Islamic laws are too harsh

Mohammed Sajid, 19, poured acid on the face of his fiancée Rabia Bibi on June 24, 2003 in Bahawalpur, a city in the eastern Pakistani province of Punjab. Sajid carried out the attack after Bibi's parents broke off their engagement and gave her hand to someone else. Sajid's two brothers were also convicted of taking part in the attack. The woman lost sight in both of her eyes and her face was severely burned in the attack.

Violence against women in Pakistan, including acid attacks, is common in Pakistan, particularly in rural and deeply conservative tribal regions.

Human rights activists, say there have been more than 70 incidents of acid attacks reported in Punjab in 2003.

On December 12, 2003, a Pakistani judge ruled that Sajid was guilty of attacking his 17-year-old fiancée with acid and as a result, he too was to be blinded with acid. Judge Afzal Sharif also ruled at his Shariat court in Bahawalpur that Sajid and his brothers were to be jailed for seven years.

The judge's ruling that Sajid’s punishment should match the crime. It falls under the Islamic principle of Qisas — retaliation in kind (eye for an eye). Such punishment is normally carried out unless the criminal is pardoned by the victim or victim's family. This is encouraged because in Islam, retaliation should be forgone as an act of charity. Only victim if still alive or if deceased, the family of the victim and not the State, may pardon the defendant.

The judge ordered that a doctor was to perform the punishment publicly at a sports stadium. "This is the Islamic way of doing justice," the judge wrote in his verdict.

There can be no doubt in the minds of people in westernized nations that this kind of punishment is premised on revenge and not justice. In any case, I doubt that the sentence was likely to be carried out because of public outcry and because President Pervez Musharraf, while he was in power at that time, was determined to modernize Pakistan.

These laws were introduced to Pakistan as part of President Zia-ul-Haq’s move to an Islamic national law with an extra layer of concepts and judicial structures. Under this policy, sections of the Pakistani Penal Code were substituted with Islamic provisions, a parallel Islamic court structure was set up, and a constitutional amendment was introduced stipulating that all laws in Pakistan have to conform to Islamic injunctions. Most of the Hadood laws relate to the offences of armed robbery, theft, rape, fornication, false accusation of fornication, drinking and drug-taking, with strict fixed punishments for certain crimes once adequate evidence if obtained. These fixed punishments – known as hadd – include stoning to death for
fornication, judicial amputation for theft and armed robbery and flogging for consumption of intoxicants, all of which are of particular concern to street children and street girls in particular.

Over the years, there have been many attempts to repeal the Hadood laws, most prominently by the Commission of Inquiry for Women in 1997 and by the Special Committee of the National Commission on the Status of Women (which had been set up to review the Hadood Ordinances in 2002), in August 2003. However, both attempts were unsuccessful.

Although the hadd punishments may not actually be imposed on individuals convicted of crimes as children, it is important to note that the definition of a child in Hadood law is simply ‘a person who has not attained puberty’. Thus, a girl of 12 who has attained puberty is legally an adult, and could be sentenced to hadd punishment under the Hadood laws. This is a matter for concern, as the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance does not legally override the Hadood Laws.

The 'Hudood Ordinances', which is aimed to make the Penal Code more Islamic, provide for harsh punishments for violations of Sharia (Islamic law), including death by stoning for unlawful sexual relations and amputation for other crimes. These 'hadd' punishments require a high standard of evidence, and, in over 20 years since the Hudood Ordinances were adopted, not a single 'hadd' punishment has been carried out which certainly goes to the credit of the Pakistani authorities. This is not to say that such punishments don’t take place in remote tribal villages.

I have tried to find out if acid was eventually poured into Sajid’s eyes but I have been unsuccessful. In all likelihood, he still has his eyes intact. However if he had been in Saudi Arabia, he may not have been that lucky.

Traditional Muslims who understand the Quran (Koran)and the 'Hadith' (reports of Muhammad's words and actions outside of the Quran) believe that Islamic law or sharia expresses the highest and best goals for all societies. It is the will of Allah. In 2000, the law of retaliation in Saudi Arabia (Arabic word is qisas) requires an eye to be removed if the criminal blinded his victim totally or partially.

A 'qisas' (law of retaliation) punishment means causing injury to the offender similar to the injury caused to the victim.

For example, in August 2000, the Saudi Arabian media reported that Abdel Moti Abdel Rahman Mohammad, a 37-year-old Egyptian national was subjected to forcible surgical removal of his left eye at King Fahd Hospital in Medina. The operation was carried out as a judicial punishment of 'qisas' after he was found guilty of disfiguring Shahata Ajami Mahmoud, a 53-year-old Egyptian, by throwing acid at his face and blinding him in his left eye. In May of 2003, Awda al-Zahrani, a Saudi Arabian national, reportedly had two of his teeth extracted by a dentist as a judicial punishment for having caused similar injury to someone during a fight.

In 2004, Rania al-Baz, who had been beaten by her husband, made her ordeal public to raise awareness about violence suffered by women in the home in Saudi Arabia. A television presenter and mother of two, Rania al-Baz was attacked by her husband on April 4th at their home in Jeddah, apparently for simply having answered the telephone. She suffered 13 fractures to her face. Her husband then put her in his van and reportedly dumped her there while she was still unconscious at a hospital in Jeddah, claiming that she was a victim of a traffic accident. He went into hiding before surrendering to the police on April 19th.

He was reportedly charged with attempted murder but this was later reduced to severe assault for which he was convicted in May. He was sentenced to six months' imprisonment and 300 lashes with a rawhide whip. Rania al-Baz had the option of a civil action to seek retribution (qisas) in the form of compensation or corporal punishment commensurate with the harm she sustained, but apparently she chose to pardon her husband in exchange for a divorce and custody of her two sons. The husband served over half of his prison sentence. It was not known if he received the lashes but I presumed that he didn’t.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that it was only in 1972 that floggings ceased in Canada for serious crimes such as rape or serious assaults. The prisoner was flogged with the cat-o-nine-tails (whip) ten times after his appeal was denied and ten lashes 30 days before he was released from the penitentiary. Women were not whipped.

Let me give you an example of Iranian law that went to the extreme. Several years ago, an Iranian who killed the woman he raped was sentenced to 100 whippings by the prison guards the day before he was to be hanged. The next day he was taken to the top of a shed in a public square and in front of thousands of people who came to watch, members of the victim’s family whipped the man with another hundred strokes of the whip. After the final stroke was administered, a noose was placed around his neck and then he was hoisted high in the air by a crane so that the onlookers could enjoy the spectacle and be deterred from doing the same thing he did to his young victim.

In 2005, an Iranian court ordered that a man's eyes were to be destroyed for throwing acid on another man and blinding him in both eyes. The accused, identified only as Vahid, was 16 when he threw a bottle of acid at another man during a fight in a vegetable market in 1993. A court said the crime should be judged as qisas, a category for which the Quran stipulates specific punishments; in this case, an eye for an eye. The paper said the sentence was to pour acid on Vahid's eyes, but an appeals court ruled it should be done surgically so as not to destroy other parts of his face.

What follows is the Articles included in the Iranian law.

Article 69: The instruments for carrying out the retaliation must be sharp and sterile, in accordance with the manner of retaliation, and be suited for such purpose. It is not allowed to inflict greater injuries on the wrongdoer than he caused.

Article 70: If someone gouges out the eye of another, he can be condemned in accordance with the law of retaliation, even if he himself has only one eye and will be blind as a consequence. No reason exists for him not to pay compensation (although a blind man would hardly have money to pay in compensation)

Eye and teeth removal come directly from the Quran, the eternal word of Allah, which must be imposed on humankind for its own good. The 'eye-for-eye'law appears in the Quran that Muhammad taught his followers. First, a verse in the Quran, analyzed in its literary and historical context, explicitly orders this punishment.

Second, the 'hadith' (reports of Muhammad's words and deeds outside of the Quran) records reliable traditions that permits the knocking out teeth and poking out eyes.

Finally, after analyzing the Torah (five books of Moses) on the law of retaliation, we contrast the way of Jesus with the way of forgiveness. Needless to say, Jesus tells us that it is better to forgive than to enact the law of retaliation literally. When Christianity reformed our laws later on in history, the Reformers had gone back to the New Testament, which preaches divine peace and love.

This barbaric law of ‘eye for an eye’ should no longer exist after Jesus ushered in the new era of salvation. For the record, that was six hundred years before Muhammad ordered the entire world to march backward to an old law in a distorted and haphazard way.

Suffice it to say here that the Quran was received from on high when Muhammad had established his authority in Medina and in many regions in the Arabian Peninsula. He laid down various laws for his community, and judging personal injury was one of them. The literary context finds Muhammad rebuking and exhorting the Jews to listen to their own sacred Torah ( five books of Moses ) and to judge wisely. One includes the law of retaliation or 'lex talionis'. The law of retaliation was then carried over to Islam.

A part of the Quran says; “And we ordained therein for them: Life for life, eye for eye, nose for nose, ear for ear, tooth for tooth and wounds equal for equal. But if anyone remits the retaliation by way of charity, it shall be for him an expiation. And whosoever does not judge by that which Allah has revealed, such are the Zalimun.”(polytheists and wrongdoers)

Second, the injured party has the option to remit or forego retaliation and take blood by offering instead, indemnity or compensation in money or in goods or livestock in an agrarian economy. This option is known as 'diya.' So the 'charity' or 'sadaqa' goes to the injured person or his family if the person dies as a result of the assault.

Third, later jurists combine this verse with other verses and the 'hadith', and see a third option: forgiveness. This means that the injured party forgoes retaliation and monetary compensation. However, it is difficult to find this option actually being taken in the 'hadith' and classical legal opinions, as we shall see in the next section.

Fourth, the last two options must be reasonable and fair. A plaintiff or injured person should be compensated for his bodily injury, and he should have the option to forgive. But, as usual with the laws of Muhammad and Islam, they take things to extremes and tend to impose the old law of retaliation and forego the other alternative with respect to forgiveness and compensation.

The law is primitive and barbaric, especially when it is contrasts with the teachings of Jesus of Christ, six hundred years before Muhammad came on the scene. Muhammad wanted to revive the old law of retaliation, but those laws and the laws of Moses were and still are excessive and therefore unjust. For example, we no longer put to death people who work on the Sabbath. (Saturdays for Jews and Sundays for Christians)

Section 2:178-179 is important because it speaks specifically of murder and the law of retaliation, as one of the clauses in Sura 5:45 does as well ('life for life'). In cases of murder, the victim's family has the same three options: 'qisas' or life for life; compensation; or forgiveness. In the United States and other countries where the death penalty for murder still exists, the family doesn’t make that decision. It is the jury and the judge who make it.

The 'hadith' are the reports of Muhammad's words and actions outside of the Quran. There are problems for example that inhere in the law of retaliation, such as quenching the thirst for revenge under the guise of a divine law, and making irreversible mistakes in a courtroom overseen by a competent judge.

Here is an incident that is often cited as an example of how a victim should take compensation for an injury instead of retaliation. An aunt of Anasibn Malik, one of the companions of Muhammad, slapped a young girl from the Ansari (native Medinans who helped the emigrants after their Hijrah from Mecca to Medina in AD 622) and broke her tooth. The girl's family demanded equal retaliation, tooth for tooth. But Anas exclaimed, “O Allah's messenger! By Allah, her tooth will not be broken.” Muhammad replied, “This is the law of the Quran.” Eventually, the girl's family gave up their claim to have the attacker’s tooth removed and instead accepted payment. Thus; 'hadith' is not a prime example of forbearance. Muhammad simply says that the law would be imposed, in his confrontation with Anas. The Prophet did not implore the family to take compensation. Moreover, Muhammad and his companions did not always accept payment in lieu of bodily retaliation.

This following example of 'hadith' shows Muhammad taking revenge on his household for forcing him to take medicine during a sickness. He told them not to give him the medicine (one tradition says he pointed this out without speaking). The members of his household misinterpreted his comment as a refusal for not liking the taste of the medicine. So they gave him more medicine anyway. When his health improved, he scolded them and laid down the law of retaliation: “There is none of you but will be forced to drink medicine, and I will watch you.” That meant that everyone would be forced to drink the bitter medicine, and Muhammad watched them squirm as they tasted the bitter medicine. That indeed was a form of sweet revenge for him and bitter punishment for those who gave him the bad tasting medicine.

This tradition shows Muhammad's law can be imposed for petty reasons. To be blunt, it also reveals a mean streak in him. One would expect more self-restraint and forgiveness from an Allah-inspired prophet. He should have set the example and risen above such a petty thirst for revenge. However he was a human being, a very bright human being indeed but not a forgiving individual like Jesus Christ was. There was no ‘turning of the cheek’ as far as Muhammad was concerned.

Outside of Muhammad's household, no one should doubt that the law of retaliation was actually carried out. These early Muslim leaders imposed the law, as follows:

Abu Bakr, Ibn Az-Zubair, Ali and Suwaid bin Muqarrin gave the judgment of Al-Qisas. (equality in punishment) Thus, for small offenses like slapping and hitting with a stick and scratching, the law of retaliation must be imposed. Islam means business.
One of the oddest traditions, recorded multiple times, says that if someone damages an eye of a 'Peeping Tom,' no payment or compensation is required. Said the Prophet: “If someone is peeping (looking secretly) into your house without your permission, and you throw a stone at him and destroy his eyes, there will be no sin on you.” That of course meant that there would be no subsequent punishment for the man who took personal revenge on the Peeping Tom.

This rule is not surprising because Muhammad aimed an arrow at the head of a Peeping Tom in order to hit him. Muhammad also said to another gazer that; “If the Prophet had been sure that you were looking at me (through the door), I would have poked your eye with this." (sharp pointed iron bar)

At first, this retaliation may seem deserving or even humorous, but analyzed more deeply, it is serious and disproportionate. Anyone whose mind has not been clouded by a lifetime of devotion to Islam must conclude that 'destroying' an eye is not equal to looking into a house without permission. True, the violator should be punished, but excess is never just, and this punishment is excessive, not equal, as 'qisas' implies. What does this vengeful violence and destruction say about Muhammad's capacity to be rightly guided? One would expect more from Muhammad instead of nearly poking a man's eye with sharp iron or with an arrow, even though the man's act was wrong.

Sometimes the law of retaliation is irreversible and imposed wrongly. This is seen in the severe Islamic punishment for theft: cutting off the thief’s hand. Two men accused another man of theft. Ali, Muhammad's son-in-law and cousin, accepted their testimony and cut off the accused man's hand. Afterwards, a fourth man stepped forward and showed that the now disfigured man did not commit the theft. Ali accepted his testimony, but it was too late. The man's hand was already cut off. The punishment could not be reversed. Ali told the two accusers: “If I were of the opinion that you have intentionally given false witness, I would cut off your hands.” But this second punishment would have been a mistake compounded on a mistake, even in a courtroom overseen by a competent judge. This is precisely why the law of retaliation should not even exist, not to mention such an unjust punishment for theft or the giving of false testimony. The law is irreversible and therefore excessive

Once again, Muhammad and Islam took things too far, especially when we compare him and his religion with that of Jesus Christ and Christianity.

An injured person, just like the heirs of a murder victim, can demand three things: retaliation, forgiveness, or compensation. First, we should have no doubt that early Islam actually carried out retaliation.

This law by Muhammad is stark and blunt. “If anyone cuts off the nose of a slave, we shall cut off his nose.”

Compare that penalty to one that took place in Canada many years ago. Two men tied a man to a tree and then after cutting off their victim’s testicles, they fed them to their dog. For that heinous crime, they were each sentenced to twenty years in prison. That happened when there was no automatic release after serving two-thirds of the sentence in prison. It was a heavy sentence but at least, they got to keep their family jewels.

Here is an example concerning a woman breaking the tooth of an Ansari girl. Tradition informs us how the law of retaliation would have been carried out if the girl's family had forced the issue. Ahmad Hanbal was asked: “How is the retaliation of a tooth to be taken? He said: “It is to be broken with a file.” We can be sure that this punishment was literally done in early Islam. By rules of analogy, we can also be sure that other parts of the human anatomy like eyes and ears, and further down the wrongdoer’s anatomy; a certain appendage, were removed.

Abu Dawud records traditions that line up the amount of payment for injuring limbs and other body parts like teeth. The following amounts were altered in early Islam, for example, under the Caliphate of Umar (ruled 634-644), according to inflation but they give us a rough estimate. Here are some examples of such payments:

(1) All fingers are of equal value ; the victim gets ten camels per finger.
(2) Teeth carry the same value as fingers, whether the teeth are molars or incisors, so the victim gets ten camels per tooth.
(3) This is also true of toes and fingers
(4) Completely cutting off the nose requires one hundred camels.
(5) Cutting off the tip of the nose requires fifty camels, or the equivalent in gold or silver, or a hundred cows, or a thousand sheep.
(6) Cutting off half a hand requires fifty camels.
(7) For one foot, the payment is one hundred camels.
(8) For a wound in the head, thirty-three camels.
It should be pointed out that later jurists imposed a monetary compensation, instead of livestock. However, if the offender's assets consisted only in livestock, then this was the compensation given.

Several years ago, two British nurses convicted of murder in Saudi Arabia were released from jail and sent home. The reasons why they weren’t beheaded (the method of executions in that country) is because they offered to pay the victim’s family a very large sum of money. As an aside, those two deadbeats didn’t make the payment after they returned home. Two citizens of Sri Lanka however were convicted of theft in Saudi Arabia and subsequently they were beheaded because they didn’t have the means to offer payment in order to be released.

Muhammad offered himself to be subjected to retaliation by a commoner he had offended, who later forgave the Prophet. This brings me to an event that happened in my own life. When I was a senior boy’s supervisor in a residential school fifty years ago, I strapped a boy for stealing from some other boys. The next day I learned from a good source that he was innocent. I called the boy into my office and apologized. Being a sticker for fairness, I handed him the strap and told him that he could strap my hands if it would make him feel better for it. He handed the strap back to me and said, “Sir. Your apology is good enough for me.” He never stole again while at that school. There was a human being who believed in forgiveness.

Ahmad Hasan, the translator of Abu Dawud, says in a footnote that if a ruler of a Muslim nation wounds a man, he may take retaliation on the ruler. Hasan admits, however, that no Muslim would dare take retaliation from the Prophet. In reply, this 'hadith' says just the opposite of equality and Hasan alludes to it in his 'No Muslim could dare' comment’. The commoner actually forgave Muhammad because he had no choice. He would never take legalized revenge on the Prophet, just as a commoner really would not dare to exact retaliation on a ruler. If the boy in the residential school had accepted my offer to strap me on my hands, I would not have held that against him.

Class structure in Islamic countries was too rigid for such equality. So this 'hadith' does not show forgiveness and equality, but fear and social rigidity. If Islam had really broken down favoritism and class structure, this 'hadith' would have shown the commoner wounding Muhammad like for like, and then the Prophet honoring the wounded man and decreeing in the clearest terms that no one should take revenge on him and that all his companions and governors or newly conquered territories in Arabia should follow Muhammad's example.

Retaliation of bodily injuries can be inflicted on the offender's body parts provided the punishment does not exceed the original injury. For example, non-fatal bullet wounds to the stomach or the chest are not liable to retaliation because the injury cannot be duplicated exactly. Also, there is no retaliation for breaking the bone. Thus, a payment is due for both injuries. Compensation for bodily injury is reasonable. And no one can quarrel with forgiveness, if the plaintiff or victim chooses this path. Of course in Westernized nations compensation can be obtained by suing the offender for damages.

However, body parts are subject to retaliation: an eye, eyelid, the soft part of the nose, the ear, tooth, lip, hand, foot, finger, fingertip, penis, testicles, vulva, and the like. The same manual expands on the list of body parts that are liable for retaliation.

The problem lies in retaliation, tooth for tooth and eye for eye; literally. Muhammad and his holy book took things too far. He was not above petty revenge, like forcing his household to drink bitter medicine or aiming an arrow or a sharp iron bar at a 'Peeping Tom.' This penalty should not exist, for it opens the door to many problems such as punishing the alleged offender who may very well be innocent.

‘Eye for an eye’ as a means of retaliation is therefore primitive and must not be applied in the modern world. 'Sharia' in the matter of the law of retaliation is excessive by its nature, and excess is never just.

Under the edicts of 'Sharia', retaliation is also obligatory for every wound that cuts to the bone, such as a cut on the head or face that reaches the skull, or a cut to the bone on the upper arm, lower leg, or thigh. To the bone means that it is known that a knife or a needle, for example, has reached the bone, not that the wound actually exposes the bone to view.

It must be breathtaking to watch Islam in action. Does a judge or his representative take a knife or a needle and actually inflict the same wound by slicing and puncturing an arm or a leg? How is ‘like-for-like’ punishment literally and physically applied to the sex organs? The answer is found in the 'hadith' and in the modern day examples in the introduction to this article. A judge or his representative actually applies the same wound on the offender as it did to the victim's wound. That is like being judge, jury and executioner all at the same time. If 'hadith' was the law in Canada, those two men who castrated their victim would have been castrated themselves. The howling of the public would exceed the howling of those two men.

The following case deals with the crime of murder. It is an example that reveals one way of exacting retaliation. Malik records this tradition: Malik imposed retaliation against a man who killed a Mawla. ( freed slave ) with a stick. Mawla's patron killed the man with a stick. So in this case the victim's patron hit the perpetrator with a stick until he died. How many times did the patron have to hit the murderer before the criminal died?

'Malik said, “When a man intentionally goes to his wife and gouges out her eye or breaks her hand or cuts off her finger or such like, and does it intentionally, retaliation is inflicted on him.” This was the punishment I wrote about at the beginning of this article.

But when he hits her with a rope or a whip in a part of her body that he did not intend to hit, like the face, then he pays blood-money and retaliation is not inflicted. In Canada, he would be subjected to imprisonment for the crime of assault causing bodily harm and/or a fine.

A Saudi husband beat his wife to a bloody pulp, and she did not exact revenge on him in a ‘like-for-like’ manner. Instead, she opted for an indemnity: divorce and custody of the children. For the mother, custody of her children in Saudi Arabia is hard to win. Apparently, the judges made a deal with her for an alternative method of compensation rather she getting possession of their children since the light of the international community was shining all over the case.

Jesus Christ raised the stakes in personal injuries. He followed a command found in the Old Testament, in which many verses have a universal application. Leviticus 19:18 says, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself.” This is the general principle behind Matthew 5:38—39 in the New Testament. This background verse in Leviticus is supported by Matthew 5:42—45, which says, “Love one's enemies and to pray for them.” And in Luke 6:32, “It is better to let go.”

That is good advice. Years ago, a cop (who later became the chief of police) did me wrong and I had evidence that he lied in court many times when he was giving his testimony against me. For seven years, I hounded him and finally I spoke at his fitness hearing and an hour after I addressed the city council in which I urged them to fire him, he was fired without pension. When I was asked if I wanted to proceed against him for committing perjury, I declined the offer saying that I had done enough by exacting my revenge in helping to bring him down. After that, I got him out of my mind which on that factor alone, was a great relief. Up to then, he was never out of my thoughts.

With respect to Biblical passages, they must be taken in historical context. Jesus lived in first century Israel, and at that time the law of retaliation appears in a legal context, before the courts, not in a private dispute that was settled as private vendettas. The 'Mishnah', an early source of commentary on the Torah, was finalized in its written form at the end of the second century AD, but the oral traditions were transmitted long before that. This passage from this repository of wisdom, seen in the context of bodily injuries, says that all disputes of this kind must be heard before a judge. At this time in Judaism, bodily injuries could be compensated with money. Finally, Matthew 5:25 says that “…we should to be reconciled with an adversary who is taking you to court.” Many people nowadays will sue and if an apology is received, they will ask for less compensation from the person who has done them wrong. Sometimes, they will even withdraw the claim.

Jesus' view was that the interpretation of the law of retaliation must be seen in a legal context. Thus, he proclaimed in the two verses that it is better not to drag a neighbor, even an evil one, into court in a lawsuit. It is better to let the demand for retaliation go. I personally don’t accept that premise and it appears that many millions of others do not either.

Further, the two verses should not be overly interpreted. It is one thing to let go of an offense if it happens personally to you as an individual, but it is quite another to walk away if the insult happens to someone else. In that case no one who can offer help should ignore the plight of the weak and persecuted. That is why we have criminal courts and even the International Court that punishes those who are guilty of genocide. This is why even religious followers of Christianity do not believe that it is better to let an offense go, rather than drag the offender into court to demanding compensation. Some do ask the courts to let the person be set free because they believe in Jesus’ teaching of forgiveness. I don’t accept their acts of mercy because society expects more than merely forgiveness. They expect justice, punishment and deterrence.

To sum up this part of my article, Christians interpret the Old Testament through the vision of Jesus. In Matthew 5:38—39, he corrects the literal interpretation of the law of retaliation. He raises the literal command and legal option up to pursing peace and forgiveness, following Leviticus 19:18. No one who follows him should seek revenge, and no one who offends should have his eye gouged out or his tooth knocked out. It is better to win the offensive neighbor with friendship. That certainly paid off for me when the kid I strapped, handed the strap back to me when I offered him the opportunity to strap me when I had innocently done him wrong. Years later, we met when he was an adult and we became friends until he moved to another city.

This non-literal interpretation contradicts Muhammad's violent option when a personal injury occurs; literally gouging out an eye or knocking out a tooth. The first two of his options are reasonable: forgiveness and compensation. But the third is extreme six hundred years after Christ ushered a new way of salvation and a better way to live with our neighbors. Muhammad, with all the respect I have for him, took the old laws of Moses and went too far with them.

'Sharia' and human rights are opposites and antithetical. It blithely assumes that the law of retaliation is the best for humankind. Most Muslims are convinced that the Quran came down directly from God, so they never challenge it. In actual fact, it came to Muhammad, perhaps inspired by Allah but nevertheless, the writings in the Quran were entirely his own. This is what made him a great teacher and leader of his people.

There is one problem with Muslim leaders. (among many other problems) They want humanity to take it on faith in Allah (an ocean), without using reason (a puddle), that sharia is good for society. However, sound reasoning (a gift of God), as well as the New Testament, inspired by God (an infinite being), demonstrates that some parts of sharia is definitely bad for society.

'Sharia' is bad for society because it contains too many harsh rules and punishments promulgated many centuries after Jesus Christ came and showed us a better way. One of the most tragic and under-reported occurrences in the West in recent years is the existence of a 'sharia' court in Canada. Muslims are pushing for a 'sharia' divorce court in Australia, as well. Having a court of arbitration if it is based on western law and legal theory is legitimate, but 'sharia' does not hold to this standard. So Canada should promptly shut down any 'sharia' court, and Australia would never allow one. Fortunately, the province of Quebec, Canada, rejected a 'sharia' court. This is the right policy and direction. Such a court should never be permitted in the US, Europe, and elsewhere around the world. 'Sharia' ultimately degrades society and diminishes freedom of choice.

We on the outside of Islam are allowed to ask whether the Quran's punishments are better than the New Testament's policy of forgiving and restoring sexual sinners. Does the Quran guide society better than the New Testament does? Despite the fact that there are many good passages in the Quran, did Allah (God) send Gabriel down to Muhammad with a violent and bloody message that brings the messages of revenge six hundred years after Jesus began preaching? Should this message supercede the one proclaimed by Jesus?

Given the hard evidence available to us now, the Bible-educated Christian’s answer is no. I don't believe that Allah would send down such extreme policies in the new era of salvation which Jesus ushered in. Christians realize that certain passages in the Quran is empirically and factually far too severe than the New Testament is.

Jesus Christ came with the message of forgiveness and mercy. Muhammad on the other hand, later came with his message of cutting off hands and eye gouging. Christianity advances society’s concept of justice forward. Islam, to some degree, drags society backwards into the old days when forgiveness and mercy were hard to find. It has also, in my respectful opinion, dragged some of those Islamic countries back into the Dark Ages where cruelty reigned and justice was for the most part, not in existence.

UPDATE:
A man who blinded a woman in an acid attack after she spurned his marriage proposals has been sentenced in December 2008 to the same punishment, in a literal application of Iran's sharia eye-for-an-eye laws. In a highly unusual judgment, Tehran province criminal court ordered Majid Movahedi, 27, to be blinded in both eyes from drops of acid in response to a plea from his victim, Ameneh Bahrami.