Sharia in the Light of Pluralism

Moral diktats are always on dodgy ground, since they depend on a perfect revelation. Both the Bible and the Qu'ran are thoroughly imperfect revelations. Issues about who wrote what, and when, why and how, are seemingly never satisfactorily answered. As far as he Qu'ran is concerned, how do we know that Muhammad was telling the truth about his private revelations, let alone how we know whether they were accurately committed to paper the many years later...? And so on.

When, in a modern society, we are presented with multiple claims as to moral absolutes, and these claims contradict each other, we really need an objective, or rather neutral, way of dealing with said claims. We need to do moral philosophy and use reason.

Stoning people left right and centre doesn't accord well with modern morality. What is interesting is that when we look at, say, human sacrifice in the context of the Aztecs, we are repulsed. We couldn't imagine, seriously, a scenario where killing someone to appease a god or gods would be morally acceptable.

And yet that is exactly what Islam does. It declares, through its application of sharia law (which springs out of the Qu'ran and the Hadith), that death be meted out for any number of crimes against God. And the manner of these deaths is never nice. As Aryan Hirsi Ali states in Heretic:

Cultural relativists prefer to wrap the issue of sharia in the intellectual equivalent of a black jilbab or blue burqa and intone the old platitudes that we should be nonjudgmental about the religious practices of others. Why? The ancient Aztecs and other peoples practiced human sacrifice, tearing the still-beating hearts out of their sacrificial victims. We teach our children that this happened five hundred years ago, but we don’t condone it—and wouldn’t if the practice were suddenly revived in Mexico today. So why do we condone the “sacrifice” of women or homosexuals or lapsed Muslims for “crimes” such as apostasy, adultery, blasphemy, marrying outside of their faith, or simply wishing to marry the partner of their choice? Why, aside from the publication of reports by human rights organizations, is there no discernible reaction?

In the twenty-first century, I believe that all decent human beings can agree that such barbarous acts should not be tolerated. They can and must be condemned and prosecuted as crimes, not accepted as legitimate punishments.

The abuses carried out under sharia are irrefutable. If we are to have any hope for a more peaceful, more stable planet, these punishments must be set aside.

But throughout the Islamic world, these punishments are embedded so firmly into the cultures and governance of such countries that it is difficult to see a way around them.

There is a real power in making direct analogies and comparisons to religions that have become extinct or mythology, because we reject such worldviews so easily. Their "ridiculous" claims and practices are refuted almost out of hand. And yet, in reality, there is little to really differentiate them other than the present number of people who adhere to them. They are still based on outlandish claims that do not hold up to scrutiny.

And when barbarous moral acts are sustained by such beliefs, we need to reject those beliefs very strongly indeed. We need to condemn them in the strongest possible sense. We need to see them as violations of human rights. We need to hold countries like Saudi Arabia to account, rather than pandering to their economic ideals.

It is tough, navigating through these swamps in a way that is most likely to enforce change in said countries. I am just not sure that whatever approach we are taking, as the Western world, is particularly working. Perhaps it is now time to be stronger in our condemnation of barbaric human rights violations, whilst holding on to the basic idea of moral liberalism, if that is possible. As my friend used to say, we need "liberalism with teeth".