Wait a minute. Can we get Michael Kruse on this? How about Meredith Heagney? Or maybe even Honest Ibe Hooper and Brave Ahmed Rehab of CAIR? I mean, don’t these people know that Islam doesn’t call for the killing of apostates? Where is M. Cherif Bassiouni when you need him?
“Parliament takes on revised penal code,” by Ahmed Naish for Minivan News, October 14 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
The revised penal code was sent to a seven member ad hoc committee today for further review with unanimous consent of MPs.
All 60 MPs in attendance voted in favour of sending the bill to committee. The new penal code will come into effect a year after it is passed….
Existing laws and regulations, principles of Islamic sharia and norms and values acceptable to Maldivians were taken as the basis for drafting the law, he said.
Suood said difficulties arose when there were conflicts between the three. “Some Islamic sharia punishments are not enforced in the Maldives. For example, there is no amputation for thieves or death for apostates.”
Another difficulty was disagreements among fiqh scholars in interpreting the Qur’an and the hadiths, he continued, and the traditional values and practices in the country were considered in such cases….
Several MPs said Islamic sharia should take precedence in specifying offences and punishments and spoke in favour of introducing the death penalty.
Ungoofaru MP Dr Afrashim Ali of the opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) said the penal code did not include offences specified in Islamic fiqh or law, adding it was obligatory to enforce punishments set out in Islam.
Apart from the Qu’ran and the hadiths, said Afrashim, the consensus (ijmah) of religious scholars should be taken into account when drafting such laws.
“Before looking at the laws of England or France, we have to look at the principles of sharia in Islam,” he said. “I am not saying at all that we should not benefit from laws developed in England or France in 1,000 or 2,000 years.”
While there was no objection to assimilating laws of non-Islamic countries, he said, it should not take precedence over Islamic laws….