Sharia versus Title IX Tribunals

A legal tip for young men subjected to Title IX campus kangaroo courts for alleged sexual offenses: Convert to Islam and demand as a matter of right that the proceedings be conducted pursuant to shariah law.

A 1982 precedent the accused could cite would be the case of Safia Bibi, an almost-blind teenage domestic servant repeatedly raped by her landlord employer and his son in Sahiwal, Pakistan. She became pregnant and the baby died at birth. Her father called the police. A rape charge was made. The result of the court operating under Pakistani law at the time and therefore closely following shariah was to sentence Ms. Bibi to death.

That might strike you as insane, but not if you are a Muslim scholar. When the early Muslim community was on the move, the Prophet’s very young wife rode in a curtained bier. One time the caravan stopped for a break at an oasis. There, she stepped out, eventually fell asleep in a shady spot and the caravan moved on without her. (The arbitrary rule that women wear veils had just been made up, and the guys carrying the bier probably did not feel they should peek in or start a conversation.) When the group finally noticed her missing, a search was undertaken, and one of Mohammed's lieutenants found her. She then rode with him back to camp. Tongues immediately began to wag: older husband… young wife… dashing young rescuer. He immediately asked his wife if there was any inappropriate activity. She denied that. Her rescuer denied it. Then three of his men testified that they caught up with him only minutes later, so nothing untoward could have happened. Mohammed publicly declared himself satisfied that there was no impropriety.

This may seem like a rather boring vignette, but it involved an action by the “perfect example” and was thus incorporated into Islamic law. Where sexual impropriety is at issue, a woman is not to be believed unless four Muslim men back up her story as witnesses. If there is evidence that sex took place and her claim of innocence cannot be duly verified, then what we have is zina, unlawful extramarital sex punishable by death by stoning.

Bibi was without four witnesses, so the outcome was inevitable.

This result was so unjust and embarrassing (Pakistani ambassadors were confronted in civilized nations) that later a nonspecific technicality was discovered by the Federal Shariah Court and she was released after six months (and 15 lashes). New reforms were passed in Pakistan in 2006, but local courts are technically still bound to follow shariah.

It is noteworthy that there is no mechanism to change blindingly stupid provisions in shariah because it is deemed eternal and final. The Catholic Church can change canon law. Common law nations can drop unworkable precedents.

Unlike Mohammed, Jesus did not spin out a large set of rather arbitrary requisite behaviors. “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is His.” In other words, the Faith, truth and core principles don’t change, but how we implement them is up to us. Even if Muslims were moved by infidel sensibilities to refrain from pure implementation of their seventh-century blueprint, where and when those infidel influences wane, the unchanged requirements necessarily reemerge.

But so long as there are keffiyeh-clad deeply confused feminists in charge of our universities, why not give them the full experience of the joyous wisdom of shariah by demanding its implementation as a vibrant multicultural choice?