www.WorldMuslimCongress.com | Hadith-based laws unnecessary, says Dr Mahathir Muhammad
Finally, the big guys are speaking now, and I hope it gains momentum. Islam is a religion of peace, mercy and justice. The Sharia laws compiled by the scholars were meant to be just but they are not, and hence cannot qualify to be Islamic in spirit. There is no punishment for apostasy and blasphemy, there is no beating of women, and triple talaq is down right unjust and cruel to the woman. DNA should suffice to prove rape, three shameless guys who watched the rape are not needed as witness.
The biggest problem that we have is putting Imam Bukhari, Maliki, Shafii, Shia, ibn-kathir, ibn tamiya, hasan banna, maududi and others on par with Prophet and Quran. Mahathir rightly said, nothing is above Quran.
This site www.WorldMuslimCongress.com has several articles listed on the left column to read and go to www.Sharialaws.com and read the genesis and fixing sharia laws.
Mike Ghouse
World Muslim Congress
# ##
Hadith-based laws unnecessary, says Dr M
James Sivalingam
May 6, 2015
The ex-PM laments over-reliance on Prophetic Traditions at the Quran’s expense.
PUTRAJAYA: The misconception of Islam as a religion of oppression is partly caused by contemporary scholars’ over-reliance on the Prophetic Traditions at the expense of the message of the Quran, according to former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad.
“We seem to have rejected the Quran in favour of the Hadith,” he said in his keynote address at a Perdana Leadership Foundation forum today.
(“Hadith” is often translated as “Traditions”. The word is sometimes used to refer to only the sayings of the Prophet and sometimes to both his sayings and his practices. There are several authoritative collections of these, and scholars have traditionally classified them into “authentic”, “good”, “doubtful” and “false”.)
In a statement that is likely to invite brickbats from several quarters, Mahathir said injunctions from the Hadith were merely guidance and not meant to be enforced as law.
“The teachings, or the performance, or the traditions of the Prophet come after he had been given the message of Allah, which is recorded in the Quran,” he said.
“Between the two, it is obviously the Quran that is superior.”
Mahathir pointed out that stoning to death for fornication is not called for in the Quran, but only in the Hadith, which mentions the enforcement of such punishment on two occasions.
“Allah is merciful and compassionate,” he said. “One who is merciful and compassionate would not enjoy stoning people to death.”
Mahathir stressed that any Islamic law would have to be just. If it were unjust, he said, it would not be Islamic.
Thus, he said, he disagreed with the law that requires a woman to produce four witnesses to back her claim of being raped.
He said deviations from the message of the Quran had led to deviant behaviour among Muslims. He cited atrocities committed by organisations like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria as well as the recent conviction of a Malaysian student in London for possession of child pornography.
“We used to have great scientists and mathematicians, but now our mathematicians are downloading 30,000 pornography images,” he lamented. (The convicted student was pursuing a mathematics degree.)
Mahathir also expressed his disagreement with the practice of turning fatwas into law.
Fatwas, he said, were merely opinions, and the laws derived from them were sometimes impractical and unnecessary. He gave the example of old fatwas that prohibited the use of light bulbs and motorised vehicles because they were invented by “infidels”.
“There’s no necessity to Islamise everything,” he said. “Of course, there are things that should be abstained from as they are forbidden in Islam, but there’s no reason to give unnecessary fatwas to Islamise them.”
