Friday, April 22, 2005

Religion and Law

Humans can not live together without religion and law. Religion itself has laws as Moses' Laws and Islamic Sharia. Religion unlike laws however creates standards of morals and build the human conscience. Law tells people they will be caught if they transgress the law. A lot of people and lawyers when they know well the boundaries of laws and the holes in the laws they learn how to work around them. If you try to make very detailed law so you prevent previous abuses of laws you end by having very firm blind laws that do not take in account that not every situation is the same. Religion teaches us to fear God even if people do not see him while laws teach us we are O.K. as long as we do not get caught. In Hadith "worship God as if you are seeing him, If you do not see him, he sees you". Laws do not teach people kindness, it teaches them to be like robots if one steps on the other one foot he will be punished. Religion teaches people kindness you do not step on the other one foot because you learn to be kind and gentle to other humans. Laws and compensation with no consideration of God teach people to be aggressive, sue-Hungary or sue happy. You see the ads to lawyers on T.V. who they could look scary in some of them. Many are waiting for the lottery ticket when they could sue a doctor or a big corporation. I love Christ teachings and I know very good Christians, however I do not understand it when I hear that someone is saved by the blood of Christ since the main function of religion is to build human conscience. If the religion rationalizes for you your sins to begin with it kills your conscience. People think laws in Islam are grave and inhumane. This is true if you did not read the sheria laws. The two most harsh are cutting the hands of thieves or stoning married fornicating men or women. Both laws are meant more to make clear to people how both sins are very destructive to communities and evil to God. Before Islam if a man would catch a woman cheating on him with other man he would kill her, which is actually happening in some Arab countries now. In Islam you do not do that you have to have 4 witnesses who sees her with organ to organ intercourse to have her stoned which is very difficult to do and of course you do not video her for that. You got the message, the ones who do that in God eyes deserve to be stoned and if it happens with one partner he just can walk away. But all of us has to be dreadful to this sin. A man came to the messenger and asked him to stone him for sexual intercourse the Prophet (PBUH) told him may be you kissed her, the man told him I had intercourse with her. The prophet told him may be you hugged her, the man told him I had intercourse with her. The prophet was not eager to stone the man but to let him out and then he can repent and God forgives sins. Similarly cutting the hand of the thief has very strict roles that made it difficult to the governor to do that. Thus in Islam the best way to prevent stealing is to teach people morality of their religion and being righteous. The government is ought to create social justice and prosperity to all of its people regardless of race or religion. With the advancement of technology and communication we are able to do that to all humans in earth. Morals and not laws are what Islam concerns more about. You can create all laws of the world that you wish and still have dysfunctional and hateful societies. God and morals unite us all and the law would likely still be needed but will be used less often. Lawyers will still have jobs as negotiators and writing business contracts. If the ship sinks we all will go done including lawyers.