“The central idea of Umar’s [the second “Rightly Guided Caliph,” who led the nascent Islamic Empire from 634 until his assassination in 644] regime was to further the religious-military development of Islam at the expense of the conquered nations.

It was the basis of its severe directives regarding Christians and those of other faiths, that they be reduced to the status of pariahs, forbidden from having anything in common with the ruling nation; it was even the basis for his decision to purify the Arabian Peninsula of the unbelievers, when he presented all the inhabitants of the peninsula who had not yet accepted Islam with the choice: to emigrate or deny the religion of their ancestors.

The industrious and wealthy Christians of Najran, who maintained their Christian faith, emigrated as a result of this decision from the peninsula, to the land of the Euphrates, and Umar also deported the Jews of Khaybar. In this way Umar based that fanatical and intolerant approach that was an essential characteristic of Islam, now extant for over a thousand years, until this day [i.e., in 1868]. It was this spirit, a severe and steely one, that incorporated scorn and contempt for the non-Muslims, that was characteristic of Umar, and instilled by Umar into Islam; this spirit continued for many centuries, to be Islam’s driving force and vital principle.”¹

—Alfred von Kremer, 1868 “Islam has never favored democratic tendencies². Muslim law has always aimed at controlling the religious, social, and political life of mankind in all its aspects without qualification, and the life of those who follow the tolerated religions to a degree that prevents their activities from hampering Islam in any way³.[R]ules of Mohammedan [Islamic] law which control the relations of the ‘faithful’ to the ‘unbelievers’ can only be characterized as humane.if we start on the supposition.that kafirs [non-Muslim infidels] are the inferiors of Muslims in this world. That law declares it to be permissible in some cases, in others commendable and even obligatory, to slay infidels, or to kidnap or enslave them.

Many ways are left open to the Muslim of cheating individual kafirs or an infidel government without sinning against God. Under the Mohammedan law religious liberty is intolerable as involving the coexistence of truth with falsehood, and of the service of the true God with paganismA..The whole set of laws, which according to Islam, should regulate the relations between believers and unbelievers, is the most consequent elaboration imaginable of a mixture of religion and of politics in their medieval form. That he who possesses material power should also dominate the mind is accepted as a matter of course; the possibility that adherents of different religions could live together as citizens of the same state and with equal rights is excluded. Such was the situation in the Middle Ages not only with Mohammedans....The difference chiefly is this, that Islam has fixed all these medieval regulations in the form of eternal laws, so that later generations, even if their views have changed, find it hard to emancipate themselves from them.”⁵

—C. Snouck Hurgronje, 1882-1915

“The Caliphate State is both spiritual and temporal; it is founded on justice and equity....When they attack religious law, Turkish secularists, relentlessly attack with stubborn ferocity the freedom Sharia grants to the Ahl alKitab [“People of the Book,” typically Jews and Christians subjugated by jihad, as per Koran 9:29].’-

—Rashid Rida, 1923

“Muslim International Law depends wholly and solely upon the will of the Muslim State which in its turn is controlled by the Muslim Law (Sharia)....If the theologians define Islam as belief in practice of ‘there is no God if not Allah Himself, and that Muhammad is His Messenger’.the same is not less applicable to Muslim law from the point of view of international jurists. All our conduct of State must be based on the commands of God, received through his messenger Muhammad.”⁷

—Muhammad Hamidullah, 1935

“Islamic thought is authoritarian.

Political absolutism parallels the theological absolutism of God's relation to His creatures.”⁸

—Gustave von Grunebaum, 1955

“The idea of a religious law—the concept that law, as well as other human relationships, must be ruled by religion—has become an essential part of the Islamic outlook. The same, incidentally, is true of politics and even of economics; it explains the recent attempt to hold an Islamic economic congress in Pakistan. Because they cannot face the problem, because they lack historical understanding of the formation of Mohammedan religious law, because they cannot make up their minds, any more than their predecessors could in the early Abbasid period, on what is legislation, the modernists cannot get away from a timid, halfhearted, and essentially self-contradictory position. Parallel with the tendency to modify the existing doctrine of traditional religious law goes a seemingly opposite trend: the desire to construct modern laws on the foundations of the basic principles of the sacred law, that law reflects the conditions of early Abbasid society. This is called “temporal Islamic legislation”—a contradiction in adjecto [logical inconsistency] in the light of history. Those who propose to do this are to a great extent the same persons who advocate modifying the religious law in those fields in which it is still being applied in practice. All this goes to show how firm a hold the idea of a religious law has got on the legal thought of even modernist Muslims. The common aim underlying both programs is to express modern ideas, which have been borrowed from the West, in a traditional medium, but it hardly seems to have been realized that the two programs are mutually contradictory.”⁹

—Joseph Schacht, 1955

“In any broad sense, Islamic Law offers the American lawyer a study in dramatic contrasts. Even casual acquaintance and superficial knowledge—all that most of us at bench or bar will be able to acquire—reveal that its striking features relative to our law are not likenesses but inconsistencies, not similarities but contrarieties.

In its source, its scope and its sanctions, the law [i.e., Islamic Law, Sharia] of the Middle East is the antithesis of Western Law....Islamic law, on the contrary, finds its chief source in the will of Allah as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. It contemplates one community of the faithful, though they may be of various tribes and in widely separated locations. Religion, not nationalism or geography, is the proper cohesive force. The state itself is subordinate to the Qur’an, which leaves little room for additional legislation, none for criticism or dissent. This world is viewed as but the vestibule to another and a better one for the faithful, and the Qur’an lays down rules of behavior towards others and toward society to assure a safe transition. It is not possible to separate political or juristic theories from the teachings of the Prophet, which establish rules of conduct concerning religious, domestic, social, and political life. This results in a law of duties, rather than rights.”¹⁰

—Robert H. Jackson, 1955

“This Law [Islamic Law] is a hodgepodge: we find measures in which we recognize moral precepts, juridical rules, indications of a ritual order, but all these norms that we judge essentially different are treated in the same spirit—casuistically, it may be said—by the Doctors of law, that is to say, by the real representatives of Islam, a religion without priests. The distinctions we make, they do not, for all the rules expounded there manifest, in all their details, the actual state of things, the ideal desired by God, for the Doctors have deduced, starting from the Koran and Tradition, and in an infallible way, the ensemble of rules that the Muslim community ought to follow to obey His inscrutable Will. These norms, considered as definitive by the Doctors for more than a millennium, embrace the whole life of the believer as an individual and of the Community, dealing with (I mention at random): sharing, ritual Prayer, the invitation to a wedding feast, the way of satisfying natural needs, judicature, the use of toothpicks, competitions in archery, safe conduct to give to certain unbelievers, the interdiction for a man to wear rings of gold or silver, retaliation, the way to treat animals, the interdiction on eating pork, care of children, etc., etc.

Thus there is in Islam an undifferentiated whole, where modern Europeans distinguish clearly among ritual, the law, moral doctrine, good customs in society, etc. This distinction has even long existed in Christianity: no Catholic would confuse the way of saying mass with moral theology, or with canon law, or the polite way to greet an ecclesiastic, etc. If I may make an indelicate comparison (I would take a loftier example but I cannot think of one so striking): one finds among mammals a bladder, a vagina, and a rectum, whereas birds and reptiles have only an undifferentiated organ, the cloaca, corresponding to a previous stage of evolution. Similarly, divine law, the Sharia, has remained at a stage of evolution more primitive than Christianity. Thus one grasps all the dangers and misunderstandings committed when starting from our concepts to deal with things that do not exist in Islam. We would laugh at a naturalist who spoke of the vagina or the bladder of a bird, but we commit just as inexcusable a mistake when we speak, as of clearly distinct things, about moral doctrine, or about the law or theory of Islam. The Doctors of Law had no idea of these concepts. Similarly there is for them only a single tribunal, with a single judge and universal authority; it is thus inadmissible in Islam to speak of a tribunal for children, of a Court of Appeal, of a Public Minister, of a Court of Assizes [former periodic criminal court in England and Wales, replaced by permanent Crown Court in 1971], and so forth. Apply this example to everything that deals with the Law and you will understand the errors into which one falls by transposing our own ideas into the Muslim world by making distinctions where there is no reason to, by creating European categories where they do not exist.”¹¹

—G.-H. Bousquet, 1966 “To understand the impact of Sharia law you have to look at other [i.e., Islamic] countries. At its heart it has basic inequalities between Muslims and non-Muslims, and between men and women.

The problem with Sharia law being used in tribunals [in Britain] is that it compromises the tradition of equality for all under the law. It threatens the fundamental values that underpin our society.”¹²

—Michael Nazir Ali, 2010 “Gradualism in applying the Shariah is a wise requirement to follow. In doing so, we will be following Allah’s Laws with regard to physical nature and teachings of Islam. Gradualism was observed in enjoining the obligations of Islam such as Prayer, fasting, et cetera, and in forbidding the prohibitions as well....Being a divine law, gradualism is to be followed on the political level nowadays. That is to say, gradualism is to be observed when it comes to applying the rulings of the Shariah in today’s life when Muslims have been socially, legislatively, and culturally invaded. If we want to establish a real Muslim society, we should not imagine that such an end can be achieved by a mere decision issued to that effect by a king or a president or a council of leaders or a parliament. Gradualism is the means through which such an end can be fulfilled. Gradualism here refers to preparing people ideologically, psychologically, morally, and socially to accept and adopt the application of the Shariah in all aspects of life, and to finding lawful alternatives for the forbidden principles upon which many associations have been founded for so long. Gradualism in that sense does not mean we are to procrastinate and put off applying the Shariah. It is not to be taken as a pretext for discouraging people and foiling their pressing demands to establish Allah’s Laws. It, rather, should spur us to spotlight our aims, set our plans, and decide, sincerely and wisely, on the gradual stages to be taken in that respect. In that way, step by step, and through wise planning, organizing and determination, we can reach the last and long-awaited stage of applying all the teachings of Islam heart and soul. This was the same approach that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) adopted so that he (peace and blessings be upon him) could change the pre-Islamic life of degeneration and ignorance into the enlightened life of Islam. There is an example in that respect which is related concerning Umar ibn Abdul-Aziz* [r. 717-720], whom the Muslim scholars regard as the fifth rightly-guided caliph and a true follower of his great-grandfather, Umar ibn AlKhattab [r. 634-644]. Umar ibn Abdul-Aziz’s son, Abdul-Malik, who was a firm pious young man, said to his father one day, ‘O father! Why you do not implement the rulings firmly and immediately? By Allah, I would not care if all the world would furiously oppose us so long as we seek to establish the right [that Allah Almighty has enjoined].’ These words show how zealous that young man was to destroy all signs of corruption and deterioration immediately and without delay whatever the consequences. But the wise father said to his son, ‘Do not deal with matters hastily, son. Allah Almighty [Himself] despised drinking alcohol twice in the Qur’an and did not declare it forbidden but in the third time. I am afraid that if I enjoined the right on people at one stroke, they would give it up all at once, which might lead to sedition.’ That attitude of Umar ibn Abdul-Aziz shows that he saw it wise to tackle matters gradually. He was guided in that respect by Allah’s dealing with prohibiting alcohol. Umar wanted to lead people step-by-step towards establishing the right and this, in fact, is the wise juristic approach to handle matters.”¹³

—Yusuf al-Qaradawi, 2011 *Qaradawi lionizes Umar b. Al-Aziz (r. 717-720 AD) in this fatwa. Here is what this Caliph Umar (often referred to as Umar II, Umar b. al-Khattab, r. 634-644, the second “Rightly Guided Caliph” being Umar I) wrote to one of his governors about the Sharia-based regulations of dhimmitude for non-Muslims, according to a legal treatise composed by the great Hanafi jurist Abu Yusuf (d. 798): “After the preliminaries [greetings]; do not allow any cross to be exhibited without smashing and destroying it; no Jew or Christian may be allowed to ride upon a saddle, but must use a pack-saddle, and let none of their womenfolk use a padded saddle, but only a packsaddle; formal decrees must be issued in this respect and the public restricted from disobeying them. No Christian may wear a kaba, nor a fine cloth nor a turban! It has been reported to me that several Christians under your jurisdiction have relapsed into the custom of wearing turbans, no longer wear belts at the waist, and let their hair grow freely without cutting it. Upon my life! if this happens in your entourage, it is on account of your weakness, your incompetence, and the flatteries that you heed, and these people know, in resuming their former customs, what kind of person you are. Keep a watch on all I have forbidden and do not contradict those who have done it. Peace.”¹⁴

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Source: Bostom Andrew G.. Sharia Versus Freedom: The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism. Prometheus Books,2012. — 1110 p.. 2012

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“The central idea of Umar’s [the second “Rightly Guided Caliph,” who led the nascent Islamic Empire from 634 until his assassination in 644] regime was to further the religious-military development of Islam at the expense of the conquered nations.

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