20 Facts About Sharia Law That The Radicals Hide
Hasan Mahmud
There are five Madhabs (schools of law) after the names of the Sunni Jurist Imams Abu Hanifa, Shifi’i, Hanbal, Malik and the Shiite Imam Jaffar Sadiq. Hanafi law dominates more than half of Sunni world; Saudis adopted Hanbali law and Iran adopted Jafari law.
- The Imams wrote a little. After their death other Imams of their following added their laws in their Madhabs.
- The Imams were not appointed by Caliphs; they created the laws personally.
- None of the Imams wanted to establish a jurist sect after their names.
- None of them accepted government posts in spite of several requests of the Caliphs.
- Imam Malik refused the Caliph’s request to enact his law as the State Law.
- There are more than six thousand laws in Hanafi manual Hedaya and Shafi’i manual Umdat Al Salik. Many are good laws, some became obsolete with time such as slave-laws and some need update such as laws about women and non-Muslims.
- It is established that the sources of the laws are the Quran, Hadiths (Prophet’s (S)) examples, Ijma (Consensus) and Qyias (personal reasoning). Actually there are at least eleven sources of Sharia law including the Bible and local customs.
- There are lots of crucial differences among the laws on the same issue, so much so that in a particular case the criminal is acquitted in Hanafi law but executed in Maliki law.
- Sharia laws were created before Hadiths were collected and falsely created. There are lots of false Hadises legitimizing oppression and injustice.
- For a thousand years Sharia laws were floating. The Indian emperor Aurangzeb codified Hanafi law for the first time by the name Fatwa Alamgiri in 17th Based on that the Ottoman Caliph codified a shorter version in 1869.
- The first impact of five Madhabs was violent fragmentation of Muslim societies. Followers of one Madhab used to curse all others and did not pray behind Imams of other Madhabs.
- At one point marriage between followers of Imams Abu Hanifa and Shifi’i was banned.
- Followers of Imam Shifi’i beat Imam Malik to death.
- The Caliphs severely tortured and injured all the five Imams; Imam Abu Hanifa was beaten and poisoned to death in prison; so was Imam Jaffor Sadiq.
- Women’s voice was never reflected in creating the laws.
- There is not a single female Sharia-Imam in Muslim history.
- There has never been any research on the impact of Sharia law on human/women’s lives.
- With time laws such as killing apostates or amputation of thieves’ limbs were slowly extinct; but recently those came back forcefully.
- The spirit of the institution of Sharia law is global domination. Lots of Sharia-organizations answer legal questions of millions of Muslims who apply those answers on their lives. This is an invisible global Islamic State.
- The institution of Sharia law is rejected by millions of Muslims and organizations including Nahdatul Ulama, one of the biggest Islamic organizations of the world led by the late Indonesian president Abrur Rahman Wahid.
Hasan Mahmud is member of advisory board of World Muslim Congress and general secretary of Muslims Facing Tomorrow, Canada.