Portal: Islamic Law: Difference between revisions
| [checked revision] | [checked revision] |
No edit summary |
No edit summary |
||
| Line 74: | Line 74: | ||
{{col-float-end}} | {{col-float-end}} | ||
==Crime and punishment== | ==Crime and punishment== | ||
Islamic scripture explicitly lists a number of particular punishments, most corporal, for the violation of the various rules it contains. The crimes for which scripture provides its own punishments tend to be those which are considered the most severe. Advocacy against these explicit scriptural injunctions is itself considered an act of apostasy, and thus traditionally merits the death penalty, as outlined in scripture. Beyond the well-known prohibitions on and punishments for sexual activity, the practice of free speech, and drinking alcohol, Islamic law traditionally also outlawed a great many forms of recreation, such as music and games that involved chance. In many cases, the particular prohibition is not clear - the most eminent example of this is, perhaps, the prohibition on Riba, as the precise meaning of the 7th century Arabian financial concept has long been lost to history. | |||
<div class="articleSummaryColumnsWrapper"> | <div class="articleSummaryColumnsWrapper"> | ||
<div class="articleSummaryColumn"> | |||
{{PortalArticle|summary=|title=Islam and Freedom of Speech|image=Images-cfiv-0004.jpg|description=According to Islamic law, it is a criminal offense to speak ill of Islam, its Prophet, and its holy Scriptures (Qur'an and Hadith). Blasphemy is punishable by death. Sufficiently unorthodox perspectives constitute blasphemy just as well as ''only partially'' orthodox perspectives (that is, those perspectives that affirm some tenants of blasphemy while denying others).}}{{PortalArticle|title=Islam and Homosexuality|summary=|image=Homophobes.jpg|description=The four Sunni schools of jurisprudence all agree that practicing homosexuality is an egregious crime that earns an especially harsh punishment, although the schools vary regarding what exactly this punishment should be. Punishments range from execution by beheading, execution by stoning, execution by being thrown off a tall building, and imprisonment until death.}} | {{PortalArticle|summary=|title=Islam and Freedom of Speech|image=Images-cfiv-0004.jpg|description=According to Islamic law, it is a criminal offense to speak ill of Islam, its Prophet, and its holy Scriptures (Qur'an and Hadith). Blasphemy is punishable by death. Sufficiently unorthodox perspectives constitute blasphemy just as well as ''only partially'' orthodox perspectives (that is, those perspectives that affirm some tenants of blasphemy while denying others).}}{{PortalArticle|title=Islam and Homosexuality|summary=|image=Homophobes.jpg|description=The four Sunni schools of jurisprudence all agree that practicing homosexuality is an egregious crime that earns an especially harsh punishment, although the schools vary regarding what exactly this punishment should be. Punishments range from execution by beheading, execution by stoning, execution by being thrown off a tall building, and imprisonment until death.}} | ||
</div><div class="articleSummaryColumn"> | </div><div class="articleSummaryColumn"> | ||
| Line 96: | Line 97: | ||
{{col-float-end}} | {{col-float-end}} | ||
==Jihad== | ==Jihad== | ||
Jihad, which literally means ''struggle'', refers in Islamic law exclusively to military activity intended to spread and preserve the Islamic empire. Islamic literature does, however, often avoid this terminological use in order to use it in its literal sense. In this usage, the word Jihad is sometimes used to metaphorically allude to and describe the ''internal struggle'' one must at times engage in ''against oneself''. This alternative, metaphorical usage of the word Jihad does not, however, have any legal implications. The legal doctrines of Jihad are rather straightforward: the Muslim ''ummah'', or peoples, must, as the Quran states fight the unbelievers "until religion is all for Allah".<ref>{{Quran|8|39}}</ref> Although a military struggle is envisioned and described by these and similar statements in scripture, they have be employed rhetorically and metaphorically as encouragement for personal, spiritual struggles. There are also rules set out for how to conduct Jihad. On the one hand, wildlife, innocents, and enemies should not be needlessly maimed. On the other, all those who refuse to convert or submit to financial, social, legal, and various other forms of subjugation, be the innocents or combatants, must either be executed or enslaved (this includes sexually, in the case of women and girls). | |||
<div class="articleSummaryColumnsWrapper"> | <div class="articleSummaryColumnsWrapper"> | ||
<div class="articleSummaryColumn"> | |||
{{PortalArticle|image=Jihadistsig.jpeg|summary=|title=Jihad in Islamic Law|description=Jihad has been a central imperative in Islamic law throughout history and remains one today. Although the doctrine of global religious and imperial conquest has proven controversial in recent times, particularly when groups have attempted to implement it, the basic contours of the doctrine have remained static since rise of first Islamic caliphates.}}{{PortalArticle|title=Invitation to Islam Prior to Jihad|summary=|image=Muhammad-Letter-To-Heraclius.jpg|description=The practice of inviting non-Muslim nations to join Islam or pay the Jizyah prior to engaging in offensive Jihad was first initiated by the Prophet Muhammad. His example was then followed by the Rightly-Guided Caliphs and the leaders of Islamic empires, codified within the Islamic Shari'ah. Where radical Islamists have today tried to emulate Muhammad and implement this well-established practice, they have generally been faced with widespread criticism.}} | {{PortalArticle|image=Jihadistsig.jpeg|summary=|title=Jihad in Islamic Law|description=Jihad has been a central imperative in Islamic law throughout history and remains one today. Although the doctrine of global religious and imperial conquest has proven controversial in recent times, particularly when groups have attempted to implement it, the basic contours of the doctrine have remained static since rise of first Islamic caliphates.}}{{PortalArticle|title=Invitation to Islam Prior to Jihad|summary=|image=Muhammad-Letter-To-Heraclius.jpg|description=The practice of inviting non-Muslim nations to join Islam or pay the Jizyah prior to engaging in offensive Jihad was first initiated by the Prophet Muhammad. His example was then followed by the Rightly-Guided Caliphs and the leaders of Islamic empires, codified within the Islamic Shari'ah. Where radical Islamists have today tried to emulate Muhammad and implement this well-established practice, they have generally been faced with widespread criticism.}} | ||
</div><div class="articleSummaryColumn"> | </div><div class="articleSummaryColumn"> | ||
| Line 115: | Line 117: | ||
{{col-float-end}} | {{col-float-end}} | ||
==Ritual== | ==Ritual== | ||
A great part of the body of Islamic law regulates the particulars of ritual practices ranging everything from precisely how one should twiddle one's index finger during the daily prayers to how the the throats of cattle should be split and drained dry of blood during ritual sacrifice. Whereas scripture provides usually clear outlines on the basic workings of rituals, jurist differ endlessly in the details. The great majority of ritual law regards benign practices of the finger-twiddling variety which, despite being a potential and sometimes actual source of social discord, have generally become topics of lesser concern among the wider Muslim population. Ritual laws regarding the large-scale sacrifice of hundreds of millions of animals to Allah, on the other hand, have attracted growing international attention. Similarly troubling have been the pilgrimage rituals conducted at Mecca which, when practiced by millions of persons all at once, have repeatedly resulted in hundreds of deaths by stampede and contagion. While some of these challenges such as those with pilgrimage rituals, Islamic jurists contend, can be overcome through logistical and architectural innovation, other, often moral, challenges, such as those face by animal sacrifice in the face of growing concern for animal rights, have been cause for lesser optimism. | |||
<div class="articleSummaryColumnsWrapper"> | <div class="articleSummaryColumnsWrapper"> | ||
<div class="articleSummaryColumn"> | |||
{{PortalArticle|title=Eid al-Adha|summary=|image=Eidadha.jpg|description=Eid Al-Adha (عيد الأضحى, "the festival of sacrifice") is the biggest Islamic holiday, in which Muslims ritually sacrifice animals (usually sheep) in commemoration of Abraham's attempted child sacrifice of Isma'il (Ishmael). Of the two Islamic Eid festivals (the other being Eid al-Fitr, celebrating the end Ramadan), Eid al-Adha is the holier one. Eid al-Adha occurs on the 10th day of Dhu al-Hijjah, the final month of the Islamic Lunar Calendar, and lasts four days.}}{{PortalArticle|image=Udhiyya.jpg|summary=|title=Qurban (Ritual Sacrifice)|description=Qurban means "sacrifice" in Arabic. Islamic scriptures (the Qur'an and Hadith) recount at least two close instances of human sacrifice which were averted at last second and contemporary Muslims continue to engage in yearly animal sacrifice on عيد الأضحى "Eid Al-Adha", the Eid of the Sacrifice.}} | {{PortalArticle|title=Eid al-Adha|summary=|image=Eidadha.jpg|description=Eid Al-Adha (عيد الأضحى, "the festival of sacrifice") is the biggest Islamic holiday, in which Muslims ritually sacrifice animals (usually sheep) in commemoration of Abraham's attempted child sacrifice of Isma'il (Ishmael). Of the two Islamic Eid festivals (the other being Eid al-Fitr, celebrating the end Ramadan), Eid al-Adha is the holier one. Eid al-Adha occurs on the 10th day of Dhu al-Hijjah, the final month of the Islamic Lunar Calendar, and lasts four days.}}{{PortalArticle|image=Udhiyya.jpg|summary=|title=Qurban (Ritual Sacrifice)|description=Qurban means "sacrifice" in Arabic. Islamic scriptures (the Qur'an and Hadith) recount at least two close instances of human sacrifice which were averted at last second and contemporary Muslims continue to engage in yearly animal sacrifice on عيد الأضحى "Eid Al-Adha", the Eid of the Sacrifice.}} | ||
</div><div class="articleSummaryColumn"> | </div><div class="articleSummaryColumn"> | ||
Revision as of 18:38, 14 February 2021
Islamic law, or the Shariah, is held to comprise the specific rulings intended by Allah for all of mankind in all times and places and delivered through Islamic scriptures (namely, the Quran and hadith). Fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence, comprises the legal and interpretive theories through which these rulings are derived from the Quran and hadith. Norms observed and prescribed by Muhammad in these scriptures are, as a rule, taken literally and considered binding. To intentionally defy any part of Islamic law is to defy God's will, and thus to recant one's faith. Islamic law covers and immense array of topics, regulating everything from bathroom etiquette, criminal law, bedroom conduct, and imperial policy to etiquette with books, restrictions on speech, restrictions on diet, and economy. As nearly all of Islamic law derives from the hadith rather than the Quran, historians have questioned whether much of it can be historically attributed to Muhammad in actual fact. Nonetheless, the Shariah serves as a foundation, at times comprehensively and other times nominally, for numerous Muslim-majority nations. Where Muslims are not governed by Islamic law, they are obligated to conduct their own lives in accordance with it, on penalty of torturous punishment in the hereafter, alongside unbelievers.
Theory
For all their prescriptive content, Islamic scriptures do not themselves contain a formal theory of law. Much as Christian doctrine has been pieced together by competing sects based on different formulas for reading scripture, Islamic law is generated only after Islamic scriptures are passed through the different interpretive apparatuses of the various schools of Islamic law. For all there differences, there is much that the four major Sunni schools of law, or madhhabs agree on: Muslims must pray facing the Ka'bah in Mecca, apostates must be executed, and cousin marriage is permissible. Broadly speaking, the four schools agree where there is explicit instruction on a legal matter in scripture deemed authentic, and differ where there isn't.
Other articles in this section
Women
Women are legally disadvantaged by Islamic law in several in several domains of life. Particularly, women are disadvantaged in matters of sexual, domestic, legal, financial, sartorial, and physical autonomy. According to Islamic legal theory, while not all of Islamic law necessarily has a perceptibly rational basis, legal restrictions on women may be due to their intellectual deficiency, which was pronounced by Muhammad and is recorded in Sahih Bukhari.
Other articles in this section
Non-Muslims
Those non-Muslims permitted to live under the Islamic regime (namely, Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians; i.e. 'Dhimmis') are subjected to unique disadvantages in matters of sexual, domestic, legal, financial, sartorial, physical, communal, and religious autonomy. While this subjugation is comparable - albeit in each specific account different - from the legal disadvantages imposed upon women under Islamic law, the rationale is fundamentally different. Though the Quran decries non-Muslims as being, among other things, 'deaf, dumb, blind'[1], 'evil'[2], 'like cattle'[3], 'perverse'[4], and 'without intelligence'[5], any supposed characterological traits are not the underlying reason for their subjugation, as might be thought to be case for the subjugation of women. The reason for the the subjugation of non-Muslims living in the Islamic state is because the have the potential to convert to Islam - As the Quran states, this subjugation is simply intended as measure which, through bringing about their humiliation, will incentivize their conversion.
Other articles in this section
Crime and punishment
Islamic scripture explicitly lists a number of particular punishments, most corporal, for the violation of the various rules it contains. The crimes for which scripture provides its own punishments tend to be those which are considered the most severe. Advocacy against these explicit scriptural injunctions is itself considered an act of apostasy, and thus traditionally merits the death penalty, as outlined in scripture. Beyond the well-known prohibitions on and punishments for sexual activity, the practice of free speech, and drinking alcohol, Islamic law traditionally also outlawed a great many forms of recreation, such as music and games that involved chance. In many cases, the particular prohibition is not clear - the most eminent example of this is, perhaps, the prohibition on Riba, as the precise meaning of the 7th century Arabian financial concept has long been lost to history.
Other articles in this section
Jihad
Jihad, which literally means struggle, refers in Islamic law exclusively to military activity intended to spread and preserve the Islamic empire. Islamic literature does, however, often avoid this terminological use in order to use it in its literal sense. In this usage, the word Jihad is sometimes used to metaphorically allude to and describe the internal struggle one must at times engage in against oneself. This alternative, metaphorical usage of the word Jihad does not, however, have any legal implications. The legal doctrines of Jihad are rather straightforward: the Muslim ummah, or peoples, must, as the Quran states fight the unbelievers "until religion is all for Allah".[6] Although a military struggle is envisioned and described by these and similar statements in scripture, they have be employed rhetorically and metaphorically as encouragement for personal, spiritual struggles. There are also rules set out for how to conduct Jihad. On the one hand, wildlife, innocents, and enemies should not be needlessly maimed. On the other, all those who refuse to convert or submit to financial, social, legal, and various other forms of subjugation, be the innocents or combatants, must either be executed or enslaved (this includes sexually, in the case of women and girls).
Other articles in this section
Ritual
A great part of the body of Islamic law regulates the particulars of ritual practices ranging everything from precisely how one should twiddle one's index finger during the daily prayers to how the the throats of cattle should be split and drained dry of blood during ritual sacrifice. Whereas scripture provides usually clear outlines on the basic workings of rituals, jurist differ endlessly in the details. The great majority of ritual law regards benign practices of the finger-twiddling variety which, despite being a potential and sometimes actual source of social discord, have generally become topics of lesser concern among the wider Muslim population. Ritual laws regarding the large-scale sacrifice of hundreds of millions of animals to Allah, on the other hand, have attracted growing international attention. Similarly troubling have been the pilgrimage rituals conducted at Mecca which, when practiced by millions of persons all at once, have repeatedly resulted in hundreds of deaths by stampede and contagion. While some of these challenges such as those with pilgrimage rituals, Islamic jurists contend, can be overcome through logistical and architectural innovation, other, often moral, challenges, such as those face by animal sacrifice in the face of growing concern for animal rights, have been cause for lesser optimism.