Religious authority for physical violence against women, legal mutilation, execution for homosexuality, death to critics of the state religion, forced marriages at age nine, outlaw of drinking and gambling, exact legal revenge for the injured, execution for sex before marriage…

While appearing on a British television show hosted by a member of an extremist group, President Barack Obama’s adviser on Muslim affairs, Dalia Mogahed, explained how the United States and other western countries have an “oversimplified” view of Sharia Law, and how most women “around the world associate it with ‘gender justice.’ The show, which aired this week on London based Islam Channel, was hosted by representatives of Hizb ut Tahrir, an extremist group that promotes the destruction of western capitalism and the introduction of Sharia Law worldwide.

During the discussion Mogahed listened to 45 minutes of the panel dumping on the US and western liberty. And, while the group called for Sharia Law to be the “source of [all] legislation,” and the removal of women from positions of leadership, she did not challenge the rhetoric, but instead, in Obama-like fashioned apologized for the misconception of Sharia in the western media, added that “promiscuity and the breakdown of traditional values” were sources of the Islamic disapproval. Mogahed did suggest that “many Muslims associated Sharia with ‘maximum criminal punishments’ and ‘laws that… to many people seem unequal to women,’ but added, ‘part of the reason that there is this perception of Sharia is because Sharia is not well understood and Islam as a faith is not well understood.”

James Arlandson of American Thinker wrote an article two months ago about what westerners believe are the problems with Sharia law. He cited ten examples, each with references to the Quran or hadith; here are a few:

10. Islam commands that drinkers and gamblers should be whipped.

The Prophet felt it hard (was angry) and ordered all those who were present in the house, to beat him [the drinker dragged into Muhammad's presence]. (Bukhari, Punishments, nos. 6774—6775)

9. Islam allows husbands to hit their wives even if the husbands merely fear highhandedness in their wives.

4:34 . . . If you fear highhandedness from your wives, remind them [of the teaching of God], then ignore them when you go to bed, then hit them. If they obey you, you have no right to act against them. God is most high and great. (MAS Abdel Haleem, the Qur’an, Oxford UP, 2004)

Back in February, Muzzammil Hassan, a Buffalo, NY man was charged with beheading his wife after she filed for divorce. Ironically, he was the founder of  a cabletelevision channel created counter anti-Muslim stereotypes.

8. Islam allows an injured plaintiff to exact legal revenge—physical eye for physical eye.

5:45 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 . . .). (Hilali and Khan, The Noble Qur’an, Riyadh: Darussalam, 1996)

4. Islam orders unmarried fornicators to be whipped and adulterers to be stoned to death.

24:2 The fornicatress and the fornicator, flog each of them with a hundred stripes. Let not pity withhold you in their case, in a punishment prescribed by Allah, if you believe in Allah and the Last Day. And let a party of the believers witness their punishment. [This punishment is for unmarried persons guilty of the above crime (illegal sex), but if married persons commit it (illegal sex), the punishment is to stone them to death, according to Allah's law]. (Hilali and Khan).

3. Islam orders death for Muslim and possible death for non—Muslim critics of Muhammad and the Quran and even sharia itself.

(1) Reviling Allah or his Messenger; (2) being sarcastic about ‘Allah’s name, His command, His interdiction, His promise, or His threat’; (3) denying any verse of the Quran or ‘anything which by scholarly consensus belongs to it, or to add a verse that does not belong to it’; (4) holding that ‘any of Allah’s messengers or prophets are liars, or to deny their being sent’; (5) reviling the religion of Islam; (6) being sarcastic about any ruling of the Sacred Law; (7) denying that Allah intended ‘the Prophet’s message . . . to be the religion followed by the entire world.’

Here’s what I understand, Sharia Law is an ancient oppressive legal system that degrades and dehumanizes woman, promotes violence, hatred, and intolerance, limits or eliminates personal freedoms. What is “misunderstood” about that?

from the Telegraph