Download a condensed version of the Looking at Refugees Part 1

Looking at Refugees: Part 1
Clearing Up The Confusion
Whether countries should
allow Syrian refugees into
their borders is something
that will come down to each
person’s opinion. However, a
valid, respectable opinion on
this issue needs to include
multiple factors, one of
which is a knowledge of why
so many people are
immigrating in the first place
and what their belief system
is once they arrive.
One of the reasons people
don’t talk about what’s
happening with ISIS or
Syrian refugees
meaningfully is that it’s
very, very difficult to
concisely explain. For
example:
Let’s Actually Break This Down:
Sunni and Shia
• There is a split dating back 1,400+ years between Sunni and Shia
Muslims. Although both sects of Muslims agree on many aspects
of Islam, there is still some considerable disagreement.
• Mohammed died without appointing a successor, leading to a
split in the religion over whether its next leader should be chosen
democratically or whether the Prophet’s blood relatives should
reign.
• The Sunnis believed the Prophet Mohammed’s friend and advisor
Abu Bakr was the rightful leader of Muslims, while Shias thought
that his cousin and son-in-law Ali was chosen by Allah (God) to
rule.
• Abu Bakr held the title first until his death, while Ali was crowned
caliph fourth after two previous rulers were assassinated.
• But the split became more entrenched between Sunnis and Shias
over who came next: Sunni Muslims argue their interpretation of
Islam follows the ways of Mohammed (the Sunnah), Shias claim
Ali was the rightful first caliph and only his descendants could
claim to be the true leaders of Muslims.
The majority of Muslims
across the world are
Sunni – making up
almost 85 per cent of
Islam’s followers, while
Shia Muslims remain
confined to the Middle
East.
The Cycle Continues
When Iraq was ruled by
Saddam Hussein – who was a
Sunni Muslim – for more than
20 years, he savagely
oppressed Shia Muslims. After
the 2003 war and fall of
Saddam Hussein, Shia Muslims
stepped into power, targeting
Sunni Muslims through
government death squads and
torture.
Sharia Law
• Sharia law is Islam's legal system. It is derived from
both the Koran, Islam's central text, and fatwas the rulings of Islamic scholars.
• Sharia literally means "the clear, well-trodden path
to water".
• Sharia law acts as a code for living that all Muslims
should adhere to, including prayers, fasting and
donations to the poor.
• It aims to help Muslims understand how they
should lead every aspect of their lives according to
God's wishes.
• Sharia Law is a constantly changing and evolving process designed to try and ensure
society lived intelligently and ethically. It was not written down in a legislative statebased form like today’s law, giving it the freedom to be able to be constantly revised
and improved upon. This may be why there are many different forms of it in the world.
Sharia Law
• Sharia can inform every aspect of daily life for a Muslim. For example, a Muslim
wondering what to do if their colleagues invite them to the pub after work may
turn to a Sharia scholar for advice to ensure they act within the legal framework
of their religion. Other areas of daily life where Muslims may turn to Sharia for
guidance include family law, finance and business.
• Sharia law divides offences into two general categories: "hadd" offences, which
are serious crimes with set penalties, and "tazir" crimes, where the punishment is
left to the discretion of the judge.
• Hadd offences include theft, which can be punishable by amputating the
offender's hand, and adultery, which can carry the penalty of death by stoning.
• Some Islamic organisations have argued that there are many safeguards and a
high burden of proof in the application of hadd penalties. Not all Muslim
countries adopt or enforce such punishments for hadd offences, and polling
suggests attitudes of Muslims to harsh penalties for such offences vary widely.
Sharia Law
• Depending on where you are in the world, “Sharia Law” could mean
something very, very different. This is because Sharia Law emphasizes the
importance of obeying the laws of whatever country you’re in. If you’re a
Muslim in a country with a corrupt and/or cruel leadership, this may result in
people associating Sharia Law with cruelty, even though the two don’t
necessarily have anything to do with each other.
• No national Muslim organization has ever called for Sharia to overtake the
ruling of a North American court. It’s completely beside the point of Sharia
and it’s not something American Muslims want.
• And yet, during the run-up to the 2012 election, efforts to ban Sharia law
popped up in at least two dozen states across the country ― a development
that Gingrich, then a presidential hopeful, helped spur on. Many claim the
initiative was a response to an imagined threat that was more about
promoting anti-Muslim sentiment than about preserving American law.
Sharia and Colonisation
When the British the Dutch started entering India and Indonesia in the late 16th and
17th Centuries, they introduced the idea of codifying (translating and writing down)
laws. The colonisers viewed Islam as a threat to the western system and civilisation
they understood, and began thoroughly remodelling Islamic legal systems.
The colonisers took out the interpretive core and fluidity (i.e. ability to change based
on the circumstances present) that Sharia law depended on. What’s more, this
process actually wound back progressive aspects of Islamic law to conservative
Western standards. Sharia and Islamic law had bestowed women with rights and
privileges that were advanced and equalising; when the laws were translated into
colonising languages, those nuances were removed and the male-centric colonising
culture prevailed, writing the rights women had enjoyed under Sharia out of the
system entirely. The “Sharia” notion that a man is the head of the family to be obeyed
without question was a post-colonial inclusion that completely changed the original
intention of the Islamic ruling, and the western colonisers felt like Islamic law allowed
criminals to escape punishment too easily, complaining that Sharia was “founded on
the most lenient principles and on an abhorrence of bloodshed”.
Bengal Warren Hastings,
the man who changed
Sharia Law forever
Remember this? Now that we’re warmed
up, let’s break it down:
• Up until the mid-20th century, large parts of The Middle East were imperially
ruled by the British, French, and Ottoman empires. Once they left, Arab leaders
failed to establish anything like stable democratic societies. Instead, they imposed
unpopular and brutal military dictatorships that prevented any real sense of
national unity developing and squandered the region's economic potential.
• The Middle East's progressive and democratic
parties failed, due to a combination of
incompetence and interference, to put together a
viable alternative to the military regimes.
• This created a large population of people in the
Middle East who were disenfranchised and
looking for a new form of politics. During and
after the Cold War (roughly from the 1980s and
on), an extreme version of Islam rose to fill that
void: It appealed to an identity and a set of values
that many in the Middle East shared and
understood. Parts of it were based on Islam, but
it also had the power to overthrow the military
government that was oppressing them.
Some governments — like Saudi
Arabia's sometimes shaky leadership
— had an interest in helping
spreading this fairly hard-line, more
brutal version of Islam, since a clear
set of values made them seem more
legitimate. Radical Islamism also got
a boost from the populace’s general
dislike of foreign powers such as the
US and Russia. Not long before this
the US had supported Iran's brutal
leaders, and the Russian/Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan had created
understandable resentment in
middle easterners. Leaders of this
radical Islam movement were eager
to support resentment towards other
world powers if it meant more power
for their movement.
More recently, the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and
the Arab Spring (democratic uprisings that
arose independently and spread across the
Arab world in 2011) threw the Middle East's
normal sense of order into chaos, creating a
vacuum in which different groups/sects tried to
fill the void with varying degrees of violence.
ISIS flourished in this kind of religiously
polarized chaos (the most brutal group is likely
to get the most attention), bringing us to the
point we're at today. Understandably, not
everybody is on board with this level of danger
and instability, so many people (particularly in
Syria) are trying to get out of the country and
to safety.