I don’t think he’s arguing that. What’s being argued, though, is that the attitudes of the government of Saudi Arabia are a mainstream viewpoint in the Islamic world. Those viewpoints aren’t just a fringe movement within Islam the way that the KKK is within Christianity.
That, of course, doesn’t mean that all Muslims share those views, or even that a majority does. But it still says something negative about the modern Islamic world that those views are acceptable.
Let’s reign in the hyperbole for a second. How many Muslims have committed acts of violence? What percentage of 1.75 billion is that? Is that really a “huge subset”? I agree that certain governments have deplorable human-rights records, but are you really going to indict the entire religion because some extremists are doing some fucked-up shit in the name of Islam? Lots of other problem areas, too. North Korea and China come to mind. They aren’t Muslim governments.
If you can’t understand the basic premise that bad people doing things in the name of religion doesn’t make the religion inherently bad, whether it’s Jim Jones, the KKK, or Muslim radicals, then I don’t know what else to say. I could post examples all day and you’ll just dismiss them all out-of-hand.
But they’re not. There’s no “Muslim world”. There’s the world, and there are a lot of Muslims who live in the world, and they are not all the same. There are millions of Muslims living in the United States. I haven’t heard about any of them whipping any women lately. Have you?
I think you’re forming a false impression about all Muslims based on a few sensationalist news stories. Maybe they ought to run stories like, “Muslim man still hasn’t whipped his wife”, or “Muslim family goes yet another week without suicide-bombing anyone”. They aren’t going to do that because that doesn’t sell papers. We must have a very small number of Muslims here on SDMB; I’m really surprised that we aren’t hearing from any. Maybe they’re afraid; I know I’d be.
Wait. Is the OP really saying that Shari’a law is a fringe movement in Islam?
Ogre, let’s say hypothetically that the U.S. decided to implement the penalty of death by stoning for adulterers. Many people believe that the U.S. is a Christian nation, and that is technically Christian law according to the Bible. Would you consider that representative of Christianity worldwide, or would you acknowledge the fact that the vast majority of Christians aren’t in favor of that? Does that help answer your question?
Your hypothetical aside for a moment, you do realize that many Islamic countries implement Shari’a law in a very strict sense, right? There was a story very similar to this out of Chad a year or so back. Also one from the Sudan. Not to mention Taliban Afghanistan. It’s not fringe, man. It’s fairly common.
Or I should say, I don’t think it’s nearly as “fringe” as you think it is.
We’re talking past each other now. Please read post #42 again. Perhaps you are not comprehending how big a number 1.75 billion is? Or perhaps you don’t consider Muslims who live in countries that don’t have Muslim governments as real Muslims?
I can’t for the life of me figure out why people keep bringing up these strawmen. When did I say there aren’t any countries that implement Sharia law? How can I get you to understand that the Saudi government doesn’t speak for all Muslims worldwide? Obviously I will never convince you…
And I think you have your head in the sand about how prevalent the support for Shari’a is among Muslim populations…especially those who are located in very poor, traditionally aligned areas (which is a LOT of Muslims.)
I guess I’ll never convince you.
Well, how large does support for Shariah law have to be before you don’t call it “fringe” anymore?
In your example, if the US adopted Biblical law, then Biblical law would no longer be fringe, because enough important people in the United States would have to support Biblical law that it would not be a fringe position anymore. Nevermind that it is a fringe position today.
And there really really are lots of people around the world who really do advocate Shariah law, and there really really are countries that really really do have Shariah law. Perhaps not a majority of Muslims advocate imposition of Shariah law, perhaps not even in countries where Shariah law exists. But advocation for Shariah law simply is not a fringe position in the Islamic world, and only the most naive person would think it was.
How many people? You keep saying there are 1.75 billion Muslims in the world. How many would it take for you to declare that Shariah law is not a fringe position? A million? 10 million? There are many orders of magnitude more Shariah advocates in the world than there are Klan sympathizers. How many Klan sympathizers are there? A few thousand? How many Muslims want Shariah law? Tens or even several hundreds of millions.
Before you can get an answer to that, don’t you have to ask “Which sharia law?”
A poll last year of Muslims living in Great Britain found that 40% of them wanted to live under Sharia law. 41% did not.
That’s approximately half of Muslims living in a supposedly enlightened Western society, desiring Sharia law.
I don’t see polls for other countries with substantial Muslim populations, but this site notes that most countries already having Sharia law are democracies.
But as Monty has already pointed out, there is no single Sharia Law. There are at least four prominent schools of juridical philosophy that are encompassed by the phrase “Sharia Law” and they are sufficiently different that a poll asking whether any group of Muslims would support “it” is flawed from the outset.
Large numbers of U.S. voters in 1994 supported the Republican Contract [del]on[/del] with America–and probably seriously agreed with most of it. However, the language used was particular to encouraging support and in several areas, notably those involving protection of the environment, the Republican pledge to get the government “off the backs” of industry meant “destroy laws protecting the environment” to one set of legislators and did not mean the same thing to most voters, causing the Republican dominated Congress to have to withdraw several bills submitted as part of the Contract when the actual effects were brought to the attention of the electorate.
Muslims who support a vaguely worded “support” for “Sharia Law” may or may not support actual laws requiring the stoning of adulterers, depending on which of the four major (and multiple minor) divisions of Sharia Law with which they are familiar, but assuming that 40% of British Muslims support stoning is irresponsible unless one goes back and polls them on that aspect of that particular version of Sharia law.
No, he’s saying that the Saudi government’s Wahabbi-influenced interpretation of Sharia Law is not representative of Sharia law as a whole or of Islam as a whole.
Big difference.
Very good point. As has been pointed out before, there are so many differing sects, factions, schools of thought and sub-groups of Muslims that it’s ridiculous to suggest that the actions of any one of them represent the whole. And yes, that even applies to the Sharia courts of Saudi Arabia. Their Ultra-Strict, Wahabbi-based application of the law is certainly not indicative of the attitudes held by Mohammed in the corner shop in London or Ismail in the office in Jakarta or Jamal shooting hoops in Queens.
Are any of these versions of Sharia Law not insane? (serious question, not snarky)
Well according to Wikipedia:
*Sharia law is divided into two main sections:
The acts of worship, or al-ibadat, these include:
Ritual Purification (Wudu)
Prayers (Salah)
Fasts (Sawm and Ramadan)
Charities (Zakat)
Pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj)
Human interaction, or al-mu’amalat, which includes:
Financial transactions
Endowments
Laws of inheritance
Marriage, divorce, and child care
Foods and drinks (including ritual slaughtering and hunting)
Penal punishments
Warfare and peace
Judicial matters (including witnesses and forms of evidence) *
I’m sure that *somewhere * in there are a few laws that aren’t insane…
I assume you read Monty and tomndebb’s posts, so I think that explains the issue very well. To answer your question, if you can show me evidence that even 25% of all Muslims worldwide believe that a woman should be whipped 90 times because a man blackmailed her and forced her to ride in a car with her, then I will concede your point. I don’t believe you will be able to do that.
Say it’s 20% (I think it’s higher, but I don’t have the time money or resources to make the dangerous trek through rural Algeria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, etc. etc., or the slums of Cairo, Yemen, Algiers tec. etc. just to answer this stupid question.) Do you think 20% of a population represents a “fringe group.”
No one’s saying every single Muslim supports these stupid laws. But to compare the percentage of Muslims who do with the percentage of Christians world-wide who support the KKK is absurd. It would be like calling Lutherans a fringe group.
Also, where did this law of equal religious perniciousness come from? Why does it defy the laws of physics and common sense to suggest that one religion may be more pernicious than another? Religions are doctrines. They give laws for behavior and state facts about the Universe. Surely one doctrine might be more pernicious than another.
I don’t believe that 20% of the Muslim population worldwide would agree that woman should be whipped 90 times because a man blackmailed her and forced her to ride in a car with her.
First, I made no claim as to relative percentages of support for any group. That’s a total strawman.
Second, read the previous few posts: Supporting the concept of Sharia law is not the same as agreeing that a woman should be whipped 90 times for being forced into a car. I reject your premise that the two are equivalent. As pointed out, simply saying one is in favor of Sharia law doesn’t mean they endorse everything the Saudi Government does.
Poor analogy. Lutherans aren’t radicals. I’d say it’s more analogous to Heaven’s Gate, Jonestown, or Branch Davidians.
But that’s the point. If you strictly examine the Bible, there are equally pernicious doctrines in there. If you’d pay attention to what more moderate Muslims are saying, rather than limiting yourself to whatever sensationalist stories come to your attention, you’d see that the vast majority do not subscribe to such radical views.
Don’t get me wrong - In my opinion, wanting rule under Sharia law is insane. But then, there is a huge number of Christians who would want rule under the Ten Commandments, which is equally insane.