I may also quote the case of Zainab and Zaid to show that whatever is considered the “Islamic Law” is personal to Muhammad’s life and has been stretched around his followers as the family law of Islam.
Zaid was the slave of Muhammad, who adopted him as a son publicly and declared that he should be called Zaid bin Muhammad i.e. Zaid, son of Muhammad. As he grew up, the Prophet arranged his marriage with his own cousin, Zainab.
The Koran says:
"O believers, do not enter houses
other than your houses until you first
ask leave and salute the people thereof." (Light: 25)
One day the Prophet entered their house uninvited. It created desire in his heart to have her. There is no room for details in this article though I have discussed it fully in my unpublished work: “Islam and Sexuality”. Zaid, the adopted son of the Prophet divorced Zainab so that she could marry him. To establish that there is no such thing as adopted children, Islam does not admit the concept of adoption. Thus the “Islamic Law” being theocratic in nature does not suit the purpose of a democratic and progressive government.
Now, I may discuss the second reason i.e. Islamic contempt for human rights and hatred for non-Muslims.
Man is born free but Islam does not acknowledge the human right to freedom. The Muslim jurists have laid it down that if a person who was born as a Muslim gives up Islam, he must be executed. They hold this opinion on the ground that the renegade (the person who gave up the faith) had a covenant with Allah to follow His religion.
What a crazy argument it is! Nobody has any control over his parentage. As a general rule, he adopts his parents’ faith without ever asking for it. He is a Hindu, Muslim or Christian by the sheer accident of birth and not as a covenant with God. If we accept this pretext then it follows that only the Muslim babies had made such an agreement with Allah, and the non-Muslims did not. The Allah who is so fussy about followers, must make similar stipulations with other babies as well. Why doesn’t He? Again, how can Allah make such contracts with the people who are not even born yet?
It is just a ruse of the theocrats to fool people to rule them by usurping their liberties. It amounts to gross contempt of human rights. The God who does not allow man to choose his faith, is the worst type of dictator and dreadful enemy of mankind.
Even worse is the Islamic attitude toward non-Muslims. It is outrightly based on their hatred and destruction. This is what makes the Islamic Law an anathema for a multi-cultural or multi-religious society. I may quote from my unpublished book “Islam and Sexuality”, to elucidate this point.
- The Prophet Muhammad declared that, as Islam is the religion for entire mankind, all other faiths including Judaism and Christianity have been rescinded by God. This declaration has been made in chapter LXXI of Sahih Muslim, and the hadith no. 285 asserts that any Jew or Christian who hears of Muhammad but does not believe in him, shall become “one of the denizens of hell-fire”.
- Though there are two verses in the Koran, which forbid violence in religious matters, they are an exception, and contradict the general princple of Islam, which liberally sanctions bloodshed and brutality for securing prevalence of the Islamic dogma. See for yourself.
Muslims are the best of all nations (House of Imran: 110). Thus they are superior people, entitled to dominate the rest of mankind.
The point is further explained by “Private Apartments: 28,” which states that the Prophet Muhammad has been sent by God with “The religion of truth that he may cause it to prevail over all religions.”
This is why Islam calls itself “Din-e-Ghalib”, the religion of dominance.
With this Islamic theory and purpose in mind, one should read the following Koranic verses which perpetually set the Muslims against the non-Muslims to make the world a living arena of hatred and war.
- “O ye who believe! Murder those of the disbelievers…and let them find harshness in you.” (Repentance: 123)
- “Humiliate the non-Muslims to such an extent that they surrender and pay tribute.” (Repentance: 29)
- “O believers, do not treat your fathers and mothers as your friends, if they prefer unbelief to belief (i.e. non-Islam to Islam); whosoever of you takes them for friends, they are evil-doers.” (Repentance: 20)
- “Certainly, Allah is an enemy to the unbelievers.” (The Cow: 90)
- “God has cursed the unbelievers and prepared for them a blazing hell.” (The Confederates: 60)
- “O believers, do not make friends with the Jews and Christians…whoso of you makes them his friend is one of them.” (The Table: 55)
- “Muslims are hard against the unbelievers, merciful to one another.” (Victory: 25)
- “The believers (Muslims) indeed are brothers.” (Apartments: 10)
Since it is one of the major duties of the state to create harmony among its people, it cannot enforce laws which seek to create detestation, disharmony and destruction.
One wonders if the people who believe in Islamic Law, can ever form a part of the Indian society, or even wish it well.
Among the major functions of the state are:
a. Protection of the weak against the strong, and,
b. Maximization of individual liberties.
a. This is especially true with reference to a democratic state like India where an individual’s will decides the form of government, its policies and actions.
Even if one assumes that Islam is a code of practice, being medieval in spirit, it has no relevance to the modern age where women have attained social parity with men. Islam does not acknowledge this fact, and treats woman as a slave who is required to follow man’s will, and if she does not, he is empowered to give her a jolly good hiding but must not break her bones:
"And those (women) you fear may be rebellious
admonish; banish them to their couches,
and beat them. If they obey you,
look not for any way against them." (Women: 35)
The Muslim men were pleased with the privilege and they certainly made a generous use of it. The hadith Ibn-e-Majah (vol. 2 p. 553) states that “as a result, seventy women during one evening gathered at the residence of the Prophet to complain ruefully against their husbands, who they thought, were not good people.”
The Indian state by allowing Islamic Law will fail in its duty to protect Muslim women from the tyrannical powers which Islam bestows on their men as a religious right.
b. From the feminine point of view, the Koranic command to observe purdah (mask) is even more ruinous. It gives her the status of a bird-in-a-cage”, depriving her of human status. This fact becomes evident by looking upon any Muslim household in the Indian community. The draped windows and doors of a house tell the story of women incarcerated behind the curtained walls.
The Koran treats women as a born-prisoner. See for yourself:
"And say to the believing woman, that they cast down their eyes and guard their private parts, and reveal not their adornment save such as is outward; and let them cast their veils over their bosoms, and not reveal their adornment save to their husbands..." (Light:30)Again:
"O Prophet, say to the wives and daughters and the believing women, that they draw their veils close to them." (The Confederates: 434)The Koran goes even further and stops women from participating in public life altogether:
"And stay in your houses." (The Clan: 33)
This is the reason the world of Islam has produced no great women over the last 1400 years. The rise of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, Khalida Zia in Bangladesh and Tansu Cillar in Turkey is therefore, a revolt against Islam because it defies the fundamental principles. How can a secular democracy allow the introduction of so-called Muslim family law?
Never mind India, which to Muslims is the land of Kafirs, the Islamic Law has faled to flourish even in countries traditionally associated with Islam since its inception. Let me quote two countries – Syria and Tunisia.
Regarding polygamy, the classical jurists believed that if a Musim husband had financial ability to provide for four wives simultaneously, he could do so without requiring anybody’s consent; they stressed that it was a matter for the husband’s conscience. And they were certainly right. But the modern Syrian reformers, realising the evils of polygamy concluded that it was not a matter for the husband’s conscience but a positive legal condition before one could register a second marriage. The man must seek permission of the court before he can indulge in such an action.
It is certainly violation of the law as stated in the Koran.
The Tunisian Law went even further. It held that in addition to the husband’s financial ability to support a polygamous household, he must also demonstrate that he was capable of fulfilling the Koranic command of impartiality, which requires of him to be equitable to all his wives. It held that such a state of affair could not be maintained under modern social and economic conditions, polygamy was abolished legally. Yet the Muslims believe that the Koranic laws are eternal.
Again, a Muslim husband is authorised by the Koran to divorce his wife at will. The reason for repudiation can be very flimsy indeed. For example, a hadith says that if a man does not like his daughter-in-law, and tells his son to divorce her without giving a reason for it, he must do so (Tirmizi vol. 1, p. 440).
Man’s absolute discretion to divorce his wife is a fundamental principle of the Islamic family law, yet we find that the Tunisian law forbids man to exercise this right and declares: “Divorce outside a court of law is without legal effect.”
I think that I have given sufficiently detailed description of the Islamic Law to show that it lacks substantiveness and is like a fluid which assumes the shape of its container.
In India, the so-called Islamic Law is of much greater concern to the Hindu than it is to the Muslims. It is because the Muslims have demanded it owing to their belief in its righteousness but the Hindus are being victimized.
The two-nation theory which proved lethal to the unity of India, is the product of the Muslim belief in the virtues of the Islamic Law. As it can be seen from the above discussion, they are totally misguided in this field yet their faith is kept alive in it by the most beguiling Muhammadan promises of paradise, which abounds in free women, wine and boys. It is high time that these people came down to earth instead of alluring themselves with the imaginary delights of heaven. They have only to look at Pakistan to realise the truth. Members of every civilized society have always treated the country of their birth as the Motherland and proved their love and loyalty for her with their sweat and blood. However, the Indian Muslims are the only people who suffer from the religious mania that goads them to treat India as Dar-ul-Harb i.e. the battlefield, which is not a home but the place of mischief, mutiny and mutilation.
To practise the so-called Islamic Law, the Muslims of India brought this country to the brink of a civil war. The Hindus who had got used to ahimsa, failed to defend the honor of their Motherland and agreed to its partition. To an impartial assessor of history, their failure to resist the Muslims, makes them every bit as guilty as it condemns those who broke up their own Motherland to satisfy their religious dogmas. They wanted to create Pakistan to live under the Islamic Law, which has no validity.
This statement is true because half a century has passed but the Islamic Law has still not been enforced in Pakistan. If there was such a thing as islamic Law, it would have been introduced long ago.
What has been introduced as the Islamic Law is nothing more than a legal mirage because it does not conform to the spirit of law for revolving around the person of Muhammad. Take, for example, the Law of Blasphemy devised by Pakistan in 1986, and amended in 1991. It says:
“Whosoever by words, either spoken or written or by visible representation or by any imputation, inuendo or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, shall be punishable by death or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.”
No law is ever valid unless it is applied through the recognized procedures. In disputed cases, Islamic Law requires evidence of four eye-witnesses, whose integrity cannot be impeached. But when it comes to applying this law, commonly known as Qanoon-e-Namoos-e-Risalat, the Islamic procedures are not followed because they concern the person of Muhammad, whose honor is considered higher than that of Allah. The result is a chaos in the judicial system of Pakistan, giving it the lowest prestige in the community of nations.
This article clearly demonstrates that the Islamic Law does not qualify as law. Therefore, it cannot solve social problems.
The verdict of the Indian Supreme Court is correct and must be enforced at all costs. This is an auspicious step toward building a harmonious nation.
Again, the judicial system of India has another very good reason not to implement “Islamic Law” because of its nature : a hadith says:
"Time will come when Islam will exist in name only and the Koran will be just a collection of words. The mosques will be full but completely unguided. During that period the mullah shall be the worst of creatures under the sky; they will be the source of mischief." (Mishkat, vol. 1: Kitab-ul-Ilm, ch. 3 p. 76)
It clearly states the following:
- Islam has come to exist in name only. Therefore, what is being held as Islam, is not Islam at all.
- The Koran having become just a collection of words, is not capable of giving guidance. It is no longer a code of law even if it held such a position in the distant past.
- Though the mosques are thronged with people, they are not guided. Therefore, they are fake Muslims.
- These mullahs are a source of mischief and the worst people under the sky.
In view of the contents of this hadith, the government of India will fail in its duty if it does not enforce the directive of the Supreme Court of the land.
By: Anwar Shaikh
