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Comment by InclinedPlane | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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.

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

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