Heretic : Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now by Ali Ayaan Hirsi

Author:Ali, Ayaan Hirsi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-02-17T16:00:00+00:00

The Sharia Paradox

One of the Saudi Arabian kingdom’s leading executioners, Muhammad Saad al-Beshi, told the publication Arab News that he has executed as many as ten people in a single day. The sword is his preferred instrument. He keeps his blade “razor sharp” and has his children help him keep it clean. Al-Beshi finds it interesting that people are amazed at how fast the sword can separate the head from the body, and he wonders why people come to watch executions if they are going to faint and “don’t have the stomach for it.” Al-Beshi also carries out the rulings of sharia by severing hands, feet, and tongues.

Such comments must be deeply shocking to most Western readers, even those living in countries that retain some form of capital punishment. Yet for years, like most Muslims, I myself did not think to question the basic principles and practices of sharia. Even in running away from my arranged marriage, I believed that sharia punishments would follow me because that was the rule in my own community. When I arrived in the Netherlands, I feared that my father or his clansmen or the man I had been assigned to marry would simply appear and force me to submit against my will. When the Dutch officials first told me that there were laws to protect me and that the Netherlands would not recognize my arranged marriage because it had no legal standing, I marveled at this system, so different from the Islamic code. As I immersed myself more in the beliefs and teachings of Western liberal thought, I only marveled more.

In small seminars at Leiden, we reflected on World War II. Did ordinary Germans know about the Holocaust? Did the Dutch? We were put in the position of asking ourselves: What would I have done in the circumstances? Would I have been a “willing executioner”? Would I have helped the Jews, at the risk of my own life? Would I simply have done nothing? As I was grappling with these agonizing questions, my younger sister—who had joined me in the Netherlands—was going through what I had experienced in Nairobi. It was her turn now to feel that she must strive to be a good and pious Muslim. She was reading Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones and Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s The Lawful and Prohibited in Islam: key texts of the Muslim Brotherhood. She was embracing sharia, even as I was being taught to understand the importance of man-made laws and the appalling consequences of lawless totalitarianism.

Today, thanks in large part to my years at Leiden, I understand—I know—that each person, regardless of sex, orientation, color, or creed, deserves basic human rights and protections in return for adhering to the laws of the land where they live. But I also know that this truth contradicts many of the fundamental dictates of sharia. Whereas the rule of law in the West evolved to protect the most vulnerable members of society, under sharia it is precisely the most vulnerable who are

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