This is the kind of story that mainstream analysts in the West leave their hearers totally unequipped to understand. The line on Sharia in the West is that it is completely benign, and anyway, impossible to characterize: “Reza Aslan recalled a saying that likened the Sharia to water, since “it takes the form of any vessel it is poured into.”
It is amazing that the whole audience doesn’t erupt into laughter when that infamous clown Aslan emits these howlers. But the mainstream media is instead in endless Emperor’s New Clothes mode, since he parrots all the Right Opinions. Sharia in reality is marked by a remarkable uniformity: the four Sunni madhahib agree on about 75% of all rulings. Whenever and wherever we see Sharia implemented, it looks essentially the same. Changes and variations come in when Sharia provisions are relaxed or dropped altogether, as in secular Turkey — but that is not some different version of Sharia, it is no Sharia at all.
Mali Islamic supremacists move to ban music, just as they have in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Mali and Afghanistan are separated by immense distance and differences of language and culture. But Sharia in both is markedly similar.
Hadith Qudsi 19:5: “The Prophet said that Allah commanded him to destroy all the musical instruments, idols, crosses and all the trappings of ignorance.” (The Hadith Qudsi, or holy Hadith, are those in which Muhammad transmits the words of Allah, although those words are not in the Qur’an.)
Muhammad also said:
(1) “Allah Mighty and Majestic sent me as a guidance and mercy to believers and commanded me to do away with musical instruments, flutes, strings, crucifixes, and the affair of the pre-Islamic period of ignorance.”
(2) “On the Day of Resurrection, Allah will pour molten lead into the ears of whoever sits listening to a songstress.”
(3) “Song makes hypocrisy grow in the heart as water does herbage.”
(4) “This community will experience the swallowing up of some people by the earth, metamorphosis of some into animals, and being rained upon with stones.” Someone asked, “When will this be, O Messenger of Allah?” and he said, “When songstresses and musical instruments appear and wine is held to be lawful.”
(5) “There will be peoples of my Community who will hold fornication, silk, wine, and musical instruments to be lawful ….” — ‘Umdat al-Salik r40.0
Anyway, this action in Syria means that playing music while smoking is right out. “Syria jihadists impose Taliban-style music, smoking ban,” from AFP, January 20 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
BEIRUT – The jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham has banned music and smoking in Syria’s Raqqa, days after taking control of the northern city following battles with rebel groups.
ISIS said it had decided to “ban the sale of music CDs, music players, and playing songs in cars and buses and in shops and all places,” in a statement posted on jihadist websites and signed the “Wali [governor] of Raqqa.”
The group added they had taken the step because musical instruments and singing are “proscribed in Islam because they distract from remembering God and the Koran.”
In a second statement, ISIS said that as part of efforts to “apply sharia [Islamic] law… it is completely forbidden to sell cigarettes or water pipes in any place.”
Such bans are reminiscent of those the Taliban imposed on television, cinema and music in Afghanistan when in power up until 2001.
ISIS has alienated activists and other opposition fighters in Syria, who accuse it of imposing a reign of terror on areas where it operates.
Its actions provoked a backlash from powerful rebel groups in early January, and the group is now fighting opposition forces in several parts of northern Syria.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday that ISIS fighters “withdrew after midnight yesterday [Sunday] from the western Aleppo countryside and evacuated their positions.”
The Britain-based Observatory also reported heavy clashes between jihadists and rebels on the outskirts of the town of Azaz in Aleppo province, near the border with Turkey….