Shari’a vs. Civilization

Welcome Dharmaveer to the Counterjihad blogosphere.

Regular readers know that Gates of Vienna urges an alliance among Jews, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Taoists, atheists, and indeed any group of people that doesn’t believe in Allah or Mohammed.

India is a natural ally in the struggle against the Great Jihad, because it has been on the receiving end of the greatest abominations ever dealt out to the infidels by Islam. It has the world’s largest Muslim minority — somewhere between 140 and 165 million followers of the Prophet, depending on whose figures you use — and experiences horrific Muslim terrorist attacks almost daily, of which the recent Mumbai atrocity is simply the most well-known.

Dharmaveer has this to say about himself and his blog, “Thoughts of a nationalist Indian”:

I am a software engineer in Bangalore, India. I have been studying Islam for the past 8 years, and have thoroughly read the Kuran, the 4 canonical Hadiths, the Sirah, and various other books of Islamic jurisprudence such as Umdat al Salik etc. I have literally spend hours daily for these past years learning about Islam. Following suggestions from many friends, and after the Mumbai Jihadi attacks, I decided to make this blog to share ideas about the unique threat we Hindus face from radical Islam and its core ideology of Jihad upon kafirs.

I want to also use this blog to build bridges with the West, which faces the same assault we Hindus do. Hindu and Western civilization cherish the same ideal of freedom, a fact that contributes to the success of Hindus in Western countries. We must stand together to protect this ideal, else we will surely perish together.

And he explains his blogging pseudonym thusly:

This blog is dedicated to Sambhaji — the oldest son of Shivaji — who was given the title of “Dharmaveer” for refusing to convert to Islam after being scientifically tortured for over 20 days by Aurangzeb.

He died a Hindu.

With Dharmaveer’s kind permission, I reproduce one of his recent posts below:

Shari’a vs. Civilization

Modern civilisation is based upon a few axioms. These are held as self-evident, and while not every society has been able to arrive at successful practice of them, most would agree with them in principle. These are:

1.		Equality of all human beings in the eyes of the law. In particular, men and women are equal in the eyes of the law, and members of all religious groups are equal in the eyes of the law.
2.		Freedom of beliefs in general, and religion in particular. A person is free to choose his beliefs, including her/his faith and the manner of her/his worship.
3.		Freedom of expression and freedom to dissent. Freedom to intellectually scrutinize any doctrine, including a religious one.
4.		Belief in democracy as the ideal mode of governance.

Once again, while no society has arrived at this perfect ideal in practise, most modern nations would agree to all four points in principle.

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But not Islam. Not Shari’a. Islamic law (Shari’a) is categorically and emphatically opposed to ALL 4 axioms of modern civilization. Let us inspect each one in turn.

1. Shari’a law denies equality to women and to non-Muslims. Both the Kuran and Hadith — the foundations of Shari’a law — assert that women are inferior to men, and this is reflected in Shari’a law. In particular, the testimony of a woman is worth only half of a man in a Shari’a court.

Similarly, since the Kuran and Hadith assert that “unbelievers” are not the equal of Muslims in any manner, the testimony of a non-Muslim is worth only half of a Muslim.

Once again, this is not just the case with “radical Islamists”, but has been agreed upon by all 4 schools of Sunni jurisprudence (Hanafi, Shafi, Hanbali, Maliki) since their beginning.

2. While Islam exhorts all Muslims to wage continuous war (Jihad) upon non-Muslims in order to expand the Islamic state, Shari’a law does not allow any Muslim to leave his faith. This includes someone who may have originally been of a different faith before converting to Islam, and now wants to return to her/his original faith. The penalty for a Muslim who leaves Islam is death, according to all 4 schools of Sunni jurisprudence. This is based on numerous Hadith where either Muhammad directly says that those who leave Islam must be killed, or his close companions bear witness to him having said so. In several Hadith, this sentence is actually carried out (i.e., a former Muslim is put to death, and this is recorded in the Hadith). Indeed, there is a Hadith which records the execution of such a person (who was originally Jewish, became Muslim, and reverted to Judaism).

Shari’a law also does not give non-Muslims the right to build or repair their places of worship. It does not allow idol worship as a means of worship, and generally approves of the demolition of the temples of anyone it considers “polytheist” or “idolator”. This has been used to justify the destruction of literally thousands of Hindu temples all over India during the years of Islamic rule. Even today, strict implementations of shari’a law demolish idols, such as the Taliban’s destruction of the centuries old Bamiyan Buddhas.

3. Shari’a does not allow any sort of open discussion of Islam. Islam is held to be a doctrine straight from Allah, binding upon humans for all time and in all places. Hence, criticism of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad is punishable by death. This is part of law even in countries that do not have full fledged Shari’a law, such as Pakistan. Under Pakistan’s Tauheen-e-rasool (literally “disrespect of Prophet”) act, any criticism of Muhammad is punishable with death.

4. Shari’a is a strict alternative to democracy. In other words, Shari’a posits itself as a political system, and does not recognize the legitimacy of any other political system such as democracy. Every single school of Islamic jurisprudence says governance by Shari’a is the only acceptable form of Islamic government. Indeed, bringing about such governance by Shari’a law is considered the ultimate goal of the Muslim “umma” (Muslim nation). Democracy is categorically rejected as an acceptable system of governance. Almost every Islamist writing pours scorn on democracy and secularism as “western inventions” that are “contaminating the Muslim ummah.”

So Islamic Shari’a law is opposed to all four basic axioms of modern civilization as we know it. It is not a coincidence that Islamic societies “look very different” from free societies. I have not even gone into issues such as barbarity of punishments (such as stoning to death, chopping limbs etc. which are imposed under Shari’a law). I am speaking simply of the basic axioms that underlie modern human civilization and society and which mankind has generally come to agree upon, with the one exception of Islam. Islam rejects all these axioms. To accept any imposition of Shari’a law, no matter how “harmless” it is deliberately made to appear, would be tantamount to rolling back centuries of human civilisational progress. I particularly appeal to British readers of this blog to understand that by allowing even a mild form of Shari’a, they are allowing the imposition of a system that does not accept women and non-Muslims as complete human beings and forever relegates them to a status between human and animal. Is this what Britain stands for these days? I am appalled. Please, my British readers, raise your voices now.

What I have written here is not something our venal politicians will openly state. But these are the issues we face today. In India, as evidenced by the Shah Bano case, politicians are only too eager to please their Muslim vote banks by allowing limited forms of Shari’a. Shari’a law might soon be allowed in limited form in Britain — a startling new story in Europe’s lack of will to stand up to this civilisational assault. The Indian media, in a characteristically spineless display, did not give any coverage to the Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) posters saying “No to democracy, No to secularism, Yes to Shari’a” which appeared in many Muslim localities of cities including Mumbai. Make no mistake — rejection of democracy and secularism, and their replacement by Shari’a, is core to Islamist teaching. It is up to honest intellectuals to inform the public about what Shari’a means.

It means the end of civilization as we know it.

“Thoughts of a nationalist Indian” will be added to our blogroll as soon as I get my act together and update our template.