The visit of Ms. Ayaan Hirsi Ali to Ohio University to deliver the keynote speech at the Baker Peace Conference on April 8 generated a lot of discussion among students, staff and community members. Last Friday, the Center for International Studies, in collaboration with the African Studies Program, hosted a discussion forum in response to Ms. Hirsi's keynote address. The forum presenters, as well as many of the audience members who participated in the discussion, reacted negatively to Ms. Hirsi's talk and questioned the wisdom behind her invitation to speak about war and confrontation at a peace conference. I think what still needs to be explored further in this debate is to address Ms. Hirsi's claims that Islamic Shari'a laws are discriminating against women. This should be the responsibility of the Muslim community members and the Islamic scholars at Ohio University.
As a Muslim myself, in this letter I would like to address these questions with honesty and civility. First of all, there should be no disagreement that Ms. Hirsi's right to leave Islam is to be protected. Although I disagree with her choice, I defend her right to do so. Second, I think it is high time that Muslim communities in general and Islamic scholars in particular acknowledge with courage and honesty the shortfalls associated with Islamic Shari'a laws. Some forms of Shari'a laws as they have been implemented by the prophet Mohamed in the seventh century and as they are currently in use by some Islamic governments, such as in Saudi Arabia and the Sudan, discriminate against women and non-Muslims. Denying this fact and the inability to explain it is merely burring the heads in the sand. It further enforces Ms. Hirsi's claims and distorts Islam itself.
While Islamic Shari'a laws were just, fair and constituted a great leap forward by the standard prevailing during the time of their legislation in the seventh century, some of them fall short to address the current human aspiration for equality and human rights, especially laws pertaining to women rights, such as marriage, witness and inheritance. The problem is not associated with the Islamic Shari'a laws themselves, but it is related to Muslim scholars who want to implement them now and take them out of their historical context. The mistake that Ms. Hirsi and the overwhelming majority of Muslims make is that they understood Shari'a is the final word in Islam. It isn't. Shari'a represents only a subset of Islamic laws and teachings that we can consider the entrance to Islam; it is the beginning and not the end. Obviously, if someone only stays standing at the gate, he or she will miss what is inside the house.
The solution to the Islamic Shari'a law dilemma can be found in the work of Ustadh Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, the founder of the Republican Brotherhood movement in the Sudan (1909-1985). Taha introduced a radical proposal to reform Islamic Shari'a laws. According to Taha, Islam as revealed in the Quran is not one but two messages
the first and second which are respectively based on the Medinese and the Meccan texts. Based on the second message, Taha calls for withdrawing all forms of Shari'a laws that uphold inequalities between people based on their gender or religious affiliation and replace them with new laws from the Quran that are consistent with constitutional laws and human rights.
Knowing that Ms. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a researcher who wrote and published about Islam and Islamic Shari'a laws, one would assume that she looked into Taha's work. Particularly in that Taha was prosecuted, declared apostate, and executed as a result of his radical proposal to reform Shari'a laws. Moreover, Taha's story is currently posted on the African Studies website here at Ohio University: http://www.african.ohiou.edu/Conferences. I urge Ms. Hirsi to do her homework before she throws aside a religion that has more than a billion followers and not to be blinded by her own personal experience.
Ismail Elmahdi is associate director for Instructional Technology in the Center for International Studies.
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Opinion
Letter to the Editor
