I notice from media reports that there's a growing chorus of voices in the west criticizing Qatar
which is hosting the World Cup which is due to take place very shortly for example the London
Times reports and I quote an official Ambassador for the football World Cup in Qatar has described
homosexuality as a form of quote damage in the mind during a German television interview before
he was swiftly cut off by a media advisor the Arab state where homosexuality is punishable
by up to three years in prison has struggled to fend off criticism of its record on LGBTQ rights
Khalid Salman a retired Qatari football star who is one of the ambassadors for the World Cup has
underscored this tension with his remarks on gay rights in an interview with ZDF a German
public broadcaster Salman 60 acknowledged that quote many things will come into this
country in the course of the World Cup let us talk about gay people for example he said
the most important thing is that everyone accepts they are coming here and they would have to accept
our rules unquote and the times continues he added that he was worried Qatari children might see gay
men and learn quote something that is not good unquote asked why homosexuality was banned in his
country Salman said it was Haram an Arabic term meaning forbidden under Islamic law now this is
very interesting and there's been a whole rash of Articles BBC Guardian the Times and many
other media platforms criticizing Qatar for its views on so-called LGBTQ rights and this
struck me as particularly significant what does it tell us about what's going on in the world well
firstly it tells us that the West believes it's right and Superior in the secular liberal value
system that it has and that everywhere else in the world especially Muslim countries must follow the
West and do as the West does in its ever changing ever evolving value system could never stays
still for long there's always a new moral code and new attitudes and no new mores that we in
the west are expected to adopt and everywhere else by extension must also accept and this this
points to the asymmetry of power in the world of course but more seriously than that it suggests
that the West does not respect Islamic morality it has completely ignored this I noticed this that
in the media reports the word Islam rarely appears but the teaching of Islam is directly contradicted
and condemned repeatedly but what is this teaching and I notice in the media at least as far as I
see it I rarely see an informed discussion of exactly what Islamic law teaches on this subject
of homosexuality but just to scratch the surface it's easy to find out there's plenty of resources
online and books that teach the truth about this the first thing that's not seems to that people
in the west don't seem to realize that is there is no agreed upon punishment for homosexual acts
for example the Hanafi school traditionally has said that there is no capital punishment
for homosexual acts the often it's left to the discretion of the judge the Qadi
for example the other scores that the hand belief do mandate the death penalty for
homosexual acts this is true but the the the most commonly followed score the hanafi score does not
but what are we talking about him sorry to get a bit explicit and there's an explicit warning
here what are we talking about when we're talking about homosexuality precisely well the
Sharia seems to be concerned in the main with something in Arabic called you can look it up
what does it mean well an English equivalent a translation will be sodomy that's what it's
concerned about this particular act now the Sharia is concerned with public behavior and indeed
Salman himself said that the most important thing is that everyone except they are coming here and
that they have to accept our rules and these rules are public rules to do a behavior not
with private behavior this is a quite important distinction that's explicitly recognized in Sharia
so to be a crime in an Islamic context Qatar being an Islamic society in this in the sense that
it follows many aspects of the Sharia a particular act has to be done in public this is when
it becomes a crime and be witnessed by four people four upstanding witnesses so they can't themselves
have a criminal record or be a dubious character and then they have to go to court and testify in
front of a judge that they witness said alleged behavior taking place and the behavior itself the
act of penetration is what they have to see they can't just see two people vaguely doing whatever
they have to witness the act itself in a court and as I say there's no agreed punishment uh for this
now what is uh this is called uh the hadude punishments and there's more to be said about
them and they apply to adultery uh homosexual acts and and a cut just like one or two other
categories which we won't go into uh now but the central principle in the application of hadude
punishments as they're called is maximizing Mercy Mercy is the heart of this and this was clearly
formula it's not just a a modernist liberal kind of humanitarian idea this was clearly formulated
in a Hadith this is a saying of the Prophet Muhammad upon whom be peace and it was also
echoed by prominent companions among them his wife Aisha and the calebs Umar and Ali and the
best attested version of this Hadith because there are several versions is as follows in English ward
off the hadude from the Muslims as much as you all can and if you find a way out for the person then
let them go for it is better for the authority to ER in Mercy than to uh in punishment end
quote and within A Century Of The Prophet's death Muslim Scholars have digested this Hadith into a
crucial legal Maxim or legal principle which is as follows ward off the Hadoop by ambiguities
ward off the Hadoop by ambiguities so on the con in so different from the Western perception of the
enthusiastic application of her dude laws you're not supposed to you're supposed to find a way not
to implement them uh if possible to get people off using whatever strategy can be employed so
as I say there is no agreed upon punishment it's the act is supposed to take place in public there
have to be four witnesses and they have to testify in court not three not two not one but four and
if there's just any three doesn't matter it cannot cannot be brought to court so that is the first
thing I want to establish is actually virtually impossible to implement Hudood punishments
in Islamic law given these quite strict criteria and the bias in the law towards mercy rather than
severity I think that's an important point to grasp and secondly I just want to also mention
how can I put this politely that there seems to be a great disrespect towards Islam in the
Western media whether it be the conservative media or the liberals secular media that there
seems to be a disinclination to accept that other countries non-western countries like
Qatar and other Muslim majority countries have a different value system the West perhaps needs to
realize that Muslims have very different views on sexual morality especially homosexuality
and as a Muslim Khalid Salman this chap from Qatar is is surely entitled to express his sincerely
held views and this is not a position that is usually taken in the west uh we simply dismiss
Muslims and their faith whenever it contradicts uh the latest secular liberal values and the problem
with these values is they're constantly changing they seem to every 10 years or so or even more
quickly you'll get a new set of ideas and mores and values uh that the West suddenly Embraces and
then it expects the rest of the world especially Muslim countries to also accept these values and
if they don't accept them they can be punished they can be threats and people are calling in the
West for a Qatar no longer to host the cup or that it was a mistake to ever give them this because of
their so-called stance on lgbtq right rights but other countries are not treated like this the West
for example when it hosts the World Cup are they taken to task for their foreign policy for their
invasion of Muslim countries for the numerous casualties and deaths resulting from these
invasions and wars that Western countries like America Britain France Etc have been involved in
numerous Wars in recent years resulting in the in the deaths of Untold numbers the very least
hundreds of thousands of Muslims have died that's not mentioned Guantanamo Bay I mean the list is
rather long unfortunately are these countries held to vary the highest moral standards when it comes
to awarding them uh you know the World Cup or any other sporting event tennis or whatever they're
not are they and who would enforce it anyway who would enforce uh these rules on America for
example or Britain it wouldn't be possible I would imagine so uh this whole episode uh reeks suggests
um an asymmetry of power that the West being at the moment at the moment the hegemonic uh
Power uh the center of gravity when it comes to political cultural and economic power calls the
shots and it universalizes its morality it says well we now believe in this latest uh
um alternative lifestyle as a human right and therefore you Muslim countries and everyone else
must also accept it and if you don't accept it we will punish you we will take away your rights to
act host sports or we will withdraw foreign aid or we will sanction you or we'll apply
unofficial pressure on you which certain Western governments it has been disclosed do do they they
do unofficially uh put very economic pressure on people and political pressure on governments
to come into line with the laces Western View so this whole issue of Qatar hosting the World
Cup has opened up this can of worms unfortunately uh and the unwritten text the subtext seems to me
to be that Muslims can't be Muslims unless they agree with the West's uh secular liberal ideology
we're also told at the same time that politics and religion have nothing to do with sports no
no no no we must get no religion and faith and these have nothing to do with sports which of
course is not true if the religion in question is Islam and then the West comes in and starts
pointing fingers and making accusations and this strikes me as very unfair and unbalanced
and discriminatory and dare I say using the words often derided but nevertheless seems really really
opposite in this context the word is simple it is islamophobia it's this kind of irrational
fear of Islam not really understanding what is um actually teaches uh in detail and certainly
not respecting one of the great faiths of the world and the fastest growing religion in the
world as well the religion of Islam anyway that's my rant take it I'll leave it till next time