History seeks historians
I am glad that multiculturalism enables Abhijit Pandya to contribute to the Daily Mail‘s RightMinds blog. But then I’m from a place noted for religious dissent for the past five hundred years: Lollards, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists. Multiculturalism runs right through our veins.
Meanwhile, a reader in the comments beneath the article quotes from poorly paraphrased passages from the website “religionofpeace” and tells us they are hadith, hoping none of us knows how copy and paste works.
In schoolboy fashion, I too can do a Google search and happen upon English translations of ancient texts to present an opposing argument without wondering about authenticity, accuracy or interpretation.
And so here, in this rendition of the “green veil” hadith, 200 words long in English, we read of a woman who wishes to divorce a man because he is impotent and of no use to her. The hadith does not say whether the man was admonished or not, it only says that the Prophet, peace be upon him, believed that the man was not impotent because he had two sons who looked just like him, making the claim of impotency no grounds for divorce.
And here, in this rendition of the “Abu Dawud” hadith, we find that the second half of the hadith records the Prophet, peace be upon him, admonished the men for beating them after seventy women came to him to complain about their husbands. In a nearby hadith it ends, “Beat them, but only the worst of you will beat them.”
The reality is that Muslims vary immensely in their approaches to Islam and their interaction with family and society. Two scholars, both deeply learned and engaged in their faith, sometimes have completely opposite views on this subject alone. Tis life. Muslims are humans. Texts are open to interpretation. History seeks historians.
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Wolves In Sheep’s Clothes
In 1987 Baroness Cox co-founded the Committee for a Free Britain, “an extreme right wing organization”, funded by Rupert Murdoch which at one point called for “the legalization of all drugs” (www)
Abhijit Pandya supported EDF, Geert Wilders, Michael Savage etc. (www) As far as I can see, he is not trained in Islamic Jurisprudence.
Reading a translated text in English of the Quran or Hadith, then drawing a law from it, is not the traditional way of Muslims. If one is not a jurist, they should refer to a jurist. If an untrained doctor administered medication to a patient, he could be prosecuted in a court of law. You do not become a doctor just by reading books of medicine.
As the subject is related to forced marriage, he should have at least defined it. He should have defined marriage as seen by muslims as well. He could have quoted: “..consort with them in kindness..” Quran 4:19, for example, along the text he understood as beating and how would he reconcile the two if at all possible. He could have quoted: “Advise each other to treat women with kindness” which is in Bukhari and Muslim. And again how would he reconcile it with beating.
Seeing only one side? Why?
Muslims view a man and a woman as two who complete each other. Therefore they share many things, but they are also different in many a thing. So seeing the women as equal (equal like in Mathematics) to men, is a great injustice to women. Also what he has not touched upon is how to be just to all and not just to one side. Hearing only one side is the foundation of injustice.
Anyway, the way of Muslim jurists is first to collect all the text related to the issue they are dealing with. Then separate what is authentic from what is not.
Then apply the rules of Usool (Principles of understanding the text). Then draw their conclusions. By “Principles of understanding the text”, I mean things like:
To criminalise a religion because of the actions of the few is a crime. The list of criminals comprise people of every religion and non-religion. For crime is the activity of a “human being” not necessarily that of “religious human being”.
— noted by Mohammad 2:17 pm on 5th January, 2012 .