Are Democracy and Sharia compatible?

Lawnmowerman said:

NO, 50% of the adult population would be ineligible to vote.

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Would this mean that the United States before the 13th amendment or Universal Suffrage was not a democracy?

The Second Horseman said:

Would this mean that the United States before the 13th amendment or Universal Suffrage was not a democracy?

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In modern terms yes, in accordance to the times no.

sculptingman said:

No.
An autocratic religious code, especially one that treats women like chattel, is incompatible with democracy... because democracy, by definition, enshrines the rights of the people to CHANGE their laws and their government... whereas Sharia specifically forbids change.

You can not have a functional democracy in any system in which the people can be told they are wrong and can not embrace change they seek

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This shows how much you actually know about Islamic Sharia (beyond media bs that is fed to gullible western audience all the time)...

Menshevik said:

You sound like a broken record. I'm not claiming to be an expert on Islam or Sharia, I know next to nothing about either. But, as myself and others have explained, one HAS to supersede the other. If the precepts and laws of Islam are compromised, to allow something against the tenets of Sharia then your government is primarily a secular one with Sharia maintaining a strenuous and dubious hold on government.

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No, its all of you guys who look outright funny blabbers when talking about something that you have no idea about.

Your question is : Is Sharia and Democracy compatible? The answer is yes.

Other than that, all of you guys are singing the same dumb song of how 'democracy protects rights' and 'sharia enslaves women' ... lol...

Same Western ignorance and ramblings..nothing more.

dagul said:

I agree with you regarding the incompatibility of democracy with Sharia Law on the basis of the source of their respective fundamental law. Sharia Law was never ratified by the people, and so it is indeed not the will of the people and you aptly pointed out that such cannot be amended to.

It is my position as I constantly aver that the separation of the church and the state is necessary in democracy.

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This one line shows exactly how much people know about Islamic Shariah here in this forum...

Hint : I have similar amount of knowledge regarding advance-stage quantum physics...

It depends on who interprets the Sharia which is not immutable despite some claims. Quran only defines a handful of things as Haraam with almost all other laws coming from traditions of descriptions of the life and actions of Allah's Messenger.

Of course all modern Muslim states contain many people who are full of Haraam and usually it is the ruling class doing the most sinful deeds.

... outside marriage, murder, and stealing are expressly condemned.

Then it becomes more complex as there aren't any specific actions prescribed but behaviours, or results that come about due to the above 3 specifically proscribed actions or failing to fulfill the 5 principals of Islam are sinful. So for example renting a room to an unmarried couple is sinful because it makes the renter an accessory to ... outside marriage. Selling alcohol is aiding in others sinful behavior and even worse if some drunk person then murders another. Bankers are sinful if they take interest on loans as interest keeps those needing loans in debt and thus puts some Muslims above other Muslim when all Muslims are supposed to be 'brothers' and one of the 5 principals is charity/donations to the poor.

There is quite a bit of interpretations and built up traditions concerning most other 'laws' Muslims should obey and even more diverse are what punishments should be given in case of sinful actions?

In a way the very flexibility of Sharia makes it difficult to reconcile with Democracy in a secular setting where laws can exist independent of religious values which is possible under Islam but in practice quite difficult due to the very wide body of Sharia and the interpretations built up over centuries and simply traditions which aren't necessarily part of Quran or even touched by Sunnah (which is open to interpreting such things as the meaning of 'silent assent' or not correcting a friend).

In reference to the OP's poll there isn't any answer I'd give available such as- It is possible that Sharia exists with Democracy but difficult under ideal conditions and very difficult with how Sharia is currently practiced in most Muslim countries that pick and choose who can indulge in greater sins while condemning other Muslims for lesser sins. As long as Muslims remain too busy looking elsewhere to avoid seeing how much sin is practiced within their own communities- Democracy will be impossible to reconcile with Sharia as Democracy is not a 'fair' system but meant to result in justice for the community while Sharia is a 'fair' system meant to ensure justice but results in the perpetuation of injustice when applied only to some in the community and not to others.

Before discussing Shariah, I think its advisable to have the briefest of idea what Shariah actually is: http://historum.com/medieval-byzant...ed-muslim-law-3.html#post1400814?postcount=29

AlpinLuke said:

Absolutely: a people can make the choice to live in a not democratic system. Democracy is not a "duty", it's a choice.

So, no problem with that. But that's not democracy.

Democracy means that elected representatives, or electors directly by referendum, can change or even erase this or that law.

I ask [since I'm honestly not aware about this]:

is there the possibility that an elected parliament changes the Sharia by majority vote?

Is there the possibility that the generality of electors can change the Sharia by referendum?

If yes, Sharia is democratic, if not, Sharia is not democratic.

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Shariah is not a rigid set of laws. Except for some set values, most of Shariah rulings are subject to interpretation, and many alternates to one issue is embedded within Shariah.

Shariah also is a dynamic legal system that requires constant updating & making new rules to cater to newer circumstances. So obviously addition & alteration to Shariah laws is a necessity. But that is done not by elected parliamentarians, but by bonafide scholars. In that sense, Shariah is a mix of meritocracy (e.g. making laws) and democracy (e.g. election of the leader of the nation).

I think you can have Sharia culture. Like if you stole something and your dad finds out about it he can still chop off your hand but then he would have to go to jail.

Another thing to understand about Shariah is that it is more than just a legal framework. It includes individual obligations which pertains only to a Muslim, social obligations some of which apply to Muslim community, some for all. It also contains guidelines how to run a state (= constitution), as well penal codes.

And not all rulings are enforceable by state. So, non-Muslims should not concern themselves with most of the Shariah.

All these talk about chopping off hands....

Just a little piece of information, there's a rigorous criteria to meet before chopping off a thief's hand, and as far as I know, not one single case of chopping off a thief's hand is known in the Prophet's (s.a.w) lifetime.

I have a personal guess, there are too many built-in safeguards to make it more of a deterrent, than a common law to be practiced widely.

Under Sharia law would women be entitled to vote???

Lawnmowerman said:

Under Sharia law would women be entitled to vote???

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I don't know of anything that bar women from voting.

My personal opinion is that they are incompatible because democracy's authority comes from people who live today, whereas Sharia's authority comes from people who lived about 1500 years ago.

The fact that Sharia is presented as God's law makes it blasphemious as far as i'm concerned.

M.S. Islam said:

Before discussing Shariah, I think its advisable to have the briefest of idea what Shariah actually is: http://historum.com/medieval-byzant...ed-muslim-law-3.html#post1400814?postcount=29



Shariah is not a rigid set of laws. Except for some set values, most of Shariah rulings are subject to interpretation, and many alternates to one issue is embedded within Shariah.

Shariah also is a dynamic legal system that requires constant updating & making new rules to cater to newer circumstances. So obviously addition & alteration to Shariah laws is a necessity. But that is done not by elected parliamentarians, but by bonafide scholars. In that sense, Shariah is a mix of meritocracy (e.g. making laws) and democracy (e.g. election of the leader of the nation).

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That's nice, but a fundamental principle of democracy is that the will of the people is supreme. Is a system in which the will of god is fundamentally inferior and subordinate to the will of man consonant with Sharia? If not then Sharia is inconsonant with democracy.

constantine said:

That's nice, but a fundamental principle of democracy is that the will of the people is supreme. Is a system in which the will of god is fundamentally inferior and subordinate to the will of man consonant with Sharia? If it is not, then it is inconsonant with democracy.

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I view it the other way: some concepts (not democratic processes) of democracy are incompatible with Shariah.

But such concepts, such as "will of the people is supreme", is mostly rhetorical which have no practical value in any case.

Any Muslim would be expected not to vote against laws which impact the ability to practice the 5 principals or impede obedience to specifically told actions in the Quran but in that sense the possibility to vote is not seen as something necessary since true Muslims simply wouldn't vote in affirmative against things which are against Islam.

In many Islamic states that expectation has so far carried over into many other aspects some of which Sharia laws touch on but the traditions and ideas of younger generations are slowly changing those expectations since some conservative judge reading from jurists writing 1,000 years ago is not likely to reach a stronger conclusion than the greater community expressed in a democratic vote.

So alot of the struggle in Islam currently is between the jurists/scholars and the rest of the Muslim community who believe that many scholars are bought and paid for by ruling regimes or crazy crackpots. So in that sense the younger generations wanting democratic vote see it as a way of expressing the Muslim communities views which traditionally were supposed to be represented by Ulama or the consensus of learned scholars but the problem is most scholars are supported either by ruling regime (and thus not serving the greater community) or in Sunni nations are Hanbali jurists whose tradition is that only the first generation of Muslims views meant anything and thus Sharia is frozen in terms of what can be learned from 7th century and applied to modern times. Such views resonate with Salafists who reject any changes to 'pure' Islam such as practiced by first generation of Muslims or as described in their traditions.

Other traditions of Islam give greater precedence to using reason and can trace the justice of laws to several sources with only the Quran taking strong precedence over the other sources.

M.S. Islam said:

I view it the other way: some concepts (not democratic processes) of democracy are incompatible with Shariah.

But such concepts, such as "will of the people is supreme", is mostly rhetorical which have no practical value in any case.

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Yes, I'm sure you can pick and chose elements of democracy that are compatible with Sharia, just as I can pick and chose elements of Sharia that are compatible with democracy: I'm sure we could all agree that, generally speaking, theft or murder is a bad. But the ability to accept a few principles out of context tells us nothing. And a fundamental principle of democracy is that the will of man is absolute, making the will of god not merely inferior as I stated before, but utterly irrelevant from the perspective of law. Sure, some may vote for a 'divinely inspired' law to be in force, but the law is still not in force because some god willed it, the law is in force because men willed it. The law of man is not subject to the will of god, the law of god is subject to the will of man. If this cannot be reconciled with Sharia, then Sharia is fundamentally inconstant with democracy.

Either power rests with the people or it rests with god, the former is democracy the latter is theocracy, the two are not compatible.

Right. The four schools of jurisprudence can be imagined within a spectrum with one end being 'literal interpretation' and the other being 'rational interpretation'.

Interestingly, the earliest school (Hanafi) was the most rational, and as time went by, the later schools systematically became more and more literal, the most literal being the latest of the four - Hanbali.

M.S. Islam said:

Right. The four schools of jurisprudence can be imagined within a spectrum with one end being 'literal interpretation' and the other being 'rational interpretation'.

Interestingly, the earliest school (Hanafi) was the most rational, and as time went by, the later schools systematically became more and more literal, the most literal being the latest of the four - Hanbali.

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Why do you think it went that way?