Saturday, May 23, 2020

Islam critiqued is no coding genius; sharia is a rigid code of law?

In answer to the video "Allah is NOT Forgiving, Merciful or Loving"

Contrary to Islamophobic rant and media, there is no such thing as "Islamic law" insofar as there exists list of rules that are fixed and immutable. Even among issues on which there is temporary ijma'/consensus the classical hanbali and shafi'i jurists reject the notion that the doors of ijtihad are closed. The hanafi jurists practiced ijtihad to resolve legal issues in the Ottoman era. In more recent times, even the most prominent advocate of salafism (return to the pristine origins of Islam), who is none other than Muhammad ibn abd al Wahhab, was a staunch anti-taqleed (immitation of previous scholars), advocating the return to the Quran and hadith rather than relying on a centuries long inherited corpus of laws from medieval times.

The Quran is not Deuteronomy or Leviticus and their fixed, eternal immutable laws that will be reinstaured at the end of times. As a side note this negates the Christian notion of 10 "commandements" open to interpretation.

Jesus doesnt even quote from those "commandements" when asked which is the most important. The reason for that is that these 10 things arent even laws but classifications which the 613 immutable laws fall under. To reconcile Jesus' and his early followers' stance with Paul's and theirs as regards to Jewish laws, Christians today attempt word acrobatics to equate on one hand, "the Law of the Lord" with the so called "Ten Commandments", and on the other hand, the  "moral laws" or the "Law of Moses" with the now obsolete "ceremonial law" (ie the remaining 603 laws of the Torah).

However what these Christians want to classify as "ceremonial law", the obsolete 603 mosaic laws according to Paul, is called "the Law of the Lord" many times Ex13:7-9,1Chron16:40,2Chron31:3-4 as well as in Nehemiah8:1,8,14 -in conjonction with Lev23:33-36-. Not only that but the "Law of Moses" and the "Law of the Lord" are used to refer to the same books.

Even Jesus in Matt12:5 refers to the ceremonial law as "the Law" because he considered the Mosaic Law to be one inseparable unit. He equated what Christians call Moses' "ceremonial law" with "the law of the Lord" numerous times Luke2:22-24,39. When he was asked which of the commandments was the greatest he quoted two commandments neither of which were from the so-called "Ten Commandments" Matt22:34-40 but from what Christians want to differentiate as Moses' "ceremonial law" Deut6:5,Lev19:18. It is obvious that the Bible never even once makes any distinction in terms of the Law between the moral (which Christians want to be so-called 10 commandements) and the ceremonial. On the contrary the 613 laws are always viewed as one unit.

For example Deut4:44-45 speaking of "the law", ie all 613 laws not just the so called 10 commandements. Same thing for Josh8:34-35,1Kings 2:3,Micah4:2,Lev18:5,24:22,Deut4:1,5,8,6:25,31:12-13,2Kings17:3,21:8, 23:25,1Chron16:40,Ezra7:6,Ps78:5,119:1,55,108,137,174,147:20,Prov31:4-5, Isa5:24,Jere18:18,Lam2:9,Ezek7:26,Hosea4:6,Amos2:4,Hab1:4, Zeph3:4,Zech7:12,Mal2:9,Mk15:31,Jn1:17,Acts13:39,Gal3:10,Eph2:14-15,1Tim1:7-8,Titus3:9,Heb10:28,James2:10.

Even the word "law" (Torah in Hebrew and Nomos in the Greek) when applied to the entire corpus of laws of the Torah is always singular even though it contains 613 separate commandments. Finally, Deut27 curses the one who does not live by the divine law. Yet we have Paul in places like Gal3:10 painting it as a curse which Jesus' death now retrospectively freed the world from. But the world in the first place isnt even concerned by this law, only the Jews were, and still are, concerned by it. This negative, completely misconstrued view of the mosaic law is of course in disregards of statements such as Deut30:10-14 where the entire Law is said to be at anyone's reach, of Ps119:1 stating that
"Praiseworthy are those whose way is perfect, who walk with the law of the Lord"
and Job37:23 which does not expect people to be perfectly righteous in Torah observance. In fact even the NT contains similar statements, as in Lk1:6 where John's parents are upright in God's sight, observing all commandements blamelessly. This is the way of God and is reflected not only in the earlier revelations, but down to the Quran as well
2:220"And had God so willed, He would indeed have imposed on you hardships which you would not have been able to bear, but behold, God is almighty, wise".
The sharia/law of God is and has always been intended to be simple and straightforward, adapted to man's nature, extreme circumstances and exceptions, and above all it is the means by which one is spiritually purified 2:185,5:6,22:78. Whenever the religion became complicated, it was either because of man-made additions to it, or as a punishement.

Far from being a "curse", the Law revealed at Sinai is in fact something previous prophets "loved" and praised, thanked God for, as reflected throughout most of the Psalms and more particularily ch119.

Today's Christians pick and choose which laws are still aplicable to them while all of them, including the so-called 10 laws, were revealed at Sinai. But being non-Jews, they are not obliged to follow the Law in the first place, yet still declare that Jesus' sacrifice is the only thing that saved them from it (the law that God Himself obliged). Being that God is the source of the very laws they condemn, the "mercy" of Jesus "fulfilling" the law by "breaking" it, came after the generations upon generations of oppression by that very same God's demand that His law be upheld and fulfilled.

With all that was in mind, we now proceed with the issue of alleged codification of the sharia.

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