Brunei's sultan to implement Sharia penal code

I've been resisting for some time the temptation to start a thread about atrocities committed in the name of Islam (and there have been quite a few lately) and what I can consider to acts of barbarism justified in the name of Allah, particularly under Shariah law, but this article made me want to discuss this here.

Stoning to death, flogging, imprisonment till repentence, torture and death for Apostasy, amputations, not to mention the way that Shariah law justifies the beating of women and blatant discrimination against both women and children, non-believers and atheists, non-muslims and homosexuals, and the suppression of contradictory critical thinking and exposure to alternative belief systems, is this really something we should be tolerant of? Is this a type of behaviour that we want to allow to propagate under the dubious protection of some vague concept of 'religious freedoms', 'religious privilege' or 'respect'?

We can all argue till we're blue in the face about whether or not Islam is a 'worse' religion than any of the others, and even with a charitable interpretation of what exactly 'worse' means, it may still not be possible to prove anything, but I am nevertheless very glad that I don't live in a country run by an openly Muslim government, particularly one that implements Shariah. I realise that this isn't an argument, just a personal observation, but it stuns me that I live in a world where I can read an article about how Physicists are expanding the Standard Model to include Dark Matter Physics and help explain the universe that we live in and then the very next article is about people cutting other people's hands off because they think a god wants them to. How can we be so advanced and still so primitive?

Are there any Muslims who post here, or anyone else for that matter, who'd like to mount a defence of Shariah law? Is there anyone here who would be happy to live under Shariah?

I myself am regularly annoyed at how criticism of Islam and then specifically Islamic law tradition is regularly met with very childish and immature replies. I think I was accused about 20 times for "hating muslims" (which for the record is an almost exact quote) the last time I voiced my opinion on the issue.

There is a clear trend that predominantly Islamic countries enforce Islamic law through the state, it is also a clear trend that all these countries score very poorly on measures of liberty like the democracy index. Anyone with the capacity to read would also see that there is a clear conflict between Abrahamic law and modern conceptions of human rights. Briefly stated I think both the correlation and the causal links are pretty much in the open.

I can only assume that some people are not able to grasp that criticising trends is fully legitimate even when exceptions aplenty apply. There is little wrong with criticising "western" culture for causing a wasteful over-expenditure of resources, even if we can find many individuals in those cultures that aren't wasteful.

What do you propose? We invade them? We tell them off? trade sanctions?

First and foremost we need to not be shy about, or afraid of being critical. Islam, or any other belief system, should not be immune to analysis and criticism. I think there's a case to be made that Islam is attempting to become just that.

See the quote below from this article - New Atheism should be able to criticise Islam without being accused of Islamophobia:

Maybe he does not propose anything? Criticism, raising concerns or asking questions is fair game even if one not have ready answers on the matters. It's only when the aim of your criticism is to attack as opposed to constructive debate you have a problem.

This specific debate is mostly about a) whether a problem actually exists b) if it should be dealt with if it does.

As for your suggestions:
War: Western countries can't currenly win wars. We can only avoid a tactical loss.
Telling them off: Relatively inefficient and when done at the individual level, dire outcomes are not unheard of.
Trade sanctions: Effective, but means a lot of prolonged suffering for local population

I agree, and when I am critical of your belief system, you strenuously defend it (Im not saying youre different, everyone does the same)

So thats a problem right away. That critisising their belief system automatically puts them on the defensive, which is not conducive to change or learning or anything that you might want.

It depends what you mean by "critisism" I guess

Brunei is an interesting country because despite its location and obvious differences, it is rather similar to Saudi Arabia. That is, a combination of massive oil wealth dominating the GDP that entrenches a royal family that strongly pushes religious conservativism (even if the population is more pluralistic than Saudi Arabia's) that is or at least was a major jewel of a western imperial empire. So much of the political factors that lead to SA being as it is carry over here. It would be nice if this was different, or if such inherently conservative regimes didn't have incentives to promote religious conservatism among the population, but such as life.

As for "defending sharia" well this is hardly a monolith. Sharia of course is very broad and encompasses a great many things of which these are interpreted, implemented, and emphasized differently around the world. Do I defend specific punishments like stoning or amputation for various crimes? Obviously not, and nobody here is going to do that.

But the criticism isn't against "them". Then we would need a big list of all who support whatnot and all who oppose whatnot. The criticism is towards a trend which we can clearly trace towards Islam and Islamic law (which, for the record, is a far far broader concept than Sharia).

Possibly, although Im pretty certain that any Muslim is going to perceive an attack on Islam as an attack on themselves, whether that is what is intended or not.

Sure, but what I don't do is accuse you of racism or mightybooshaphobia, claim mightyboosh freedom or privileges to believe what I will (indirectly accusing you of attacking my freedom to believe what I will), accuse you of disrespect, as if that somehow makes my opinions safe from criticism etc etc etc

That's their problem not mine. I don't have any issues with people being defensive, what I don't like is when they get indignant, as if they're immune to being criticised or that you're somehow being offensive in daring to critique them.

I'm using this - "the analysis and judgement of the merits and faults of......"

Ironically, while I was typing 'criticism' into Google to get a nicely worded definition, one of the auto-suggestions of what I might be looking for was 'criticism of islam'.

A problem arises when you blame Islam for such issues that are not specific to Islamic cultures and are not specifically caused by the Islamic religion.

Those weren't the only Sharia punishments that I mentioned, what about the others? What's your overall impression of Shariah?

I can't see why the problem would have to be specific. That essentially means you could only criticise any given culture for unique issues. For example we would be unable to criticize nazism for genocide.

As for causation, the Islamic law tradition (not to be confused with Sharia which is merely the quran/bible/torah-given religious rules) marries state and religion. As far as political issues go, it doesn't get more causal than that.

Every nazi regime engaged in genocide. Not every Islamic culture supports all (or even the same) aspects of Sharia law as part of legal governance.

Well we wouldn't be able to blame the root cause on nazism, which seems fitting since most of our cultures are products of genocide right?
Yes but what you are ignoring that skews this is state is a religion.

Is anybody doing that ITT?

ya the op is doing it. Or you are asking if Muslims believe in the validity of shariah law?

This argument falls completely flat on its face because "A not being unique to X" does not mean "A is caused by X". If I were to follow your logic through, you couldn't blame me for shooting your mother... because a lot of people shoot people.

It does stand to follow and I don't think it falls my argument flat.

So what you are saying is that if we can find a group of nazis who opposed the Endlosung, then we couldn't criticise nazism for the genocide?

Or did you merely swap around "country" and "culture" to make it fit your case?

It does indeed fall flat, because you are saying two separate phenomena can't have similar outcomes (and they are only similar, not identical... an important distinction).

That article states that "The law would apply only to Muslims," so even if I think that the punishment is too severe, they presumably don't, since most Muslims approve of Sharia law from the stats I've seen.

I don't at all agree with the severity of these punishments, but I think it should be noted that these crimes are far more severe in the eyes of Muslims living in places like Brunei, than they are to us in America. We may think of stealing as an innocent crime committed perhaps by a juvenile, and cannot see it as anything worse since we were raised in this culture, but it is not the same to them. The same goes for adultery, where Hollywood often glamourizes affairs, Muslim cultures are not nearly as nonchalant.

I'm not trying to condone or justify their behaviour, but if you see things from their perspective the crimes are much more severe. Yes, I think it's a drastic measure, but I also think there are bigger issues in our own backyard that are just as deplorable.

I'm not at all opposing MB's outrage, obviously it's a crappy world.

We can criticism them but we are not addressing genocide by combating nazism, especially of course if our plan is to genocide nazis, and if we at home are still finished the last remnants of our own genocides.

Doing so creates a hypocrisy that fuels hate, and then we become at least equally responsible for such isolation.

In this example genocide is bigger than nazism and must be seen as such. In context of the op, such harsh penalties or whatever else is offered as an offensive way of life, is not a shariah problem.

It would come to a question of representation, first. Is that group representative of a larger collection, or are they some offshoot group?

Then it would come to an analysis of values and the expressions of those values.

Basically, what do you think nazism is? Just replace nazism with Islam and the questions are equivalent.

Potentially, but I don't know what nazism is as a culture except as an expression of what the country did. So I don't see a meaningful distinction.

No because the cause of shooting my mother is perception. And you should not choose the perception that fuels further violence (and or doesn't suppress future violence) then you become guilty of such acts. A person lives in an ignorant unfair environment, has teacher that instill violent behavior, is not so responsible for the things they do compared to the society that raised them in this upbringing.