I hope Merry posts here shes got some explaining to do, maybe she willl place a fatwa on me.
"...you got some 'splaining to do!" LOL
Sad emo and Abaddon expressed some important points on what you posted, Barry. No answer? Perhaps you are as busy now as I have been.
Sorry I'm late to your "bash." As I mentioned in PM, I am not ignoring your topic, I just didn't have time to address it yet. I was able to read the article at the link you posted, but not everything it referenced. I am a little confused as to why the author would approach this subject as something that would be bad for all societies when shari'ah is only meant for Muslim majority societies, and I also found no well-devoloped argument or proofs that these would be bad for Muslim society. Sure, it seems obvious why some Muslims and non-Muslims would not want to live under shari'ah (just as it is obvious why children often don't want to live by their parents' rules), but does it necessarily follow that these are actually bad for society?
I have been a Muslim for just a touch over 1 year now and still have much to explore and learn. One of the things I learned early on, however, is that many complaints against Islam are based on misinformation, disinformation, or plain old human error and imperfection--"yours, mine and ours." I have a few friends in various "Muslim" countries, and not one of them claims that their society is pure or even can be perfect, and most of them complain that their government does not express Islamic law and values correctly. There are also complaints that everytime an attempt is made to establish or reform an Islamic government, the US interferes.
Here is one article in defense of shari'ah-- http://www.shariah.net/sharia-punishments/ I will quote 3 sections below:
Mercy and Leniency
Having prescribed punishments and imposed strict and meticulous, though not impossible, conditions of evidence, Islam has built in a whole range of principles and precepts which reflect not a frenzied desire to flog and stone but a compassionate urge to avoid and eschew. Islam does not allow either the state or individuals to spy upon people unless well founded suspicion exists that a crime is being committed or a fellow human being's rights or interests are in jeopardy. Nor is it obligatory to report every crime. Where possible, settlements outside court are preferred. The punishment is swiftly over; the guilty person and his or her family do not have to live with the kind of lengthy public stigma that they would have had to endure in the case of a prison sentence at the end of a trial. The imposition of divinely prescribed hudud enhances, not diminishes, the individual's dignity and stature in society and before God.
Alleged Cruelty
As to the alleged cruelty of physical penalties, one wonders if to deprive a person of his or her freedom (the most precious and valuable possession), the right to act and continue to make moral choices, the right to live with a family (to work for and support them) is not more cruel. Indeed, a prison term can inflict untold misery on innocent people whose lives are intertwined with the life of the prisoner. Prison becomes a school for hardening criminal behavior and a breeding ground for recidivism. Why should it be considered more cruel for a person found drug trafficking to be given ten lashes than to be sent to languish in prison for, say, ten years.
Reform Syndrome
Why does Islam want to punish and not reform? The question is fallacious, for in Islam, every institution of society is value-oriented and owes a responsibility towards the moral development of every person from the cradle to the grave. Reform is, therefore, a pre-crime responsibility and not a post-crime syndrome and nightmare. Islam makes every effort to ensure that inducement to commit crime is minimal. Once the crime is committed, the best place for reform is in the family and in the society where a criminal is to live after punishment, not in a prison where every inmate is a criminal; unless, of course, a society considers itself to be more corrupt and less competent to effect reform than a jail! Against this, the "modern, enlightened"? approach is to provide every inducement to crime by building a society based on conspicuous consumption; to make society, education, and every other institution "value free"? and then to try to reform a criminal by segregating the person and keeping him or her in a prison.
Also, as to how shari'ah is for Islamic societies and not all societies:
Most importantly, punishments are only a part of a vastly larger, integrated whole. They can neither be properly understood nor successfully or justifiably implemented in isolation. First, law is not the main, or even major, vehicle in the total framework for the reinforcement of morality; it is the individual's belief, the individual's God-consciousness and taqwaâ, that inherent and innate quality which makes one want to refrain from what displeases God and do what pleases Him. Second, justice is a positive ideal which permeates and dominates the entire life of the community, it is not merely an institutionalized means of inflicting punishment. Third, and consequently, a whole environment is established where to do right is encouraged, facilitated, and found easy, while to do wrong is discouraged, inhibited, and found difficult. All men and women are enjoined, as their foremost duty, to aid, exhort, and commend each other to do good and to avoid evil.
The article you linked to ends with this:
The purpose of these links is not to condemn Islamic countries or to assert that the West is better than they are. Facts say that the West has many problems. Rather, the purpose is to demonstrate that Islamic countries have their share of problems as well. This means that Islamic countries are also decadent. This means that Islamic punishments do not work entirely (except by scare tactics), but they can drive the sin or crime underground.
Well, of course Islamic countries have their share of problems and Islamic punishments do not work entirely. I am sure the majority of Muslims who want to live under shari'ah in their own countries would agree with you. Each side (shari'ah versus secular) can critique the imperfections of the other to death, but Muslims still have a right and a duty to live by the laws of their religion as best they can.
~Merry
"...you got some 'splaining to do!" LOL