Islamic corporal punishments, Hirsi Ali and Ramadan
I share Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s disgust at recent reports of women sentenced to physical punishments under religious law for patently unjust reasons, and her impatience with moderate Islamic opinion on the matter. However, the one moderate she appears to single out for implied criticism has not been silent as she suggests.
Saudi judges sentencing a rape victim to 200 lashes of the cane for the crime of “mingling” with men; Sudanese judges sentencing a teacher to lashes for the “blasphemy” of letting her pupils name a teddybear Muhammad; and the zealots seeking to kill Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen: These are gross abuses carried out in the name of Islam. We agree. We also agree that the voice of moderate Islam is often muted and contradictory when ‘Islamic’ punishments come up.
However, I detect an unwarranted note of sarcasm in Ms Hirsi Ali’s New York Times op-ed when she says she “would welcome some guidance from that famous Muslim theologian of moderation, Tariq Ramadan”.
[UPDATE:] A couple of years after posting this, I helped put together the volume New Directions in Islamic Thought, which included a chapter by Tariq Ramadan setting out his call for a moratorium and reflecting on the reactions (Ramadan 2009).
The context suggests she wishes to imply that Mr Ramadan is one of the moderates that have been silent. This is not the case.
Mr Ramadan’s website features his protest against the first two cases Hirsi Ali mentions. It is datelined 29 November, a good week earlier. More generally, his call for a moratorium on such punishments has been around since April 2005, and was recalled inter alia in the Economist story on the teddybear affair.
[UPDATE 2007-12-24: Tariq Ramadan responded in International Herald Tribune on 16 December.]