More issues on Shari’ah debate
In the realm of religious issues, real knowledge comes from God through his prophets and other appointees and, certainly, not the so-called religious scholars of the time, who claim to be guardians of the religion and, therefore, their word must be accepted as the unvarnished truth. History shows that such claimants to scholarship are always tangents off the pristine teachings of the religion.
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In Matters Arising From Shari’ah Debate (1) in The Mirror of Friday, May 30-June 5, 2014, under the column Talking Islam, Sheikh Ishaak Nuamah conceded what I had stated in my earlier rejoinder on the issue that “there is no stoning to death in the Quran as punishment for adultery, and that is absolutely correct.”
However, he indicated that if my thinking was that there was no stoning to death as punishment for an adulterer in Shari’ah, then I got it wrong. This is because the Quran is not the only source of Shari’ah.
Sheikh Nuamah is right in this regard as the Sunnat, recorded sayings and deeds of the Holy Prophet - peace and blessings of Allah be upon him - constitutes veritable sources of Islamic knowledge, including the Shari’ah.
However, the authenticity of the Hadiths (sayings and deeds of the Holy Prophet), compiled many years after the Prophet’s demise, depends on whether they expatiate Quranic verses as further guidance or they contradict Quranic verses. This is the test.
Should they contradict the Quran, they must be rejected as a distortion or fabrication as one cannot remotely contemplate the Holy Prophet going against the revealed word of God.
The truth is that with the Holy Quran, being the locus classicus of Islam, no authority can supersede it. Even the Holy Prophet ( s.a.w.) to whom the Quran was revealed was commanded to judge by it (Quran 6:51, 7:204) and not judge by his own prescription ( Quran5:50 and 4:106).
On this basis, Sheikh Nuamah’s claim that the Prophet prescribed “stoning” for adultery and acted upon it cannot be true.
The only occasion when the Holy Prophet ordered the administration of stoning was in the case of Jewish adulterers whose religious book, the Torah, had stoning as punishment for adultery. He judged by the Torah in cases involving Jews and not the Quran.
Now, let us turn to Quran 24:4, which follows the verse that prescribes flogging as the punishment for adultery and fornication.
This verse establishes in the most lucid terms that this holy book does not, and for that matter the Holy Prophet (s.a.w.) did not and could not have sanctioned stoning to death for adultery.
It reads: “The adulterer cannot have sexual intercourse but with an adulteress or an idolatrous woman and an adulteress – none can have sexual intercourse with her but an adulterer or an idolatrous man. That is indeed forbidden to the believers.”
What this verse means is that owing to the social stigma attached to adultery, only adulterers and adulteresses can marry themselves.
It stands to reason that if convicted adulterer and adulteress, against whom four persons have testified to have witnessed the act ‘fiili fiili’ are to be stoned to death as prescribed by the Holy Prophet, according to Sheikh Nuamah, the consequences are that they would not be alive to contract marriages among and between themselves.
Besides, if Sheikh Nuamah asserts that adultery is punishable by stoning to death, what should be the measure of half the punishment of stoning (Quran 4:26) for married bondsman and bondswoman who is involved in adultery?
These are the core issues on which to decide on the claims that the Holy Prophet prescribed death by stoning for adultery against express teachings of the Holy Quran.
Indulgence in semantics and reference to hadiths whose dubiety is obvious and rulings of the so-called Kuwaiti-based Islamic Legal Council are not the determinants.
Almighty God is most merciful and His mercy is so encompassing that He always provides opportunity for sinners to repent and tread the path of righteousness so they can inherit paradise.
In fact, in Allah’s punishments are embedded elements of mercy as they provide an opportunity for repentance and reformation.
The tragedy with the present day Sharia is that most of it is not based on the letter and spirit of the Quran. This is due to the belief of some Muslim theologians that the hadiths – sayings and deeds of the Holy Prophet – have an overriding effect on the Quran. Some have even stated that the deeds of the Prophet can abrogate the Quran, the word of God. Really?
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No wonder in some of the so-called Islamic countries, the sharia has become an instrument for oppressing women, including banning women from acquiring education; exercising their right to vote and prohibiting them from driving; crimes like blasphemy and apostasy have been invented to terrorise their citizens from exercising their right to freedom of conscience and belief; and state institutions are empowered to decide on whose beliefs are orthodox and whose are heretical - all these in violent opposition to the noble teachings of Islam.
Sadly, this corrupted and jaundiced interpretation and application of Sharia, with its resultant bigotry and extremism, have spawned so-called jihadist movements such as Taliban, Al-Qaida and Boko Haram, Jammat-e-Islam, and lately the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, etc. that are committing atrocities, with their attendant condemnable loss of human lives – all these in the name of Allah.
Sadly, again, these, extremist and jihadist ideologies that pass for the teachings of Islam are being exported to Africa and Asian countries by some oil-rich Muslim governments in the Middle East under the guise of scholarships grants and building of mosques, etc.
By these actions, Islam is regrettably portrayed as a religion devoid of mercy and compassion and diminishing the status of the Holy Prophet, peace and blessings of God upon him, as a “mercy for mankind.”
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Alas, these actions that are monumental deviations from the true path of Islam were prophesied by the Holy Prophet as constituting the signs of the advent of the Isa Bin Maryam, the Promised Messiah and Mahdi, who will remove the rust from the visage of Islam and call the lost Muslims back to the path of true Islam.
Mohammed Kwadwo Affum
Adenta.