No God But God

Yet it is disingenuous to argue, as many contemporary Muslims do, that Islam is beneficial to women because it guarantees them social dignity and a protected legal status. On the contrary, the Koran repeatedly belittles women. "Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the others, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because Allah guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them," the holy book says (Sura 4, v. 34). Even today, magazines can be found in some Arab libraries that contain instructions for the "gentle" beating of difficult wives. And as for sex, the Koran tells men they can have it when they want it: "Women are your fields. Go, then, into your fields as you please" (Sura 2, v. 223).

CHURCH AND STATE

After the Koran, the most important secondary source of doctrine is the Sunna, the life and example of the Prophet, often recorded in the hadith, his authenticated sayings, compiled after his death by Muslim scholars who laboriously recorded the chain of sources who had heard Muhammad speak. Collectively, these require Muslims to live peaceably among themselves, be honest in commerce, be charitable to the orphan and the wayfarer, refrain from alcohol and gambling, divide inherited property and the spoils of war according to specific rules, and conduct the affairs of their community in accordance with God's law. Because these requirements apply to everyone, and because God is always watching, it has often been said that Islam is not just a religion, it is a way of life; there is no distinction between the religious and the secular. Says Middle East specialist Bernard Lewis: "Such pairs of words as church and state, spiritual and temporal, ecclesiastical and lay had no real equivalent in Arabic until modern times, when they were created to translate modern ideas."

To the true believer, no human endeavor is exempt from religious input, which is why Muslim communities are often locked in strenuous arguments about matters that would be entirely secular elsewhere, such as insurance (Is life insurance permissible?) or medical practice (May females treat male patients?) or home buying (How can we have mortgages when Islam forbids the charging of interest?). When Muslim agitators demand that communities or countries be governed according to sharia, or Islamic law, this is what the argument is about: Should public matters such as inheritance law, taxation, education, and criminal justice be determined by religion? If so, how can rules and doctrines that predated the industrial era be applied to modern life? If not, how can the community fulfill the ideals of the faith?

Because neither the Koran nor the Prophet specified what form of government was to be established, Muslims have been arguing for centuries about the proper balance between religious and secular law. Some societies have forged a compromise in which religious courts, guided by sharia, adjudicate family matters such as divorce and child custody, while leaving commercial matters to civil tribunals.

a HARSH JUSTICE

The balance has proved especially difficult to achieve in criminal law because sharia prescribes some punishments that may have been appropriate in the seventh century but are abhorrent today, such as cutting off of hands for theft and public stoning for adultery. According to the Pakistani religious scholar Maulana Muhammad Ali, the state or government punishes only crimes in which there are victims—that is, the state does not punish a failure to pray or a failure to keep the Ramadan fast. In all cases, Ali said, "the punishment of evil should be proportionate thereto," but that does not resolve the question of who has the power to determine proportionality.