Religion and Politics
All religions aim to provide a code of life for mankind. Apart from other tenets, this code establishes laws that govern all areas of man's life. Thus the laws established by the religion Islam are termed as Shariah. The term Shariah means all of the Islamic Laws and is derived from four basic sources. These sources are The Holy Quran, Sunnah, Ij'ma (consensus) of the Companions (Sahabah) and Qiyas or analogical deduction. These laws are not just limited to areas such as marriage or divorce; rather, the Islamic laws cover every action performed by an individual or a society. The term Shariah is also synonymous with Fiqh. However the term Fiqh means knowledge of all the Islamic Laws (Shariah). It can also be taken to mean the Knowledge of the sources from where the Islamic Laws (Shariah) have been extracted.
Shariah or Islamic Laws are divine ways to preserve societies and individuals. However their application to the modern societies has always given birth to criticism from all quarters. This is primarily because those not in favor of their application in essence can always condemn them on religious grounds. Therefore, if we look closely, it will be seen that it is not the Islamic nature of the Shariah that a person would be in disagreement but the fact that the he does not approve of the Law itself. For instance, according to Shariah murder is punishable by a death sentence. However a similar law is practiced in the Western societies such as the United States without any link to the Shariah although the proponents of capital punishment cannot argue against them targeting religion as a ground. This shows that the application of Shariah itself is not so much a problem but the essence of the Laws, which can also be found in societies that have no connection to Shariah whatsoever. Other than this, application of Islamic Laws has also become a problem because of the political lobbies, which have interests that might clash with the Islamic interests.
It is important to note here that the Islamic Laws are only applicable to Muslims. However modern-day Muslims, are sometimes not in favor of the application of Shariah because they are not inclined towards following all the given tenets of Islam. As a result, it becomes increasingly difficult to apply Shariah.
In this paper, we focus on the Malaysian society, which is composed of Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist communities in order to support our argument. Furthermore we will take the example of Nigerian society which is again not a singular element society but is composed of Muslim and Christian communities. However both the societies are Muslim majority areas and the governments have separate Shariah courts where cases, pertaining to Islamic Laws are tried.
This paper therefore seeks to understand the problems that are encountered while applying Shariah in any given society partly because of the individual opposition to the practice of religion and partly because of the role, politics play. Adding to this is also weakness and insufficiency of certain factions to be able to apply Islamic Laws in totality, which results in either haphazard application of Shariah or no application at all.
It is important to study this area for the simple reason that the modern societies are experiencing religious revivalism and with this experience, comes the application of religion on all aspects of a society such as Laws. Religion has, once again come to the fore to push forward its own religio-political agendas on societies all over the world. In many parts of the world today, religion is therefore the strongest factor in national politics. This phenomena is not only limited to just Islam but can also be witnessed in the form of Christian evangelicalism in the United States of America, in the emergence of a number of cults and alternative movements in Japan and the revival of the Orthodox Church in Russia.
In all of these cases, the challenge is similar. How do modern societies cope with the application of religion? For instance the application of Islam and its laws in a modern, moderate and multiracial society of Malaysia. For this purpose, we have to first study the concept of Islamism.
Islamism' is a concept so vague and encompassing that it can be interpreted in a variety of ways. In a country such as Malaysia, it refers to the concept of collective groupings, political...
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