Egypt… Sharia Law?

is this the serious thread?

I still read it! :D

The next few weeks/months are going to be interesting…until a new constitution is ratified and he is able to establish a sitting parliament, the extent of his powers is still limited. He has to tread very carefully to get the military council on side – they won’t easily give up power – and there are a lot of people wanting to have a finger in the pie…meanwhile he also has to keep the ordinary man in the street happy, both muslims and non-muslims…and all under the watchful eye of the rest of the world who also want to have their say.

However it unfolds, a new era in Egypt, but he certainly has his work cut out.

Egypt’s system of law is already blended with sharia. In practice, many issues regarded in the West as central to sharia law in reality relate to local cultures. The wearing of the hijab for example is recognized as being largely cultural, as the Qur’an evidently requires male and female modesty, as opposed to a specific female garment.

In UK in theory we have a “Christian” common law in England and Wales and “Roman” law in Scotland but we don’t adopt Roman or biblical punishments.

There have been extreme interpretations of sharia such as the old Taliban regime in Afghanistan. I think that is unlikely to happen in Egypt as that is not how most Muslims interpret sharia law. A Muslim marriage for example is considered invalid without the permission of the woman, who can also insist on marrying a suitable male whether her male relatives agree or not.

With so many interpretations of what sharia law means and how it is adapted to operate in practice, I suspect the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

Don’t think Morsi is an extremist, but I agree that we really don’t know how it is going to turn out.

What is interesting is that the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings were not stopped, despite brutal force being used, and they happened one after another – Tunisia – Egypt – Libya – Syria.

This is a bit like the fall of the Iron Curtain regimes in the 1980’s.

One can’t help feeling there might have been a master plan guiding the uprisings and their sequence, and the master planners might be radical islamists. Whenever they showed clips of freedom fighters in action in Egypt, Libya or Syria, each outgoing burst of gunfire or each RPG launched is accompanied by a shout of “Allahu Akbar” or “God is Great”, and that would indicate an islamist dimension to the struggle.

Like the last poster, I feel I must add that I don’t read the Daily Mail either – I’d class myself as a leftist, and as such I think it’s about time that some on the ‘left’ realise they’re playing a very dangerous game whenever they claim common cause with radical muslims.