"I am compelled to say I personally find the article interesting, but not "excellent". It seems that Tawfik Hamid has no knowledge of Islam and of Shari'ah, except for what he learnt inside Jama'at Islamiyyah. That is the reason why he confuses the dictates of Shari'ah with the aberrant way in which Shari'ah is re-interpreted by terrorist groups. That is the reason why he forges against the Shari'ah of Islam some accusations which are to be directed only toward the perverted notion of "Shari'ah" which is common among deviant non-Sunni groups.
When he writes "Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the "end of days", none of his claims has a base in Shari'ah.
Shari'ah only permits to kill an apostate when there exists a state of war, and when the apostate is considered guilty of treachery in war because of his apostasy. Even in this case, an autorization from the Caliph or of his deputy is needed for execution. Since in our time there exist no Caliph who could order the execution of an apostate during a war, the Shari'ah - contrary to what Tawfik Hamid claims - STRICTLY FORBIDS killing apostates, and consider those who kill an apostate GUILTY OF MURDER.
As for beating women "beating" women, the Shari'ah explain that it is an extreme measure, and should never exceed the force one can apply by BEATING WITH A HANDKERCHIEF. However, when the law of the State forbids it, even beating with a HANDKERCHIEF becomes forbidden, since obeying the Law of the State in everything which does not contradicts Islam IS COMPULSORY according to the Shari'ah.
As for Jews and Christians, the Shari'ah dictates TO PROTECT THEIR LIVES, THEIR FAMILIES AND THEIR BELONGING AS DHIMMIS, and an Arab should know that the word dhimmi means "they one who must be protected" and not "the one who must be subjugated. Apart from this, the Shari'ah also forbid resorting to cohercion in matter of religion. War is justified by Shari'ah as a mean for self-defense, and not as a mean of cohericing others. The claim according to which the Shari'ah of Islam "exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the "end of days", is the upmost of ridiculous, since from the time of Omar Ibn al-Khattab, then of Salahu-d-Din al-Ayyubi, no one of the Muslim rulers who strictly applied the Shari'ah ever tried to "exterminate the Jews", but rather PROTECTED THEM against those who wanted to exterminate them, to the point that the same Babylonian Talmud deals with Umar ibn al-Khattab in very positive terms.
If a conclusion can be deduced from Tawfik Hamid's article, is that he is still enwrapped in the horrible counterfeit version of Islam and Shari'ah which is typical of groups he was involved with. Today he openly condemns was in the past he entusiastically appproved. It is a progress, but is not enough. He must realize that his involvement in criminal gangs like Jama'at Islamiyyah also depended on his deep ignorance of Islam and its Shari'ah. Now that he recognizes the evil neture of those gangs, he also needs to learn Islam for the beginning, instead on blaming what he goes on ignoring as he did before."
- Shaykh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi
Director, Cultural Institute of the Italian Islamic Community
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