Global issues, agendas colour sharia debate
HAROON SIDDIQUI
"Nobody thinks the extreme sections of sharia will be carried out. But still, if Canada accepts this, it means it will give credibility to the sharia law around the world."
That admission by Sheila Ayala of the Humanist Association of Canada shows how the emotional debate on the proposed religious arbitration for Muslims is not about Ontario alone.
It is also about the world of Islam, more particularly, the role of women in it, and the debate on it involving Muslims and non-Muslims, as well as Islamophobes who routinely use it as a stick to beat up Muslims.
It is about the rocky post-9/11 relationship between the West and the Muslim world.
It is about the evolving relationship between the West and its growing Muslim populations — 12 million in Europe, up to 6 million in America and more than 600,000 in Canada.
It is about how Europe mistreats its minorities but immigrant North America integrates them into the common enterprise of building a mutually beneficial society, Canada more so than America.
It is about a debate among Muslims themselves, which brings forth apologetics — of both the right and the left, if that's the right terminology.
It is about the estrangement of some Muslim women from their faith or, at least, from the Muslim culture of patriarchy.
This is a minefield.
Let's attempt a way out.
Al-Sharia — literally, the way — denotes not just a penal code, as widely assumed, but the entire ethos of Muslims, well beyond the five basics: faith in Allah and his Messenger; praying; fasting; alms-giving; and, if affordable, performing the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca.
Sharia prescribes halal and haram — the permissible and the banned. It gives guidance on one's relationship with the Creator and fellow human beings, including non-Muslims.
The sharia emanates from the Qur'an and the sunna, the sayings and the deeds of the Prophet Muhammad. But much of it was developed by jurists.
Most of these jurists held that much of the Qur'an and the sunna, like the corpus of other religions, is open to ijtihad, interpretation, which can and must evolve with time.
Alas, there hasn't been much of it lately, due to colonization and intellectual stagnation.
On women's issues, male interpretations have been made worse by cultural practices, especially in divorce, custody of children and cases of rape in which women get blamed and brutally punished.
Military or monarchical rulers have made matters worse. They seek legitimacy by invoking Islam, often at the expense of women and non-Muslims.
In lawless lands, such as Pakistan and Nigeria, ill-educated mullahs build populist followings through misogynist fatwas that serve as tools of terror even when not carried out.
All this prompts the argument that Islam is great, its implementation is bad; Qur'an is equitable, man-made sharia is not.
But that doesn't explain the Qur'anic disadvantages for women on inheritance laws or their testimony counting as half.
That's only half the story, comes the answer. Women's testimony counts for more in family matters, and daughters cannot be deprived of their share of inheritance, as they can be under, say, Canadian law.
But such explanations no longer suffice for many who point out that there was more gender equality in the early Islamic era than at present.
The debate, raging for centuries, has come alive, partly due to 9/11. Terrorism has also triggered apologetics of a new kind, from some Muslims in the West.
Some call themselves "progressive," as if to say they are not regressive. Some feel the need to apologize for the actions of crazies everywhere. Some join the chorus of Islam-bashing — an increasingly profitable trade.
This is not to say that some may not believe what they say. But many seem to be striking poses, to escape the collective guilt being spread around.
If so, we as a society need to ponder our role in making them so pathetically defensive.
Meanwhile, anti-Islamists — either religiously or politically motivated — wade into the debate with their own mantra: Islam is evil and so are Muslims.
Global issues and agendas thus weigh down the Ontario debate. The media's sensationalist and sometimes shoddy reporting has not helped.
What's the way forward?
This is a Canadian issue with relatively easy Canadian solutions.
If freedom of religion is to mean anything, internal religious debates of all faiths are best left to the believers, so long as they are not violating the law.
It is of no help to be told that Britain rejected a request for the implementation of sharia there.
First, Canada needs no lessons from racism-plagued England on how to deal fairly and equitably with all its citizens.
Second, what is being proposed in Ontario is not sharia, even if its proponents have grandly called it so.
They cannot impose sharia here. All they can offer is mediation in civil disputes between two people coming forward voluntarily. This is what churches and synagogues already do.
Muslim groups have no choice but to operate within the Canadian law.
(In fact, sharia enjoins Muslims to obey the law of the land where they live, so long as it lets them practise their religion, which is the case in Canada. The principle is based on sharia's emphasis on al-maslaha — the common good.)
The small Toronto group proposing the mediation service is only one of dozens representing Ontario's 352,000 Muslims. Nobody needs to utilize its services and other groups can set up their own. Women using them, as other mediation services, need to be made fully aware of their rights.
What we cannot have is one law for Muslims and another for others. Either we have the 1991 Arbitration Act available to all, or to none.
That's the Canadian way — which is why the world looks up to us as a model nation.
