About Obama and Sharia Law

[BeBMan]

Wouldn't it be hilarious

[SpencerH]

Despite that the fatwa declaration was not "legal" by sharia law, I'd like to point out that Salman Rushdie still has a $2.8M bounty for his head as a result of his being apostate (his father was moslem). So there must be a few moslems who take Islamic apostasy rather seriously.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Aeson
How would sharia law punish your dealings on the internet?

*backs away slowly

[Ramo]

Listen how many Muslims do you know and more importantly have you ever talked about politics with them?

My parents are Muslim. The vast majority of my extended family is Muslim. What do you think?

Your opinion is total nonsense.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Ramo


My parents are Muslim. The vast majority of my extended family is Muslim. What do you think?

Your opinion is total nonsense.

Are you Muslim? Well if you are, you must admit apostasy=death penalty is a very widespread notion in the Middle east and Indonesia.

[Joseph]

Good reading.

A question. If Obama becomes President, does that mean that he would not be able to travel to the area around the Middle East because some nut case would try to kill him?

[DaShi]

Yup, that's why Bush is free to visit any Middle Eastern country without the Secret Service crimping his style.

[Ramo]

Are you Muslim? Well if you are, you must admit apostasy=death penalty is a very widespread notion in the Middle east and Indonesia.

No, I'm an atheist. Closer to an apostate than Obama...

And while it may be widespread in limited areas of the Middle East (I don't know where you're getting your ideas of Indonesia from), it's not a dominant sentiment. And the point, again, is that no one considers Obama an apostate. Or more specifically, the vast majority of folks who call Obama an apostate seem to be right wing Christians...

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Ramo


No, I'm an atheist. Closer to an apostate than Obama...

And while it may be widespread in limited areas of the Middle East (I don't know where you're getting your ideas of Indonesia from), it's not a dominant sentiment. And the point, again, is that no one considers Obama an apostate. Or more specifically, the vast majority of folks who call Obama an apostate seem to be right wing Christians...

I suppose you felt comfortable switching from one mistrusted group to another.


Its interesting how in the US the most mistrusted group are atheists. It defies logic and reason. Ok, since you where a muslim I rank your opinion about the sam I did that of the guy I knew. But isn't it possible that if Obama did something unpopular the apostate name calling would start?

[GePap]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/opinion/01pubed.html?pagewanted=2&ref=opinion

The Public Editor
Entitled to Their Opinions, Yes. But Their Facts?
By CLARK HOYT
Published: June 1, 2008

ON May 12, The Times published an Op-Ed article by Edward N. Luttwak, a military historian, who argued that any hopes that a President Barack Obama might improve relations with the Muslim world were unrealistic because Muslims would be “horrified” once they learned that Obama had abandoned the Islam of his father and embraced Christianity as a young adult.

Luttwak made several sweeping statements that the scholars I interviewed said were incorrect or highly debatable, including assertions that in Islam a father’s religion always determines a child’s, regardless of the facts of his upbringing; that Obama’s “conversion” to Christianity was apostasy; that apostasy is, with few exceptions, a capital crime; and that a Muslim could not be punished for killing an apostate.

Obama was born in Hawaii to a mother from Kansas with Christian roots and a Kenyan father whose own father had converted to Islam. When Obama was a toddler, his father left the family. His mother later married an Indonesian Muslim, and Obama spent five years in Jakarta, where he attended Catholic and Muslim schools and, according to The Los Angeles Times, was enrolled in the third and fourth grades as a Muslim.

Luttwak wrote that given those facts, Obama was a Muslim and his mother’s Christian background was irrelevant. But Sherman A. Jackson, a professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Michigan, cited an ancient Islamic jurist, Ibn al-Qasim, who said, “If you divorce a Christian woman and ignore your child from her to the point that the child grows up to be a Christian, the child is to be left,” meaning left to make his own choice. Jackson said that there was not total agreement among Islamic jurists on the point, but Luttwak’s assertion to the contrary was wrong.

Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, said the majority opinion among Islamic jurists is that the law of apostasy can apply only to individuals who knowingly decide to be Muslims and later renege. One school of thought, he said, is that an individual must be at least a teenager to make the choice. Obama’s campaign told The Los Angeles Times last year that he “has never been a practicing Muslim.” As a young adult, he chose to be baptized as a Christian.

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, a professor of law at Emory University, said that Sharia, or Islamic law, including the law of apostasy, does not apply to an American or anyone outside the Muslim world. Of the more than 40 countries where Muslims are the majority, he said, Sharia is the official legal system only in Saudi Arabia and Iran, and even there apostasy is unevenly prosecuted, and apostates often wind up in prison, not executed.

Several of the scholars agreed that, in classical Sharia, apostasy is a capital crime, but they said that Islamic thinking is evolving. Mahmoud Ayoub, a professor of Islamic studies and comparative religion at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif., said, “Whether (apostasy) is punishable by death or not, there are different opinions.”

Last year, Egypt’s highest Islamic cleric, Sheik Ali Gomaa, the grand mufti, spoke out against killing apostates. He said punishment for those abandoning the religion would come in the afterlife.

All the scholars argued that Luttwak had a rigid, simplistic view of Islam that failed to take into account its many strains and the subtleties of its religious law, which is separate from the secular laws in almost all Islamic nations. The Islamic press and television have reported extensively on the United States presidential election, they said, and Obama’s Muslim roots and his Christian religion are well known, yet there have been no suggestions in the Islamic world that he is an apostate.

Luttwak said the scholars with whom I spoke were guilty of “gross misrepresentation” of Islam, which he said they portrayed as “a tolerant religion of peace;” he called it “intolerant.” He said he was not out to attack Obama and regretted that, in the editing, a paragraph saying that an Obama presidency could be “beneficial” was cut for space.

Shipley, the Op-Ed editor, said he regretted not urging Luttwak to soften his language about possible assassination, given how sensitive the subject is. But he said he did not think the Op-Ed page was under any obligation to present an alternative view, beyond some letters to the editor.

I do not agree. With a subject this charged, readers would have been far better served with more than a single, extreme point of view. When writers purport to educate readers about complex matters, and they are arguably wrong, I think The Times cannot label it opinion and let it go at that.

I hope this article helps.

[TheStinger]

Originally posted by SpencerH
Despite that the fatwa declaration was not "legal" by sharia law, I'd like to point out that Salman Rushdie still has a $2.8M bounty for his head as a result of his being apostate (his father was moslem). So there must be a few moslems who take Islamic apostasy rather seriously.

Whilst the fatwa was outrageous, it wasn't for apostasy it was for insulting islam, Rushdie was brought up as a muslim as a younger man and i think he is now.

Some of the rantings about him where that he was an apostate but that wasn't the reason he was issued with the fatwa

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by TheStinger


Whilst the fatwa was outrageous, it wasn't for apostasy it was for insulting islam, Rushdie was brought up as a muslim as a younger man and i think he is now.

Some of the rantings about him where that he was an apostate but that wasn't the reason he was issued with the fatwa

Apostasy wasnt used as justification for Khomeini's first decalaration of the fatwa

Broadcast on Iranian radio, the judgement read:

In the name of God the Almighty. We belong to God and to Him we shall return. I would like to inform all intrepid Muslims in the world that the author of the book Satanic Verses, which has been compiled, printed, and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet, and the Qor'an, and those publishers who were aware of its contents, are sentenced to death. I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, where they find them, so that no one will dare to insult the Islamic sanctities. Whoever is killed on this path will be regarded as a martyr, God willing. In addition, if anyone has access to the author of the book but does not possess the power to execute him, he should point him out to the people so that he may be punished for his actions. May God's blessing be on you all. Rullah Musavi al-Khomeini.

but Rushdies apostasy was used by Khomeini as justification for why the fatwa would be maintained after Rushdie apologized. Khamenei mentioned last in 2005

Ayatollah Khamenei said in his message: “They talk about respect towards all religions, but they support such a mahdour al-damm mortad as Salman Rushdie.”

" mortad is a reference to someone who has committed apostasy by leaving Islam while mahdour al-damm is a term applying to someone whose blood may be shed with impunity. "

[Dr Strangelove]

It's apparent that Obama's father had already abandoned Islam by the time he met Obama's mother. It's also apparent that he eventually became a Communist, further reinforcing the idea that he had abandoned Islam.

[DaShi]

Well, this settles it. I'm voting for McCain because he is the friend of Islam and none of them will be angry at him.