentioned freedoms and values themselves. See for example burqa ban in France. Now that's what I call a country without a freedom of religion.

The UAE has massive human rights issues regarding non-citizen employees. In particular, female domestic servants of foreign origin are likely to be abused. Kuwait bans women from working after 8 pm.

True, France has had some steps backwards lately, such as the expulsion of Roma. However, I think it's still reasonable to hold the middle eastern countries to a higher standard than they currently maintain. So I'm not sure what you mean by "it also helps that Western countries are eroding freedoms"; it helps who? what?

It helps to shorten the gap between "West" and "East" freedoms or lack thereof.

Anyway, I absolutely agree that Arab peninsula states still have some horrific human rights issues to deal with, especially when it comes to foreign and especially "third-world" immigrants.

But that brings us too far from the original discussion concerning Sharia law because that has nothing to do with immigrant rights, which they essentially don't have being treated as second-class at best or slaves at worst.

I think you're misunderstanding what is meant by Sharia. It is not a strict set of rules. Because of this, it is necessarily influenced by ethnic traditionalism. Now if you're looking for western countries which have Sharia courts, the United Kingdom and India are two which come to mind which allow certain civil disputes to be resolved in Sharia courts.

For a Sharia court in the UK to have the power of law though the participants in the case all first have to agree to that though, otherwise they don't have a legal leg to stand on.

So it is only after you've voluntarily agreed to be bound that the court can proceed.

The UK also has Jewish courts.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7233040.stm

If you look at most of the Middle East countries, there are a few good examples of countries that practice Islamic (NOT Sharia ;)) law. Egypt, my home country, has a nice mix of Islamic law and British martial law. Jordan's similar. So is Turkey.

Keep in mind that there are four big schools of thought (and that's just in Sunni Islam). Saudi Arabia and the gulf conform to one of those, and it's traditionally more conservative.

...when everyone was throwing around arguments against "infecting the constitution with Sharia" even though no one actually knows what Sharia is.

Sadly, quite a few of the people who are ignorant about what Sharia is are probably also ignorant about what is written in the US Constitution. We're equal opportunity ignorant here in the US. :(

The problem, as it is with any religion, is in the way men interpret the scripture. For example, Biblical law, on which all western legal systems are based, is similarly barbaric. The laws of all western societies come from the law of Moses, which is simply the ten commandments. The difference between modern interpretations of the law and old testament interpretations is that in Moses' time, the penalty for breaking any of the ten commandments was death, pure and simple. Coveted your neighbors posessions? Death. Coveted your neighbors wife? Death. Prayed to an idol of some other god? Death.

In most western societies our legal system has evolved to the point where we recognize that the punishment should fit the crime. The problem, as I see it, is that most modern muslim societies haven't progressed to this point yet. They still practice barbaric customs such as cutting the hands off of thieves, or public stonings.

As a whole, humanity needs to denounce all barbaric punishments and legal systems, regardless of origin. The thing that is so ironic to me is that some of the same religious conservatives in the US that are speaking out against Sharia law, if you ask them, will tell you they want the US to go to a biblical law system. They are pretty much one and the same at that level.

I agree with most of your points, minus the phrase "most modern Muslim societies haven't progressed to this point".

Yes, there's a fair share of the problems, but I can honestly just think of a few (3 or less) that truly practice the old barbaric stuff. Most, even though have other problems, have at least progressed away from that.

Your point is well taken. Perhaps I should say "some modern Muslim societies." I should take care not to exaggerate this.

"Coveted your neighbors posessions? Death."

That's not true. You really shouldn't just make things up to support an argument.

As far as I can tell, there is a wide variety in people's interpretation of Sharia. In practice Sharia's introduction has been recently associated with very harsh punishments (amputation, stoning):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia#Contemporary_practice

There are definitely lots of people who choose to view Sharia this way, and invariably this kind of interpretation seems to have prevailed in practical settings. So what makes your view of Sharia the One True Interpretation? Do you even have some references, from the relevant religious authorities, to the effect that these six principles you enumerate are all of Sharia and nothing else?

What you say is true, but disingenuous. It is like saying that British common law is just adherence to the principle that judgments should be made in accordance with principles that were accepted in previous judgments, and it varies widely across different jurisdictions. This is true, but British common law means a lot more than just that.

The same is true of Sharia law. It has a lot of baggage. And it doesn't always read as a Westerner might naively like to read it. In particular when it comes to Sharia law, opposition tends to center on items 2 and 4 on your list.

On #2, Sharia law protects the family, but with different definitions and severity than Western society accepts. Consider the asymmetry between men and women for divorce. Consider the punishments for adultery. Both are widespread in Sharia law, and neither is palatable to Western audiences.

More problematic is item 4. It is not (as it is in the US constitution) the protection of freedom of religion. Instead it is the protection of the Islamic religion. (With limited protections for peoples of the book.) Thus we get anti-blasphemy rules, punishment for converting Muslims to another faith, etc. This is in direct conflict with core precepts of the US Constitution. This is not an accident of interpretation. It is a central feature of having a system of law whose purpose is to support a specific religion.

This is not an accident of interpretation.

It's much less clear than this. Highly recommend watching this show:

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/inside-the-kor...

I feel the need to fact-check this.

Wikipedia's explanation of Sharia is more complex than what you say: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia. Perhaps you could share why you think Wikipedia is wrong? The article states:

"Sharia (Arabic شريعة Šarīʿa; [ʃaˈriːʕa], "way" or "path") is the sacred law of Islam. Muslims believe Sharia is derived from two primary Sources of Islamic law; namely, the divine revelations set forth in the Qur'an, and the sayings and example set by the Islamic Prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh ("jurisprudence") interprets and extends the application of Sharia to questions not directly addressed in the primary sources by including secondary sources. These secondary sources usually include the consensus of the religious scholars embodied in ijma, and analogy from the Qur'an and Sunnah through qiyas. Shia jurists replace qiyas analogy with 'aql, or "reason"."

The article further explains that Sharia covers areas of life such as diet, dress code, sexuality, personal morality, and the punishments prescribed for crimes - the aspects of law in Islamic countries that Westerners view as harsh and sometimes barbaric. For example, punishing theft with hand amputation is part of Sharia. In five Islamic countries under Sharia law the crime of Sodomy is punishable by death.

"Sharia" is no more a specific set of laws than Anglo-Saxon "Common Law". But it is a certain way of creating and judging law based on Islamic religious tradition that is incompatible with a modern secular state.

So if I were to use the term "Sharia" to refer to a strict and expansive system of law based on the Muslim religion, I would be correct.

"Perhaps you could share why you think Wikipedia is wrong? "

Sharia is a topic of highly emotional argument right now, with lots of bigotry, ignorance, and fear-mongering. That's enough reason to suspect Wikipedia might be wrong.

Wikipedia is terrible on anything like that. On things nobody much cares about, like the history of the Marvel villain MODOK, it's great.

There is such a big difference between the claim that Sharia means six very non-controversial universal values (which the original poster claims) and that Sharia is a system of law based on Islamic beliefs as refined and interpreted by Muslim holy men, that I believe we ought to be able to determine which statement is closer to the truth regardless of interfering emotion. I suspect the original poster is being disingenuous by portraying Sharia law as such a bland and harmless thing.

Actually, my experience is that Wikipedia is excellent on subjects like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology. It's generally uncontroversial topics with little interest among Wikipedia readers that have poor-quality articles; see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhus_coriaria.

Sharia law is based on two things:

1. Things from the Qur'an 2. Things from the Hadith (sayings of the Prophet)

-------------

Modern Sharia law is based on three things:

1. Qur'an 2. Hadith 3. Fiqh (which is the interpretations)

-----

That's the issue. The Fiqh part is very different from region to region and from sect to sect. Often, the really obscure laws that are brought up in arguments (take female genital mutilation for example) are often part of the Fiqh than the Sharia. That's also why, like I mentioned before, "Sharia" can be very different in Egypt compared to in Saudi Arabia.

But that is a distinction without a relevant difference. The finer points between Saudi Arabian and Egyptian law are uninteresting the context of "based on Sharia and totally ridiculous laws." Whether or not a particular crime requires a stoning in Saudia Arabia or a beheading in Egypt is just not that relevant. It's like quibling about the phonetic spelling is sort of highfalutin and irrelevant as well.

> 'it's our internet and we're just letting you weird foreigners use it'

No, he's warning others that because Libya control this particular TLD, and police it using a set of laws that aren't available in English, it's to be considered unsafe for those who do not read Arabic.

Additionally, it is even unsafe for Americans who do read Arabic, because if the site has user generated content, and one of the users submits content which is against the Islamic rules, they may use it as an excuse to seize the valuable domain.

I don't think this is about 'seizing the valuable domain', or the first one they'd've done was bit.ly.

I strongly doubt that this sort of action by NIC.ly is about money, it's about them - probably after having received political pressure - wanting to enforce their local moral/ethical standards on their ccTLD domains, particularly those held by people from outside Libya.

If they go after the highest profile sites, they call attention to themselves and risk a backlash. Reclaiming from the bottom up establishes a precedent, and allows NIC.ly to own domains before they become too popular to grab.

The moral/ethical stance is a complete pretext. If Libya was really worried about morality, they'd do something about their atrocious human rights record.

That's a very western view. As far as they're concerned, both shutting down the "adult" shortener and their human rights record are both examples of their high moral purity. Their idea of moral behaviour and yours differ, is all.

Except, of course, your idea of morality and their idea of morality is very different.

The assumption that your morality is the only one that matters pretty much reinforces the point I was trying to make with my original comment.

In any event, NIC.ly can take back any domains it wants to. You're playing under NIC.ly's rules, and if they change their rules that's their business.

Who do you think they fear a backlash from? If they change their rules to prohibit all non-Libyan registrants, they can reclaim any domains they like. I sincerely doubt that the Libyan government and NIC.ly really care what people moan about on Twitter and tech blogs.

What do you think they're planning to do with these 'valuable' domains? Nothing, because they actually have absolutely no value to anyone who hasn't already established their branding around it.

All these guys want to do is reclaim their country's TLD for their country and to exclude things that offend their local values.

And they're entirely entitled to do that.

In terms of the domain business, of course it's their ball and they can take it home if they choose, and you're probably right that it will end up being a non-issue. But I think it's possible to distinguish between 1) the practices of a perfectly valid moral system based on Islamic law, and 2) the actions of a totalitarian regime intent on building and keeping power for itself at the expense of other nations and its own people.

And what kind of backlash would that be ?

I imagine they're more pissed of from the US repeatedly dropping bombs on them than .... what 4chan DDoSing NIC.ly ?

(I'm the [former?] owner of vb.ly and that's my blog post linked above)

I found the complaint that the rules weren't in English really amusing. Why should a country's national ccTLD rules be in English? It's a domain space for that country, not for making convenient short URLs for Americans to use on Twitter.

So I'm not American, so this isn't about imperialist America wanting everything to be in English.

The issue is the Libyans WANT international folks to buy their domains - they have all of the site in English, English-speaking pre- and post-sales support and even the domains themselves are sold in US$.

The issue I'm suggesting is that if you are going to put regulations up for the use of the domain that include needing to be in compliance with Libyan Law, it's quite unhelpful not to provide ANY resources or links to where I can read Libyan Law in English (ie the same language the website is selling the domain in).

As it happens I can't find any online resource for explaining to me the gist of Libyan Law in English.

Why would a country run under Sharia law want to allow services like bit.ly and others to use their ccTLD to link to porn and other things they find offensive?

Well with that chain of thinking then bit.ly, and everyone who uses it, should be very worried. Thus I hardly think this is a "rant" as you later describe my post!

It's our internet and we're just letting you weird foreigners use it'.

That's actually your somewhat judgmental opinion. Like I said, I'm not American so this "weird foreigners" remark is off-base.

Apart from the one mention of Americans using Twitter, I deliberately made a point of using 'Western'.

Also, the kind of xenophobia, intentional or not (note that I heavily implied it was not the result of conscious thought), that leads to the 'weird foreigners' attitude is in no way unique to America. I'd imagine there's just as much of it in London as there is in Edinburgh as there is in San Francisco.

Oh, and yes, bit.ly should be worried. They should've taken this into account when planning their business and doing risk assessment.

it's quite unhelpful not to provide ANY resources or links to where I can read Libyan Law in English

Even if they could give you their entire body of law (including court decisions!), there'd be sure to be translation errors, or laws which you can't understand without cultural context. Then they'd have people complaining about getting misled. The answer is to consult a Libyan lawyer.

> While I'm as against Sharia law as the next privileged westerner/godless heathen, I found the complaint that the rules weren't in English really amusing.

Agreed, it's their privilege to put the rules up in just their home country language. After all, if you're a foreign entity you will have to abid by the local customs, and part of that is the language.

What's more stinging about this case is that it seems to me that the 'rule change' to limit two letter domains to 'locals only' is arbitrary and was created with the specific idea in mind to recover this domain.

Another red flag for me is that there is apparently plenty of adult content on .ly domains: (NSFW)

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3A.ly+porn

So in all I think he has a point, but the real lesson here is to simply not bother with such domains and register them in a place where you have a fair expectation of respect for your rights and where you can actually read and understand the rules.

If some entity would try to take ww.com away from me you can be assured I'd put up a fight and given that it would be in a jurisdiction that has a legal system that seems to work (for the most part) I'd be fairly confident about the outcome.

If it had been a .ly domain I wouldn't have spent $.10 on it.

Yeah but as I said above, the process for buying the domain is VERY intentionally internationalized - everything is in English, you pay in US$ not local currency, etc.

I would agree with you if I had gone in there and essentially bought a domain that was only really intended for local use (some ccTLDs are like that).

But when they WANT international sales and are encouraging it, it doesn't seem right not to ensure that international customers can discover what Libyan Law says if the regulations for these same domains depend on it.

> take ww.com away from me .... I'd be fairly confident about the outcome.

Unless of course you were a foreigner, especially an Libyan one then the outcome might not be so confidence inspiring.

It's not just people from the US who read English, you know. Here in Europe, you often find people from two different non-English speaking countries conversing in English because it's what they have in common.

I think it's ultimately a bit of a caveat emptor situation though: if they're not going to publish their rules in English, it means you're likely to get screwed.

Which is to be expected from a dictatorship run by a guy who dresses like the Beatles on the cover of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts club band.

For the record: I'm not American, and while I don't self-identify as 'European', Scotland/the UK is considered part of Europe.

I know that it's a lingua franca, and that there is a certain expectation that important information online will be in English - but even as someone who only speaks/reads English I think that's an unfair and unreasonable expectation.

Regardless of country, if you can't read and understand the rules/signage, you'd better have a 'native guide' or you're going to do something wrong and not understand how to put things right. That's as true for Libya/.ly as it is for Germany/.de or China/.cn.

> That's as true for Libya/.ly as it is for Germany/.de or China/.cn.

I think that you're a lot less likely to run into 'oddities' in Germany than you are in China or Libya.

I think you're more likely to run into rules printed in English in Germany, but that aside every country has their quirks. It really wasn't that long ago that Germany and France were having a go at Yahoo! over Nazi imagery that was hosted on their services, or for sale on Yahoo! Auctions.

60+ years after the end of the war, it might not be immediately obvious, especially to an American used to 'first amendment rights', that your web page with screenshots from Wolfenstein 3D is possibly illegal.

And that's just an 'oddity' that I, someone who has never even been to Germany, know about.

Another "oddity"- Germany also has/had strict laws about using foreign academic credentials, that have tripped up visiting academics: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,540459,00...

Think again; German rules for these things are different from UK/US rules (and other European nations) in several significant ways.

Particularly in relation to their data protection rules (for example).

Sure, rules differ, but someplace like Germany, you can be pretty confident that things will go through some kind of due process that can be navigated. In places like Libya, I would not really bet a lot of money on that.

Well, maybe.

But you're also running a huge risk because if they find you in violation the fines start to get nasty. We had a client in the UK that was providing hit/redirect statistics, including full IP addresses, to German clients. Under the rules that is illegal - they were fined in the region of millions of euros for it.

Germany's privacy laws are known and probably available in multiple languages. The concern here is that you might not know the law either because you can't read it, or it only exists when the government wants it to.

> it only exists when the government wants it to

every law is applied like that

So sum it up: If you don't know a rule, it still applies to you. If you register a domain in Libya you have to play by their rules and it is your responsibility to try and understand them.

And they reserve the right to make up more rules on the go.

I think that's the most important bit here, even if you understood the rules and had them translated and you abided (sp?) religiously (in this case that is to be taken literally it seems) by them, you could still lose your domain.

So building on a .ly is building on quicksand, and likely that goes for a whole bunch of other tlds.

The concept of strict liability comes to mind.

Also, FWIW, as someone who recently registered a >3 character .ly domain, the minimum-length restriction on foreign-owned domains is plastered everywhere, and in English. That kind of restriction is something you just have to keep up-to-date on if you own a ccTLD domain, in my opinion.

I must say that Lybian law != sharia.

I know the article jumped from one to the other but it is not so simple.

Ugh, except the Terms ARE in English. They took me less than 15 seconds to find: http://www.libyanspider.com/services/lydomains/terms.php

It seems like a fantastic business opportunity for someone inside the country to "represent" the domain owners, and to deal with all the legality, technicality and resolve any conflicts that arise.

Surely a service like that would have to charge an absolute fortune in order to actually provide that level of support?

Is .ly really such a hot internet property that it's worth all that? It's trendy right now, but that won't last.

it's sad to see someone passively accept such insane religious laws as totally normal and defensible.

Agreed on general point, however the sad truth is that Internet is soon to become Chinese (with their ipv6 progress and economic status), so we better be ready to translate .com rules into chinese to be good citizens ;)

...and everything was going to become Japanese in the 80's. Funny that.

Sounds like you've been listening to too much Glenn Beck.

No, I'm listening to too much Jon Stewart in fact, but it has nothing to do with where the things are headed. Read up on CNGI if really interested.

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