pray 5 times a day or we'll cut your head off

[NASSIR]

"I believe that residents of mogadishu have every right to defend themselves, properties and dignity and faith, if they choose islam as their faith, its should not be for convenience, its a complete set of a devine regimen, applying parts of it and discarding parts is more damaging to Islam as a brand as it makes it ineffective. ( The Sharia will only be applied on common thiefs, not on powerful head of Qabiil)"

 

 

Nuur, I do agree with you here and you seem to acknowledge that our people in Mogadisho do apply parts of the God's law and discard other parts, thereby rendering the implications of Sharia laws inadequate. Since you put a condition on their(Mogadisho residents) acceptance to rule themselves according to the prescriptives of Islam, and so have a right to defend their faith and dignity provided that they meet the complete "set of divine regimen", would it matter then to be silent when the religion has only been applied to minority groups and used as a political tool? I think you should be the first one here to address the issue and expose the faults of these so called Islamic courts.

 

If you remain silent of the distortions of our religion and defacement of our morals, then you are strongly and equally accruing personal sins, ESP when you only defend the permenant teaching of our religion and disregard the unintended consequences of using Islam as a political tool.

[NGONGE]

Nur

 

A disclaimer in that post of mine would not have flushed you out, saaxib. I have to admit though, I was on the hunt for small fry that would get indignant with my words and attempt to challenge them. Maybe then, with dribs and drabs of discussion we would have reached an area where a real full fat dialogue will commence. Nonetheless, I seem to have hit the jackpot and got there in one swoop.

 

To start with, let me completely and totally declare my full agreement with all you wrote in your above reply. It was brilliantly presented and thoroughly covered the entire subject, and then some. However, (no need to panic, it’s a harmless clause) I fear that your words are not in keeping with the tempo of this thread. Had you joined us in two pages time it would probably have been spot on and very timely. Still, nothing is lost.

 

Your reply is more than adequate and truly answers the questions asked. The only problem is that the answer is not explicit enough. A skim reader (as we have on this site) is not likely to get your point or understand the purpose behind the words. In fact, I’d go as far as saying that some would wonder and ask themselves the apparently obvious question “ what has all of that got to do with the punishment for those that don’t pray?”.

 

It would be much better (IMHO) if you put the dots on the letters (as the Arabs like to say) and clarify in simple terms the meanings of your words. I’m only asking because now the topic has become yours and it would be presumptuous for me to tarnish your words by attempting to explain them or rewrite them in layman’s terms.

 

What I will do however is tackle a different issue that you missed out on in your explanation. This, I feel, is also important to the discussion and should never be ignored. I’m talking about the difference between punishment and advice. In our topic, the talk is about the penalty of he who does not pray! Though the idea of punishment itself is in dispute, I’ll choose to sidestep that argument for a minute and focus on the advice part instead. Where I see a fault in most of these discussions is in the fact that their originators always focus on the harsh part. The emphasis is always on punishment (hence, my mocking words about stoning, beheading and cutting of hands). Even in the case of Zina that you hinted at in your first post, most people would dedicate the bulk of their words to the punishment of stoning rather than focus on giving advice about the pitfalls of Zina! I feel that it’s pointless, on a social level of course, to waste our time talking about punishments when the advice would be more beneficial. For the punishment does not come if there were no crimes and if there was a crime, due process has to take place. In addition, the whole issue of punishment is usually applied on individual bases. In short, one person at a time is tried for their crime and found guilty or not. A society as a whole can not be punished (I’m talking actual punishment here and not a metaphorical one). Therefore, when talking about such topics, in public, the speakers’ emphasis should always be on the guidance part rather than the blood and thunder of chastisement. Sadly, in all our discussions this hardly seems to be the case. Zero tolerance is what always seems to apply here.

 

Even should it prove true that the punishment for abandoning prayers was to be beheaded, I think it is still important to still dedicate the lion share’s of one’s replies to advice and guidance part. To always declare that those abandoning prayers are Kaffirs would only make them abandon it even more. Their thinking process being: If I’m already regarded a Kaffir, what is the point of repenting and going back? The whole idea brings to mind the aayah (though I’m always very reluctant to quote ayaat in general) that says: walo konta fadda galeeth al qalb la en faddo men xawlik (And had you been severe and harsh-hearted, they would have broken away from about you). (Al-Imran, 159).

 

Having said, I’m probably, sometimes, guilty of that crime myself.