Drafting Sharia statutes for the Maldives in Philadelphia. From AP, with thanks to Teri:
PHILADELPHIA - Professor Paul Robinson's fall seminar at the University of Pennsylvania Law School offered a unique opportunity for the ambitious student: a chance to make law, rather than just study it.But there was a catch. The students' client would be a regime that has outlawed dissent, jailed pro-democracy demonstrators and been accused by Amnesty International of "endemic torture and unfair trials."
As part of a project sponsored by the United Nations, the class's sole task would be to craft an updated crime code for the Republic of Maldives, an island nation of 278,000 people in the Indian Ocean.
The code was to be based on the Shariah, a body of Islamic law that fundamentalist nations have used to subjugate women, crush free religious expression and impose personal behavior laws criminalizing homosexuality, alcohol consumption and sex outside marriage.
To third-year law student Tom Stenson, the challenge was too important to pass up.
"Is there a way to convince people that there is an Islamic alternative that doesn't include all the unpleasant practices? I think so," he said. "The criminal code that we'd like to present will comply with human rights norms. It will treat men and women equally. I don't think any of us would stand by and create a document that could be used for repression."
Great. How, then, will it be Sharia?
Fifty students applied for a seat in the class. Eighteen were accepted and have been immersed in the project for several weeks. The students work with high-ranking Maldivian officials, and their final draft will be submitted to the country's parliament.So far, many of the issues they tackled differ little from what they might encounter streamlining law in the West.
Stenson has been working on theft and kidnapping statutes. Other students have been codifying laws regarding fraud, forgery and rules on criminal culpability.
In interviews, several students said they have found little in Islamic law that requires the strict enforcement of centuries-old social norms favored by some Muslim scholars, and much in it that promotes social justice.
Great. Please forward this material to Saudi Arabia and Iran. Somehow they have missed it.
Their work doesn't sit well with everyone.Daniel Pipes, head of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum and a presidential appointee to the U.S. Institute of Peace, said it was a mistake for the class to do anything that could help prop up Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the strongman who has ruled Maldives since 1978.
"It's like working on the criminal law in Saddam Hussein's Iraq," Pipes said.
Pipes, an outspoken critic of militant Islam, called the Shariah incompatible with many Western values, including freedom of religion, gender equality and the separation of church and state. He said it should be rejected as a source of state law, "not made prettier."
A streamlined and pared down Shar'iah could easily be plumped up to include the more virulent form we see in Muslim countries. A very dangerous precedent. No we can't take the chance. Is this fear? You're damn straight!
What a load of bulldung.
Once a project like this gets any credibility, what's to stop say, family courts in canada from asking UPenn students to now take on the case of framing a Canada-compatible sharia' if you will? Or heaven forbid, a US constitution compatible one?
The bottom line is that sharia is fundamentally incompatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Any attempts to dress up sharia is a classic example of putting lipstick on a pig. Any departure from the Quran or Hadiths, departures that would be necessary to come into compliance with the UDHR, would be repudiations of the central tenets of Islam and the authority of the Prophet.
Therein lies the greatest conundrum facing the present generation of people on the entire planet. The Islamic ideology, unless it can be modified to conform to the reality of the modern world's acceptance of the UDHR, must necessarily be contained to those regions of the world where the inhabitants self-select into it, or it must be expunged from the planet as civilized people have expunged failed ideologies like Nazism, Stalinism and a long list of others throughout history.
Here is a link that was posted over at LGF that is very interesting, it is mostly about the treatment of women in Iran, but reveals a lot about Sharia.
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15129
The third-year law student Tom Stenson must not have done his home work on Sharia law.
"There is an Islamic alternative that doesn't include all the unpleasant practices" - what an oxymoron!!!!!!
Why aren't we encouraging our aspiring law students to legally define the incompatiblities between Islam and U.S. Democracy (as guaranteed through our Constitution)?
Americans assume our liberty will always be protected . . .but it appears that our protections are subject to interpretation (Ramadan lessons in public school for your children while winter holiday school programs bar relevant holiday spirit).
Give these young thinkers a REAL challenge! Have them SPELL out and define the framework for legislation that will obliterate CAIR's and the ACLU's attempts to chip away at our liberty.
Phe -!
what is especially disturbing about this course(outside of its uselessness to american life and the students' education -- i.e. one can think of other courses on the subject with much more value and quality like that pointed out by justamomof4 above or perhaps a course designing a legal construct for a post-sharia society) is that it sets up a marker for the already far-left academic groupthink to grasp onto and promulgate more such bullshit on our students
i used to think that it was probably better to get a left-wing education rather than one from the madrassas, but alas, perhaps these two approach each other asymptotically