Imam misunderstands Islam, asks, "What is wrong with Sharia law? If someone steals...why is it wrong to cut off his hand?"

From the article - "He said he was not proposing this system for Europe because it would be undemocratic. But it was also undemocratic for Muslim countries not to use it because most Muslims wanted it...." .....or they get their hands cut off, I assume.

Another one of those crazy arguments that religious zealots have. Yes, people WANT to repress themselves, don't they? And if they don't want to repress themselves, they are apostates and must be killed. Easy-Peasy.

"the executioner's face is always well-hidden" - Bob Dylan

NOW THE GOOD FATHER KNOWS THERE IS NO LOVE OR FORGIVENESS IN ISLAM.

"....I know it is what Sharia law dictates but, coming from him, such a moderate and tolerant person, I was shocked," he said, adding he never considered the Imam to be a fundamentalist...."

So-called "moderates" in Islam aren't really so. They may put on an innocent and smiling face just to keep you happy, but turn your back and they're bound to be a Muslim who desires amputation for limbs as much as bin Laden.

And then, real Muslim moderates aren't actually following Islamic doctrine or the example of Muhammad, who took pride and satisfaction in such barbaric rituals. Muhammad was the true Muslim and a murderous one at that.

I don't understand what is wrong with this punishment as long as it is reserved for the worst of cases. And it is:

"Hadd sentences cannot be rashly pronounced. Judges usually award discretionary punishments: in the year 1403 (1982-3), for example, 4,925 ta‘zir sentences for theft were pronounced, as against two sentences of amputation for theft."
Vogel, Frank. E., "Islamic Law and Legal System, Studies of Saudi Arabia" (Leiden, E.J. Brill, 2000), p. 247

So the very worst cases are punished with amputation. About one out of every 2,500 cases. So what. If Madoff's punishment was hand amputation (with no jail time), I would say the punishment is not enough. If they cut Madoff's hand off and let him go, do you think the punishment would be too cruel, or too lenient?

"He said he was not proposing [Sharia] for Europe because it would be undemocratic. But it was also undemocratic for Muslim countries not to use it because most Muslims want it..."

RESPONSE: And when Europe has a Muslim majority later this century and "most Muslims want it", then by logical extension, Sharia is in Europe's future.

"Yes, of course. I agree with everything Islamic."...

That pretty much sums up the whole ball of wax...'Everything Islamic' covers a lot of territory...much of it brutal and depraved...When you speak up for Allah, you also speak up for depravity...This god's hobby is 'personally' torturing people with fire, boiling water, and the furnace...'Dante's Inferno', is tame in comparison. He gave his submitters the right to treat others in similarly depraved ways...and they do...'Everything Islamic' needs to be resisted...

From Dave above... If Madoff's punishment was hand amputation (with no jail time), I would say the punishment is not enough.

Yes Dave...And we can see what the effect of everything Islamic has done for you...Don't you realize that 'off with your hand' laws for thievery in the US would cause a dramatic rise in welfare recipients? Their upkeep paid for by the taxpayer...millions of X criminals who need help with their zippers...Sharia won't work well in the US...Kufrs need two hands to zip...

dave742 - we don't cut off people's hands anymore. We used to - back in the middle ages, but we don't anymore. I know that Islam has not made any progress since 700 AD, but the rest of the world has. Time to catch up.

Contacted yesterday, Mr El Sadi stood by his comments and added the world was incurring the "wrath of God" through its permissiveness and destruction of spiritual and moral values, namely through the acceptance of "same-sex marriages, homosexuality, adultery and abortion".

Speaking of Pat Robertson, that almost sounds like something out of his playbook.

Of course, he and the Muslims might define "adultery" a bit differently, re: the earlier post about the Somali woman, but I doubt Pat has any love for "fornicators" either.

But I will give him this, I never heard of him advocating chopping off people's hands.

(sorry, but it kind of runs through me that some would condem - or kill - me, a middle-aged adult, for never making the mistake of getting married before, and have no plans to do so with my current beau, as I don't see the damn point in even worrying about stupid stuff like that any more.)

"If someone steals...why is it wrong to cut off his hand?" -- Malta Imam

It is fortunate for the Imam, in Malta and elsewhere, that the Shariah does not prescribe cutting out one's tongue as the penalty for lying or misrepresenting the truth. Too bad for that. It's also fortunate for them that the Shariah does not prescribe the removal of the index finger as the penalty for excessively wagging it when lying.

Reacting to the television debate, anthropologist Ranier Fsadni warned against "misunderstanding" the comments and said such views were probably not shared by all Muslims in Europe. - And he knows this because...?

"Just as a priest does not necessarily represent all his community, the Imam does not necessarily represent all Muslims in Malta." - Why? Because the alternative is too awful to contemplate so it just can't be so.

duh_swami:
[Don't you realize that 'off with your hand' laws for thievery in the US would cause a dramatic rise in welfare recipients?]

I don’t think cutting a hand off of two people every year would result in a dramatic rise in welfare. Try to be serious.

Tanstaafl:
[we don't cut off people's hands anymore. We used to - back in the middle ages, but we don't anymore.]

Let’s look back at what happened when the British occupied Muslim territory. What did they do with the draconian practice of cutting off people’s hands? Did they “civilize” it? Not really. The British problem with theft was that they wanted the Muslims to be executing thieves, like they did in “civilized” England, and not just cutting their hands off:

“[Hastings] believed strongly in the necessity, and greater efficacy, of fixed and immutable penalties. Yet the actual record of Company justice by no means indicates that arbitrary and discretionary were disavowed. British justice turned out to be far more draconian-in practice as well as in principle-than Islamic justice had been, resorting much more frequently to capital punishment, and much less often to community-based methods of enforcement and reconciliation. As it happened, the Company state was far more concerned with public order, and with the specific use of the law to protect its own trade and commerce as well as authority, than was the old regime.”
Dirks, Nicholas B., The Scandal of Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 221

Cutting thieves hands off was barbaric. The “civilized” thing to do was to execute the thief instead:

“The British were very outspoken in their opposition to mutilating penalties. Paradoxically, they seemed to values limbs more than lives, as they attached great value to capital punishment as a deterrent, introduced it for a variety of offenses and used it widely.”
Fisch, Jorg, Cheap Lives and Dear Limbs: The British Transformation of the Bengal Criminal Law 1769-1817 (Wisbaden: Steiner, 1983), p. 108

Taking someone elses property was the most heinous crime that one could commit in England at that time, and people were executed for it often. For example, in Surrey County from 1660 to 1800, 84% of those who were hanged had committed property offenses, as compared to 8% for murder, and 0.4% for rape. (Beattie, J.M., “Crime and the Courts in England, 1660-1800 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p.433 (table)). Stealing was obviously far more objectionable to the “civilized” West than murder or rape. The English had many capital crimes, but theft was the priority, not murder;

“There were more than two hundred crimes punishable with death. If a man stole a sheep or a horse, or forty shillings from a dwelling house, five shillings from a shop or twelve and a half pence from a pocket, he was hanged. If a man broke down a fish pond where fish might be lost or cut down trees in an avenue or garden, he was hanged. If he falsely swore, pretended to be a Greenwich pensioner, he was hanged. If he destroyed a turnpike gate, or was found before the expiration of his term of transportation, or if he counterfeited coin, he was hanged. But manslaughter was a clergyable felony until 1822 and an attempt to murder merely a Common law misdemeanor until 1803.”
Sherwin, Oscar, “Crime and Punishment in England of the Eighteenth Century, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Jan., 1946), pp. 169-199, p. 180-181

Personally, I think cutting someone's hand off is less of a punishment than killing them.

[I know that Islam has not made any progress since 700 AD, but the rest of the world has. Time to catch up.]
Islam progressed just like every other civilization, and just prior to the colonial period they were still ahead of the West. Time to catch up with modern scholarship:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20753339/Gates-of-Ijtihad

gravenimage:
[Like the 8-year-old boy who had his hand run over by an SUV in front of a screaming crowd because he stole? Surely, "the worst of cases".]
Show me the story

" I know it is what Sharia law dictates but, coming from him, such a moderate and tolerant person, I was shocked," he said, adding he never considered the Imam to be a fundamentalist...."

Who better to be a "fundamentalist" that a teaching Imam? He may be tolerant, but islam must be followed, and as such his hands are tied by the "faith" of islam.

I guess he is walking the extreme line, a line he can cross over at any time, all he is doing is following the teachings of the Qur'an.

dave - Listen to me very carefully - we don't stone women, either. Islam is still stoning women in Somalia and Iran. Your culture is backwards. If you think it is progressing, a suicide belt is not an innovation I would cite. Read the Qur'an and ask yourself why 60% of it is devoted to killing and discriminating against kuffars. Islam has always "advanced" itself by conquering a more civilized culture and then running it into the ground.

Cutting off someone's hand is not a civilized behavior. Islam is wrong to advocate it.

"Mr El Sadi said the punishment should terrify thieves and criminals, 'not the good people'."

In other words, Islam should terrify the nongood people. But who? Only "thieves and criminals", of course, and " 'not the good people' ". Now, is it not true that in Islam a Muslim, by definition, is not merely one who says, "I am a Muslim" but one who follows Allah's will? Is theivery and criminality, as defined in Islam, the following of Allah's will? Well, no.

So by the Islamic definition of "Muslim", every thief and every criminal is a nonmuslim. Such a person is in the same class of persons as anyone who does NOT affirm Islam.

So who are "the good people"? MUSLIMS AND ONLY MUSLIMS, as we know from the Koran. Now, Muslims are supposed to be hard against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves, as the praised one himself reported in K. 48 (Fatah, Victory), v. 29.

Thus, is not the practice of amputation of thieves and criminals who claim "I am a Muslim" a way to condition all Muslims to desire violence against ALL nonmuslims, even good ones who are not criminals, yet who according to Islam's rules are "not the good people" all the same? And are not the alleged safeguards opportunities to encourage mercy and benevolence among Muslims toward Muslims in great contrast to the malice prescribed toward nonmuslims?

Well, yes and yes.

Thank you, Mohamed El Sadi, Muslim leader in Malta, for affirming that Islam is a terrorist cult with a criminal agenda and objectives towards nonmuslims, whether criminal or not. Thank you also for reminding us that you don't think yourself bound to justify Sharia but entitled to shift the burden ("What is wrong with Sharia law?") by making opponents show it wrong...which you helped us to do, anyway.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mohamed El Sadi.

tanstaafl:
Do you think it is more cruel to chop someone's hand off for stealing, or to kill them?

[Cutting off someone's hand [for stealing] is not a civilized behavior.]
Is killing someone fopr stealing civilized behavior?

[Your culture is backwards]
It's not my culture. I realize you cannot understand that, so believe what you wish.

[If you think it is progressing]
I think it was far more advanced than the West until the colonial period, which is when Islamic law was decimated by the West, which I showed you with a link to my paper, which you don't care to address.

The rube, dave742, doesn't understand that mutilation is cruel and unusual punishment but that the death penalty (by lethal injection and not by some barbarous kind of head-sawing measure) for certain heinous offenses (e.g., Nidal Hasan's Islamically inspired killing spree) is perfectly in keeping with proper punishment in a civilized world (this would exclude the Islamic world where apostasy is still punished by death and adultresses are stoned).

Observe that as he sings the praises of sharia 'dave742' carefully omits the fact that although English law 17C-18C did have draconian punishments for theft, those punishments were in due time, as a result of internal soul-searching and critique, first commuted to 'transportation' - as I, an Australian, familiar with my country's history, have good reason to know; many an English thief turned a new leaf and made good in Australia - and then gradually changed to become what is done today.

He must also at all costs obscure the awkward fact that whereas cutting off hands of thieves is enshrined in the Qur'an, no less, as a rule for all time, neither the TaNaKh (Hebrew scriptures) nor the Christian scriptures - both of which precede Islam by, respectively, millennia and by centuries - do not envisage anything like such a cruel punishment.

In the TaNaKh the laws regarding theft prescribe that the thief (presumably, one who has either repented and turned himself in, or who has been caught and charged) must restore what he stole, or the equivalent, plus something extra on top.

In the Christian scriptures, St Paul treats the case of the former thief who has repented and become a member of the Christian community. St Paul's counsel is that this thief must *work with his hands* so that he may give to the needy. That is: he is transformed from one who takes what is not his, from others, to one who not only provides for himself, but gives from what is his, to others who are in need.

St Paul, having been trained as a rabbi, is probably taking for granted as a starting point the TaNaKh rule that a thief (whether penitent or not penitent) should restore what he stole, or the equivalent.

Was going to comment on Eph 4:28 but see that Dumbledoresarmy beat me to it. Probably worded better than I could have done anyway.
Eph 4:28 He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need.

Consider Sharia. It lacks the ability to apply law to all members of society equally. It proscribes cutting off the limbs of transgressors. It punishes adultery differently if the adulterer is male or female. It openly discriminates against kuffars. Even Muslimahs are not free of discrimination in a system designed by Muslims.

The "perfection" of Sharia law is just another mirage. Muslims are actually better off under a western legal system than they would be under the institutionalized tribal customs and mores that they refer to as Sharia.