Saudi Arabia's Biblical Justice

"Lately in the news, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has pardoned a rape victim who had been sentenced to prison and 200 lashes. [...] The international community was right to raise an outcry, and it's good to hear that this woman was spared, [...] However, I do wonder if the Christians who joined in the protest fully realize the implications of their position.

[...]

According to Christian theology, God deliberately laid down a set of laws - the Mosaic laws of the Old Testament - that were impossible for humans to obey perfectly, no matter how dedicated they were or how hard they tried. Since God is absolutely holy, he decreed that the punishment for failing to follow these impossible laws was death. This would have put humans in a hopeless situation, except that in New Testament times God sent Jesus to shed his divine blood, and thereby grant humans an undeserved, unmerited forgiveness and excuse them for their inability to follow the law.

The parallels are striking. The Saudi authorities, too, laid down an impossible, unrealistic set of laws - the sharia laws, which condemn women to lives of slavery and enforced ignorance. They decreed death as the punishment for breaking these cruel laws. And then, when a woman broke those laws, they chose to grant her a pardon from the punishment which they themselves created, and they consider this a great instance of mercy.

In both cases, we can rightfully stand dumbfounded, and point out that there's nothing merciful about "saving" someone from a cruel and irrational law that you yourself created!"

Daylight Atheism, Jan 5, 2008

That's a very fine point.

Profits in the name of religion

"Islamic banking is another phenomenon which I have personally found quite puzzling because by replacing “interest” with “profit” and engaging a religious scholar to put his seal on a transaction does not make that particular transaction “halal” in my opinion. Living in the interconnected global economy as we do how does an Islamic bank ensure that not a rupee/dirham/dollar is coming from a source that generates interest? With the consumer banking industry experiencing tremendous growth in the past nine years with the advent of Mr Shaukat Aziz in Pakistan, Islamic banks have proliferated by the dozen. Hoardings scream out to us to bank the “halal” way implying that the other banks are offering “haram” services. Advertisements call out to the faithful to use “halal” debit cards and enter to win a free umra, and now the faithful can even accumulate points which will ultimately lead to Paradise once they’ve got enough points to perform a free Haj. Is this what it has all come down to? Islamic banks are like any other banks and the investors who set them up have done so not to ensure the spiritual well-being of their customers but to make huge profits — nothing more and nothing less.

[...]

By using the emotional pull of religion to increase deposits somehow just doesn’t strike me as a particularly clean way of making money."

Shakir Husain, The News, Pakistan, 30 July 2007

Western subversions of Muslim progress

"I shall address the internal structure of Islamic totalism as a major hurdle to democratisation, economic growth and progress in some future essay, but here I want to shed light on the way the west has consistently promoted reactionary Islamism, subverted progressive nationalist regimes, and thus controlled the destinies of the Muslim world by tying them down to a medieval mindset.

[...]

The second Western attack on Muslim modernisation was when King Amanullah of Afghanistan initiated an impressive programme to modernise his country. Industrialisation, modern education, liberation of women and many other such ideas were in the pipeline but the British in India recruited the most reactionary Mullah of Afghanistan, Mullah Shore Bazar, and a notorious bandit, Baccha Sakka, to launch a counter-revolution. They succeeded in overthrowing King Amanullah who was sent into exile in 1929.

The third assault on Muslim modernity was the overthrow of Prime Minister Mossadeq of Iran in 1953 because he had nationalised the Anglo-Iran Oil Company. The British and American intelligence services joined ranks and with the help of reactionary sections of the Iranian clergy masterminded the agitation that brought to an end the Mossadeq era.

[...]

Chronologically speaking it was not Wahabism that set in motion forces that undermined modernising processes in the Muslim world; it was Khomeini's reactionary revolution that initiated it. The Saudis reacted violently to Khomeini's bid to capture the leadership of the Muslim world. Their rivalry drove Muslim societies more and more towards extremism."

Ishtiaq Ahmed, The News, 28.07.2007

Faith-based initatives in foreign policy.

[Saudi Arabia] How a British jihadi saw the light

"Ed Hussain, once a proponent of radical Islam in London, tells how his time as a teacher in Saudi Arabia led him to turn against extremism

[...]

At work the British Council introduced free internet access for educational purposes. Within days the students had downloaded the most obscene pornography from sites banned in Saudi Arabia, but easily accessed via the British Council’s satellite connection. Segregation of the sexes, made worse by the veil, had spawned a culture of pent-up sexual frustration that expressed itself in the unhealthiest ways.

[...]

In my Islamist days we relished stating that Aids and other sexually transmitted diseases were the result of the moral degeneracy of the West. Large numbers of Islamists in Britain hounded prostitutes in Brick Lane and flippantly quoted divorce and abortion rates in Britain. The implication was that Muslim morality was superior. Now, more than ever, I was convinced that this too was Islamist propaganda, designed to undermine the West and inject false confidence in Muslim minds.

I worried whether my observations were idiosyncratic, the musings of a wandering mind. I discussed my troubles with other British Muslims working at the British Council. Jamal, who was of a Wahhabi bent, fully agreed with what I observed and went further. “Ed, my wife wore the veil back home in Britain and even there she did not get as many stares as she gets when we go out here.” Another British Muslim had gone as far as tinting his car windows black in order to prevent young Saudis gaping at his wife."

The Sunday Times, April 21, 2007 (Extracted from "The Islamist", to be published by Penguin on May 3.)

A harrowing read.