Not Ready for Amputations, Stonings Under Sharia – Yet

Malaysia: Deputy prime minister (PM) says country not ready for amputations, stonings under Sharia – yet [Excerpts]

Sharia is a package deal, as even [Ground Zero Mosque] Imam Rauf knows. As the deputy PM makes clear, once Sharia has attained sufficient strength within a society, the rest of it will fall into place. A society that has not resisted Sharia when it was a minor force will be even less able to do so when it is a major force. Hence the gradualist approach in Britain, and as seen here in Malaysia.

Denial is not reform, but often passes for it in the West. The moment a non-Muslim notes a troubling tenet of Sharia, Sharia becomes a shape-shifting jellyfish of a law: that's not really Sharia, we're told, or that's only Sharia in scary places like Saudi Arabia. Or it's cultural and tribal baggage that could never, ever happen in the West because the West is "different" (And how and why is it different?). Or those punishments only happen in special cases to very bad people -- as if punishments like amputation or stoning, which are cruel and unusual in principle, are any less so when applied if we really didn't like the defendant.

And yet these same punishments appear wherever Sharia gains sufficient strength. That, of course, is because they are prescribed in the Qur'an, and in ahadith -- the recorded sayings and example of Muhammad -- that were deemed reliable ("Sahih," or "sound") by the consensus of Muslim scholars. That includes amputation for theft (Qur'an 5:38) and for "spreading corruption in the land" and "waging war against Allah" (5:33), lashes for adultery (24:2: "let no compassion move you"), and stoning for adultery (Sahih Bukhari 8.82.816).

(Marisol, Jihad Watch, September 22, 2011, http://www.jihadwatch.org/).