Secular Portal Blogs

The Islamic Society’s talk: Sharia Law in UK

Thursday, February 21st, 2008 | Warwick Atheists | No Comments

I went to the talk that the Warwick Islamic Society society put on entitled “Sharia Law in UK”. It was given by Wasim Yaqub, apparently the Manager of Islamic Relief UK, a maintainer of diplomatic relations between Islamic communities and the rest of the world.
He began the talk with a very long prayer, then he proceeded.
I took notes in the lecture, and I will use them to try to summarise the points he made without out caricaturing them. It is absolutely not my intention here to misrepresent what he said.

• Everyone knows that British law is Judeo-Christian in tradition. What they don’t admit is that it doesn’t have anything to do with Judaism - British law is grounded in Christian tradition.
• Allowing any one religion to have special political status is unfair, and therefore the correct response is to allow ALL religions the same same increased status, specifically Islam.
• From all the outcry against the statements of Rowan Williams, it is clear that the press hates Islam.
• It should be noted that Sharia law does not undermine the rights of women.
• “If you’re not a fundamentalist, you’re not much of a Muslim.” [Here he qualified that by “fundamentalist”, he meant “someone who strictly follows the fundamentals of Islam”.]
• One of the things that people might not like about Britain *not* under Sharia law is that homosexuality is honoured. Another is that sex education is taught in schools.
• With Sharia, Islam can make Britain Great again.
• So what is Sharia?
• Sharia is based on the idea that humans are infinite eternal creatures, and that we can live in paradise.
• Sharia is a way that living on Earth can be made bearable. It is a way for us to get back into paradise after the Fall.
• The five most fundamental principles of Sharia are:
  • Life
  • Intellect
  • Freedom of Religion (though not freedom from religion)
  • Property
  • Honour

And these things should all be protected by force. Because the government uses force elsewhere in the world, we should use the same force here at home to make sure the rules are followed.

• What does “honour” mean?
  • Respect our elders
  • No more drugs of any kind - show me someone who drinks who isn’t a binge drinker!
  • Protect women.
• Notice, the current government uses student loans to ensure that students are in debt when they leave university so that they can’t use the power they’ve been imbued with via their education and university life. It is a conspiracy.
• We should absolutely bring up our daughters piously, though not our sons.
• Under current law, when an individual is punished for a crime, it is actually a punishment for society. If a man steals a car, and is put in prison, his wife and family suffer, can’t eat, loose their house etc. Instead, the punishments for breaking the law should be so severe that they would act as a real deterrent to committing such crimes.
• Secularism is anti-God. By denying God from the law and from the government, you are denying Muslims their right to freedom of religion.
• Basically, in modern Britain, we already have Sharia, but not Tauhid - governmental recognition for the oneness of God. This is what we, as good Muslims, should be working towards. This is what the country needs. This is what will make Britain Great again.
  • Without the oneness of God, we can have no good moral compass.
• Incidentally, although Islam is criticised as anti-Semitic, it’s not; because if you have a murderer, it’s possible to hate the crime and not hate the sinner.

After the lecture, he took questions (I asked him in what ways Sharia would protect women, he avoided the question). When someone tried to clarify his apparent misunderstanding of the term “secular”, he didn’t address that either. I don’t remember the other questions.

After the questioning session, everyone left, but I stayed behind to talk to him some more. Sam gave him a National Secularist Society leaflet and suggested he read up a bit more on what he was criticising! He had a friend there, the head of the Islamic Prayer Hall on campus. I talked to both of them for at least an hour. I will again summarise some of what they had to say.

• Creationism is correct, evolution is just a theory.
• Islam should be taught in schools. The problem with teaching comparative religion classes is that, by teaching all religions as equal, you deny that any particular one of them is true. This is a right that secularism has taken away from our schools. By preventing us teaching Islam in schools, we are preventing children from ever learning about what Islam really is, and this is an infringement on our rights as Muslims.
• Part of Islam says that we should be in Govornment - it is God’s will that we are in power. Secularism, therefore, is in direct infringement of our rights to practice our religion freely.
• Under Sharia, the integrity of the law is grounded in the integrity of Islam and the integrity of the prophet Muhammed(pbuh). Therefore, anyone who:
  • Leaves Islam, thereby stating publicly that it’s tenets are insufficient
  • Slanders the prophet Muhammed(pbuh) whether in speech or writing (fictional or otherwise)
  • Entertains radically alternative historical views of the prophet Muhammed(pbuh)
  • Insults Islam or the prophet Muhammed(pbuh) publicly in any way

Is undermining the integrity of the law, which is clearly an act of treson, and should be put to death in the manner specified in the Qu’ran and Hadith - stoning.

A good example of this is the recent case of Salman Rusdie. The Satanic Verses was a politically-motivated piece of writing, and is indefensible under freedom of artistic expression. He knew the consequences of what he was doing, and he chose to do it anyway, so the fault lies entirely with him. The other complicit in the publication of the book are guilty also. This is a good argument for why Sharia should be in place.

• Alcohol would be completely illegal, as this is one of the most clear laws laid down in Sharia. The only exception would be for Christian communion - prevention of them drinking wine would be an infringement of their freedom of religious practice - and so the state would actually have to provide the wine for them, as any other trade of alcohol would be illegal. The only possible exceptions to this law might be for other religious rites.
• A member of a Sharia state should be allowed to approach a Muslim and tell them when they aren’t preying often enough.
• Sharia should only be put in national government if it is voted in by a majority.
• We should not have a constitution, as it would prevent Sharia law being properly implemented.

I should be pointed out that, whilst they had outrageous views, they remained fairly civil throughout in the discussions. The head of the Prayer Hall even gave me an open invitation to talk to him any time at his office, and even borrow a book on the limits of free speech. It should also be pointed out that it is possible that I have misunderstood what they meant and have therefore accidentally misrepresented them in my paraphrasing, though I hope and trust this is not the case. If anyone else was at the meeting, and remembers things differently, please let me know. (I would be very happy if I am in fact mistaken.)

What I found most unnerving is that these people are heads of local Muslim communities, and a large number of Warwick-based Muslims, including many who directly associated them with the society’s Islamic Awareness Week, appeared to completely agree with what they were saying; nodding in earnest appreciation of, for example, the following argument;

Me: Since the illegality of alcohol is central to Sharia law, would I be, even as a non-Muslim, forbidden from drinking it? Since I might only be enjoying a fine wine with my dinner party, surely that is an unnecessary infringement on my personal private freedoms?

Mr. Yaqub: Here is a story from the Qu’ran - there once was a governor of an Islamic state who was walking through his province when he heard a party going on - he looked in through the window and saw alcohol was being served, so he jumped over the wall, went in at the door and told them they were breaking the law. In response they said: well, you’ve just broken three laws: spying, entering a property in the wrong fashion, and entering a dwelling without permission! So under Sharia law, you wouldn’t have anything worry about.

This, I think, is why secularism is so vitally important. If you want to talk about this, please do so on the forums.

Schedule

Sunday, February 17th, 2008 | Warwick Atheists | No Comments

Here is the rough schedule of events for the rest of this term:

Week 7

Tue: Pub Crawl in Leam

21^st February: Daniel O’Brien. 5 – 7 in H0.52

Week 8

Steve Fuller

Life without God

Followed by Grad Social

Week 9

Wed: Score social

Film showing: Root of all evil

Week 10

Film showing: Root of all evil

Atheist talks

Chinese social (oriental star)

AJULA: Harris vs. Wolpe “Does God Exist?”

Thursday, February 7th, 2008 | Warwick Atheists | No Comments

Link to video player

This is a fascinating and lucid debate.  Rabbi David Wolpe is extremely intelligent, and seems to be genuinely seeking the truth, rather than just 1up-ing Sam Harris (the way many televised science vs. religion debates seem to go); Sam Harris is his usual eloquent erudite self; and they get straight down to some genuinely interesting issues, whilst (almost) side-stepping the usual meaningless rhetoric.

Photo Gallery

Monday, February 4th, 2008 | Warwick Atheists | No Comments

There’s a new photo gallery section, available from the buttons on the left.  Evidence of our debauchery will be available there.  [Let me know if you don’t want pictures of you on the internet…!]

Secularity is late for dinner.

Sunday, January 27th, 2008 | Warwick Atheists | No Comments

It’s a subject of constant wonderment to me that America, said to be one of the greatest countries on Earth, elected a man who publicly claims to talk to God. Consider, for a second, the absurdity of the situation. He told us he talks to God everyday, and around half of his country respected him for it. If he told us he regularly talked to the all-powerful creator of the universe via a hair-drier, we’d think he’d gone insane. Does the hair-drier really make that much of a difference?

Religion has always been a power-hungry part of our culture, and so it’s no wonder that it has forever been intertwined with our politics. Many of our wars were fought on religious grounds. Much of our prejudice has historically been based around religion. There have been horrific periods of torture in the name of eternal salvation. Still today, people destroy themselves and others in acts of terror for their belief in a man in the sky. We have gone on crusades to spread the word, and to kill those who oppose it. And the word is God.

Today, for the most part, the religious campaign is far subtler. (After all, it’s not too hard to be subtler than chaining people to a rack and burning them alive.) In today’s world, religion sneaks into policy and law disguised as the defender of the morals, saviour of the people. It comes dressed as Political Correctness, and as Family Values. It comes pretending to be Moral Authority. But, under those clothes, it is the same beast. It seeks to change us, convince us of our sinful ways, and to bring us back to God.

Somehow, religion still holds sway in this country and others around the world. We still undemocratically afford Bishops political privilege, give tax exemption to the churches we recognise, and allow freedom of religion to be used as an excuse for almost anything.

Financially, the churches of our day and age help us to define the word “hypocrisy”. The Catholic church in the United States of America was reported by the Associated Press to have paid out over $2.3 billion in sex-abuse related costs since 1950, or around $40 million per year. How many Catholics do you think would be shocked to discover almost 1% of their collection money each week goes towards settlements so that their clerics can continue to sexually abuse children?

On a lighter note, the poor Church of England has over £5 billion in assets and yet recently demanded £350 million from the UK Government for the upkeep of churches. Didn’t Jesus supposedly tell us to give to the poor, sell our belongings, and seek a treasure in heaven rather than on Earth? It seems strange that the Church does not heed his wise words.

In education, a worldwide movement called Intelligent Design seeks to ram creationism into the science classroom under the guise of science. It demands that we “teach the controversy”, reminds us that evolution is “just a theory”. Yet somehow it fails to make any obviously falsifiable claims and avoids peer-review. This affront to science is widely supported by staunch Christians and young-earth creationists, and was actually taught in Kentucky for a brief period of time.

The response has been immense. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was established for the purpose of hassling the Kentucky school board to “teach the controversy” with the introduction of the Pastafarian theory. They theorize that a flying spaghetti monster sneezed the world into existence, and demand it to be taught alongside ID and evolution. Slightly more seriously, a number of scientists have been convinced to sign a petition stating that they doubt Darwinism. In a tongue-in-cheek riposte, Project Steve is a petition signed by scientists named Steve, Steven or Stephen who support the theory of evolution and its evidence. It recently had it’s 859th signature. Considering the small fraction of society named Steve, I think it’s pretty safe to say evolution has gained a consensus.

We let religion affect policy change because we feel that a man who claims to serve God cannot be wrong. We support religion financially because we feel like we need its ancient moral code and parables that were written millennia ago. We let religion into our schools because we worry we might be denying our children salvation if we do not. We feel like there must be something more out there, and we allow those who claim to know about it to walk all over us. We let them dodge tax, influence our policy, guide our moral compass, indoctrinate our children and tell us whether we’re going to heaven or hell.

It’s time to stamp out religious privilege and ignore the hallucinating megalomaniacs. If the church wants to carry on as it is, it should do so without support from the state and without an unfair hand in our politics. We don’t need religion: it needs us.

(I think secularism is an incredibly important movement for the progress of society. If you agree with me, even if you’re slightly less vehement, please visit the National Secular Society website.)

The Forums

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 | Warwick Atheists | No Comments

So yes - the forums are back up and functional.  Use ‘em!I’ve upgraded to phpBB3 which should protect us from spam for a little while.

Exec tasks

Sunday, December 16th, 2007 | Warwick Atheists | No Comments

Hiya. Here’s what the exec should be up to over the holidays:

Sam

Warwick Inter-Faith Forum – mention idea of having joint column in the boar

Make sure hoodies are organised

Organise Refresher’s fair

Look at UK Brights email if not done so already

Ed

Contact campaigning societies – Warwick Pride, Peace in the Middle East, People & Planet (aids). Not WASS?

Christian

Contact Cambridge, Bristol and Leicester

Organise ‘myth destroying’ events

Keep in contact with WIRD if possible

Sign up for ‘event planning’

Will H

Keep in contact with religious societies

Mention to them idea of having a joint column in the boar

Cai

Creating new forum

New designs for hoodies/t-shirts

Email everyone to ensure they can modify website (?)

New flyer for next term

Organise Daniel O’Brien talk

Get finance card from Alex

Ben

Socials for next term

Olivia

Money request forms – Ben (and Sam?)

Sign up for ‘managing your money’

Fran

Enquire about getting article into the boar

Sign up for ‘equal opportunities’

Will W

Research companies to order t-shirts and hoodies from

Tim

Ask members if they want to write in the boar

Tell members that help with flyering would be appreciated

Ask Christian how talking to WIRD went

Put contact details on forum if necessary

Organise meeting for next term

Find out when everyone is coming up for next term

Contact WASS (check with Ed)

Make sure minutes are on website

Contact Jewish society

Posters and Minutes sections

Thursday, October 25th, 2007 | Warwick Atheists | No Comments

I’ve put up the posters we used for advertising on the website, as well as the raw Photoshop file for the logo. Use them however you like!

Also, I’ve made a section for the minutes taken from out meetings.  Find it in “Links and Resources” on the left.