By: Qasim Hersi Farah (Ph.D.).
Any community or group of people who live in a region in the world needs to have administration, jurisdiction, and legislation systems to control all forms of criminal activities. The community must also make and maintain peace, stability, tranquility, human rights protection, reproduction, community development, and economic progress based on law and policy. In the meantime, they need to have the most efficient means of law enforcement to regularize their existence. Thus, the law is necessary for humans’ survival and advancement, but it must be based on methods of justice versus appropriate retribution.
In these centuries, there have been concerns raised regarding how fairness is applied in Muslim societies. Yet, the Holy Book of Islam – the Qur’an -which is the sole reference of Islamic law, guidance, instructions, and teachings has been known as the justest document in the world.
On March 11, 2015, the most renowned university in the world, Harvard University, recognized one verse of the Qur’an that stated, “O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm in justice, witnesses for Allāh, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives. Whether one is rich or poor, Allāh is more worthy of both, so follow not [personal] inclination, lest you not be just. And if you distort [your testimony] or refuse [to give it], then indeed Allāh is ever, of what you do, Aware” (Qur’an: An-Nisa: 135). The noblest university in the world extended the most significant expression to justice and awarded the highest prize to this verse by remarking that the Qur’an has no space for injustice. See www.cair.com.
On the other hand, since the last part of the 19th century, in most parts of the world, there have been ongoing conflicts and political chaos caused by Islamic extremists demanding the implementation of sharia – Islamic law. These extremists particularly target Muslim individuals, organizations, groups, families, and countries overpopulated by Muslims. Physical attacks, counter-attacks, explosions, assassinations, beheadings, recklessly direct shooting, gang-style attitude, and uncontrolled gunslingers roaming around have been concurrently occurring in most Muslim regions. Likewise, capital punishments such as stoning to death, hand and/or leg amputating, flogging, excommunicating, exiling, confiscating private properties, and several other illicitly serious forms of violations against human rights have been executed by these fanatic young men, whilst claiming that they are applying sharia to please God.
Finally, the fanatics seem to be on the verge of being victorious. They have already succeeded in the leadership of Afghanistan, most parts of Somalia, most parts of Yemen, and some regions of each Western African countries. Now, the apparent question is how to deal with those young and middle-aged men who consider themselves freedom fighters who are almost winning in their long struggle.
Here, we need to establish peace and prosperity by saving the lives of innocents and those of terrorists, gangs, delinquents, thieves, scammers, robbers, and rapists. To fulfill that responsibility, we need to look at the problem of terrorism from an Islamic perspective by emphasizing the meanings, objectives, contents, and norms of sharia itself. Hence, we would attempt to find out whether what we witness today is a divinely legal implementation of Shariah or manmade barbaric dogmas. Throughout this article, I study the difference between the Sharia implemented by the extremists and the original Shariah in Islam.
The rapid spread of Islam caused constant attacks and counter-attacks, where almost every day there was new battlefronts opened. Of course, every community had to attempt to defend their religions, cultures, and customary laws to protect their fundamental rights and dignity. To Muslims, Latin Christendom in the Pyrenees became the most challenging front to defeat.
In the modern contemporary world, most Muslim States’ constitutions are based on a mixture of Shariah and current laws while making family law exclusive to Shariah. Before the establishment of the modern states, people were Muslim and strict to Islamic rulings. Thus, their leaders could never be dared to interfere with social and community cultures, especially regarding religious dogmas. Based on the community’s level of religiousness, Shariah has been privately and publicly practiced fully, partially, temporarily, permanently, occasionally, or alternatively. However, due to the rise and increase of divergent social statuses, cultures, behaviors, lifestyles, circumstances, and needs. Humans must have utterly written document/s to apply in their day-to-day activities, which encompasses all aspects of social life. These daily facilitate people to obtain and maintain applicable means of crime prevention, conflict prevention, poverty eradication, disease reduction, and delinquency prevention. Only when each of these adversities is prevented can humans engage in social development and lifestyle advancement.
Sharia’s unyielding reference commanded by God was supposed to be limited to the Qur’an because the Qur’an is Allah’s direct word revealed to the final Messenger, Mohammad Bin Abdullahi (PBUH), to protect humanity’s best interest. However, over time and circumstances, people created several other sources of sharia and honored them as if they were the Qur’an until they preferred them over the Qur’an. Unfortunately, these manmade sources are not unanimous and cannot be reconciled in any way, yet they were wrongly and unjustly replaced with clear-cut divine Shariah. That is the center of this date’s Sharia problem and perplexity. Had they not high-jacked the term Sharia and confessed its human origin, there would have been social ways to deal with it, but in its current situation, the confusion seems out of hand.
In Muslim societies, documents attributed to ancient jurists who lived in different eras have been recognized as absolute legal and social references. There is a disciplinary subject known as “Islamic Jurisprudence,” which is mandatory for every religious leader to learn and practice to be enabled to administer Islamic affairs, including legal, social, economic, and controlling one’s behavior. These jurists’ duties contain the deliberation and discussion of some primary issues concerning the application of the Islamic ordainments[i]. However, there are dozens of apparent questions of which, hitherto, none has ever been answered:
1. Who is the individual who has the authority to appoint individuals as public jurists for all Muslim individuals and nations worldwide, and even for generations to come?
2. What religious or public authorities do such jurist individuals possess so that they can be nominated, appointed, and recognized as Muslim Jurists?
3. Who interviewed and certified them in the jurisprudential field of knowledge and profession?
4. Who specified them and permitted them to monopolize the knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence?
5. What is the difference between jurists, imams, sheikhs, preachers, commentators – Mufasirun, and religious elders, and how can a layperson distinguish between these titles and titled persons?
6. What is the level of competency needed to be qualified for competing for the position of holding a jurisprudential office?
7. What is the length of the necessary subjects required to qualify for a jurist?
The lack of absolute answers to these questions identifies today’s Shari’a as one of the thousands of community customaries. It also indicates that it was inadvertently built with manmade laws, which specific individuals regulated without referring to or relying on public consent. In that case, it has also been described as unilateral commandments imposed by specific influential individuals in their communities.
Furthermore, the terms Shari’ah, Jurisprudence, Tradition, Previous cultures, and several similar terms with no clear-cut definition boundaries were popularized among Muslims, of whom most think such terms are Godly statements. When these words are pronounced, laymen think that God is talking to them. That is why Sharia spoilers known as extremists, fundamentalists, or Islamists influence many Muslims. Muslims love Islam and are incredibly adherent to it, but their minds are filled with wrong information and manmade statements. Taking advantage of the Muslims’ extreme love for Islam, extremists and misleaders occupy most government offices, Parliament, police, military, civil society, and political parties, and they often run for the presidency. In Somalia, for instance, at least three high-ranked officials of extremist organizations held the head of state at the federal or provincial level with the help or the go-ahead of the world’s superpower.
Islamic Extremists scattered in our contemporary world differ among themselves by name, title, emblem, ambition, goal, strategy, system, administration, creed, geographical location, race, language, military tactics, and source of funding support. It seems that the only thing that unites them is embracing puritanical interpretations of Sharia and using Islamic slogans such as “Allahuakbar” meaning Allah is the Greatest. Even though most of them frequently change their names, currently, among the most active and known titles are the following
· Al-Qaeda operates in Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan
· Al-Shabab operates in Somalia and some parts of Kenya
· ISIS operates in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Kurdish areas, as far as the Turkish and Iranian borders.
