Tuesday, March 18, 2008

'Why Shariah?'

Noah Feldman had an article in this weekend's New York Times Magazine that hasn't generated nearly the blowback that his now notorious "Orthodox Paradox" essay did. The recent article was titled "Why Shariah?" and it began with an equally notorious rhetorical outburst by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, last month.
The archbishop noted that “the law of the Church of England is the law of the land” there; indeed, ecclesiastical courts that once handled marriage and divorce are still integrated into the British legal system, deciding matters of church property and doctrine. His tentative suggestion was that, subject to the agreement of all parties and the strict requirement of protecting equal rights for women, it might be a good idea to consider allowing Islamic and Orthodox Jewish courts to handle marriage and divorce.
Then all hell broke loose. From politicians across the spectrum to senior church figures and the ubiquitous British tabloids came calls for the leader of the world’s second largest Christian denomination to issue a retraction or even resign. Williams has spent the last couple of years trying to hold together the global Anglican Communion in the face of continuing controversies about ordaining gay priests and recognizing same-sex marriages. Yet little in that contentious battle subjected him to the kind of outcry that his reference to religious courts unleashed. Needless to say, the outrage was not occasioned by Williams’s mention of Orthodox Jewish law. For the purposes of public discussion, it was the word “Shariah” that was radioactive.

In some sense, the outrage about according a degree of official status to Shariah in a Western country should come as no surprise. No legal system has ever had worse press. To many, the word “Shariah” conjures horrors of hands cut off, adulterers stoned and women oppressed. By contrast, who today remembers that the much-loved English common law called for execution as punishment for hundreds of crimes, including theft of any object worth five shillings or more? How many know that until the 18th century, the laws of most European countries authorized torture as an official component of the criminal-justice system? As for sexism, the common law long denied married women any property rights or indeed legal personality apart from their husbands. When the British applied their law to Muslims in place of Shariah, as they did in some colonies, the result was to strip married women of the property that Islamic law had always granted them — hardly progress toward equality of the sexes.
In fact, for most of its history, Islamic law offered the most liberal and humane legal principles available anywhere in the world.
Feldman goes on to argue that we are too quick to associate Shariah with punishment for rape victims and stonings of adulterers and homosexuals.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Absurd. In fact, for most of its history, Jewish law offered the most liberal and humane legal principles available anywhere in the world. In fact, they were radical and revolutionary in establishing rights for servants, captives, women, children, naturalized citizens, resident aliens etc., and in putting a safety net under people who remained doomed under the gentiles of every time and place to today. With the distinction of maintaining it as a dynamic and living law.

Too bad Noah Feldman can't bring himself to say that.

Anonymous said...

Nonsense. Jewish Law, like most other religous laws is about race purity and spiritual and social extortion based on a specious extrapolation and false and self serving interpretations on the part of the village shaman. Rights for servants and women? In what world? Ask any broad who's had to procure a get from a recalcitrant, mysognistic, rabbi. Ask any secular jewish israeli, about the constant attempts to spiritually disenfranchise him by the orthodox jewish religous establishment. Jewish Religous law as a safety net to protect against gentile exceesses? There are enough Jewish dead fertilizing polish and ukrainian cornfields to be testament to the lack of efficacy of that concept. As far as Mr. Feldman is concerned, he is spot on. Apparently Mr. Feldman's experieneces with the orthodox jewish community, as illustrated by his article; "The Orthodox Paradox" did not leave him feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. I guess when his orthodox jewish high school refused to allow his korean, gentile wife to be in a lousy reunion photo,he failed to recognize those "liberal and humane" attributes that are the hallmark of Jewish law.