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Prejudiced pundits fuss over sharia

By Irfan Yusuf - posted Friday, 15 February 2008


Once again, Muslims have been forced onto the front page, to explain themselves and justify their faith, except this time it isn't because of the inflammatory words or deadly actions of a Muslim on the other side of the planet.

I guess what many readers will be wondering is whether Muslims on either side of the Tasman want sharia law to be implemented. The answer is: I don't have the faintest.

Why? Because I haven't asked every Muslim in New Zealand or Australia what she or he thinks of sharia. Even those claiming to speak for Muslims have never polled their communities about their views on these types of issues.

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During recent trips to Indonesia and Malaysia, I was surprised by how different people's images of sharia were.

In Malaysia, groups such as Sisters in Islam campaign for less rigid interpretations of certain aspects of Malaysian Islamic family law. They are supported by some of Malaysia's top Islamic lawyers, including Professor Muhammad Hashim Kamali, of the International Islamic University of Malaysia.

Such debates are almost unheard of in Java, where sharia means non-interest banking and ethical investments. Meanwhile, in South Asia, people associate sharia with not just family law but also the law of inheritance.

Then there is the distinction between sharia as the outer manifestation of Islamic worship and tariqa (also known as tasawwuf to Sunni Muslims, irfan to Shia Muslims and sufism in the West) as the inner manifestation. In this sense, sharia is the Islamic equivalent to what Christians call liturgy.

Even if Muslims here wanted to, I doubt they could get their act together to implement sharia. They cannot even agree on when the lunar months start and finish. In Sydney, we typically have Ramadan starting on at least three separate days. Some imams insist on sighting the moon with their naked eye. Others like to use astronomical calculations, or some combination of the two.

Given that our imams cannot even agree on such simple liturgical issues, one can hardly expect them to provide much guidance on the implementation of sharia in a Western country. With that in mind, I feel I can confidently predict we won't be seeing a sharia state on either side of the Tasman at anytime before the next ice age.

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First published in New Zealand's Press on February 13, 2008.



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About the Author

Irfan Yusuf is a New South Wales-based lawyer with a practice focusing on workplace relations and commercial dispute resolution. Irfan is also a regular media commentator on a variety of social, political, human rights, media and cultural issues. Irfan Yusuf's book, Once Were Radicals: My Years As A Teenage Islamo-Fascist, was published in May 2009 by Allen & Unwin.

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