By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Absolute monarch Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei announced in January a harsh form of sharia law will be enacted. Effective in three phases beginning now and spanning two years, the edict eventually allows for the stoning to death of homosexuals, adulterers, and apostates; for amputation of limbs for those convicted of theft; and flogging for abortions and the consumption of alcohol. The capital offense provisions of the law reportedly apply only to Muslims.
Sultan Bolkiah claims this is a step in solidifying a long cultural tradition in the sultanate which was established in the fourteenth century. Increasingly conservative Muslim politicians and officials in Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia are beginning to move from sharia being limited to family matters to now criminal law and capital offenses. Acheh in Indonesia is included especially. While Brunei enjoys one of the highest per capital income in the world, has many social benefits such as effectively free health care and education, its population of over 416,000 individuals now is seeing human rights restricted in a trend that is generating international condemnation in the West. Al-Jazeera reported that many members of the Muslim ethnic Malay majority have voiced cautious support for the changes. However, non-Muslim citizens, who are fifteen percent of the population, led a rare burst of criticism on social media earlier this year, but largely went silent after the sultan called for a halt.
“Theory states that God’s law is harsh and unfair, but God himself has said that his law is indeed fair,” the sultan said.
But will Western governments be willing to isolate countries engaging in abuses of individuals and oppression of the human rights of populations or is trade and money going to become the focus and inconveniences such as abuse continue to be ignored?
In another familiar trade above human rights story, on the day this sharia law measure took effect the Obama Administration’s chief trade negotiator Michael Froman was lobbying Capitol Hill to ratify The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), strongly sought by President Obama and others since 2009, which would bind the United States to providing the sultanate with economic privileges.
Senator Elizabeth Warren stated her concern about the secrecy of the trade agreement (leaked to various news organizations) and how this agreement will allow corporations and governments the ability to override existing laws.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other NGOs have expressed concern and worry that governments such as Malaysia and Brunei which now both have laws criminalizing homosexuality are now given special trade privileges, whereas trade sanctions and other measures by corporations, governments, and individuals to attempt to instigate change in these governments to protect their citizens should be instead used. Providing trade advantages only serves to reward violations of human rights.
There are concerns in the non-Muslim cultures within Brunei. According to The Diplomat the sharia bans the propagation of religions other than Islam or atheism. The offense will carry a $20,000 fine and/or a prison term of up to five years. This has compromised the 30,000 Filipinos living in Brunei and prompted a warning from a Catholic priest in the tiny, oil-rich sultanate that there will be no baptisms. “There will be no baptisms. There is not a lot we can do about it. We will have to wait and see what happens,” he told Britain’s Independent newspaper.
Schools have also been warned that children are not to be exposed to any religion, be it through ceremonies or acts of worship, but Islam and that non-Muslims would be subjected to some aspects of the new laws. It was not clear exactly what parts of Sharia law would be imposed on non-Muslims.
On the International front Phil Robertson, Deputy Director for the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, said: “Brunei’s decision to implement criminal Sharia law is a huge step backwards for human rights in the country. It constitutes an authoritarian move towards brutal medieval punishments that have no place in the modern, 21st century world. The entire world should express its outrage and heap criticism on this ill-considered move and urge the Brunei government to immediately reconsider.” Rupert Abbott of Amnesty International, noted the laws carried the death penalty for acts that should not be considered crimes and would “take the country back to the dark ages.” He further added, “Brunei Darussalam’s new Penal Code legalizes cruel and inhuman punishments. It makes a mockery of the country’s international human rights commitments and must be revoked immediately.”
In a carefully worded statement the UN has said it considers some of the penalties to be “torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” under international law. As such their use could warrant an investigation from the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The backlash against the sultanate and its business interests is generating in the United States in certain circles. The sultan owns the Dorchester Collection which includes the iconic and luxurious Beverly Hills Hotel and is now experiencing this. Entertainer Jay Leno protested outside the hotel with the Feminist Majority Foundation The foundation moved its Global Women’s Rights Awards from the hotel as did Gill Action’s Political OutGiving conference. Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres called for a boycott and Virgin CEO Richard Branson tweeted “No @Virgin employee, nor our family, will stay at Dorchester Hotels until the Sultan abides by basic human rights.”
Some organizations went to some considerable length to voice their resolve against the Beverly Hills. According to Fox411 the teen suicide prevention charity Teen Line forfeited its $60,000 down payment to take the event elsewhere, and the Hollywood Reporter notified the Beverly Hills Hotel that it will not hold its annual Women in Entertainment breakfast there. The Beverly Hills City Council is meeting to discuss a resolution condemning Brunei’s new laws, and encourage “the government of Brunei to divest itself of the Beverly Hills Hotel.”
The sultan claims that the law allows wide discretion on behalf of judges on whether or not to impose these internationally condemned punishments of gays, adulterers and others judged to be in violation of these sharia laws. But it remains to be seen how this is actually carried out. The fact that these laws are in force is a moral outrage in more open and free societies.
Since Brunei is ruled by an absolute monarch it remains to be seen how influential international and internal pressures to embrace core human rights will be. One could argue that it only requires the changing of one mind to end this return to a dark chapter in Islam that is seemingly increasing in some areas of the world. But when face and other pressures are at hand this might prove difficult. Brunei does have a parliament yet it is completely subservient to the sultanate. Yet with a nation as developed and committed to modernism in trade and international monetary issues as Brunei, it does on the surface seem rather disconnected with its departure from the tenets of basic human rights and justice.
By Darren Smith
Sources:
Huffington Post
BBC News
Fox News
The Diplomat
al-Jazeera
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
Just so it is clear for those erecting the specter of shariah law without knowing what it actually is.
Shariah law is a socio/judicial group of laws that seek to cover all the interactions within a society. It specifies for example the rules for inheritance, how much goes to whom, adoption rules, the rules that govern divorces and marital relationships, financial transactions rules…etc, AND also the consequences for breaking those rules.
What people get their panties in a bunch about are actually a small component of shariah law, the punishments applied to those who break the rules. These punishments are a combination of what is proscribed in the Quran and what is thought to have been applied by the Prophet.
Int he case of cutting hands for thieves, the edict is indeed quranic, and is widely accepted as such but there are readings of it that do not accept its literal interpretation of physical cutting off.
In the case of stoning, it is not in the Quran. Stoning was a Jewish tradition that some claim was used by the Prophet solely in that one case where he was asked to judge between Jewish claimants, and as was the rule then, to inflict a punishment according to their own rules.
As for the lashes for adulterers, it is also in the Quran.
One point, the most important point, worth noting here is this, and I will capitalize it to reflect it:
THE CORE OF SHARIAH LAW IS THAT THE CRIME MUST BE WITNESSED BY 4 TRUSTWORTHY WITNESSES, FOR TO WRONGLY ACCUSE AND PUNISH SOMEONE OF A CRIME IS WORSE THAN ANY CRIME THEY COULD HAVE COMMITTED.
EVEN AFTER ONE IS FOUND GUILTY, THE MERE REPENTANCE FOR ONE’S CRIME IS SUFFICIENT TO FREE THEM FROM THE PUNISHMENT. THIS MAKES IT SO THAT THE PUNISHMENT WOULD ONLY BE APPLIED WHEN ONE IS FOUND GUILTY BEYOND A DOUBT, AND REFUSES TO REPENT FROM HIS CRIME.
SHARIAH LAW IS ONLY APPLICABLE TO MUSLIMS, AND ONLY REQUIRED IN A MUSLIM SOCIETY. NON MUSLIMS HAVE THE RIGHT TO PRACTICE THEIR RELIGION FREELY (WHICH WAS THE CASE IN THE TIMES OF THE PROPHET).
I do hope that anyone commenting about shariah law will base it on this info I just passed along, or other verifiable info that comes from Islamic sources and not from any writings, blog, speech, by noted or obscure islamophobes.
Religious believers: went in dumb, come out dumb too.
Good post, Darren.
“… this is a step in solidifying a long cultural tradition in the sultanate which was established in the fourteenth century.” -Darren
The ~700 year old status quo.
We must outlaw all religious laws.
Jeremy – rail as you might, I don’t think it is going to happen.
All in the name of God. Coming to our shores once the theocracy is set up, that takes time and coordination.
Jeremy – there has been some movement to add Sharia law to some cases between Muslims. Personally, I am against it.
Religion is tyranny.
Dave – attacking religion is both bigoted and tyrannical.
Sultan’s Idiot Siblings Nearly Screwed the World
Hassanal Bilkiah is worth an estimated $20 billion and lives in a 1,800-room palace. The Sultan himself, together with his family members are exempted from the Sharia Law. The sultan has had three wives and has eight children.
You can guess where this is going.
The Sultan of Brunei’s brother Jefri Bolkiah was a troublemaker. Initially he got into the press due to his escapades with his harem of over 40 women. Eventually things got embarrassing enough
that the sultan gave him the job of finance minister, just to keep him out of the papers (because who cares about the minister of finance?), thinking he couldn’t do any real damage there.
Between 1986 and 1998, Jefri managed to embezzle over $14 billion out of the country through special transfers. Afterward he went on the kind of spending spree that only a billionaire could manage.
Jefri didn’t buy luxuyry goods — he bought entire luxury goods stores. Also, fleets of cars and airplanes, yachts, chains of hotels, etc. He even flew women into Brunei to sexually abuse. Nice guy.
To continue doglover’s theme: Illegally spying on all Americans and much of the world’s conversations, arresting people and throwing them in jail for many years for smoking pot or other non-violent drug crimes, arresting people who want to pay for sex, stop and frisk, states closing all abortion clinics and forcing women to find alternative means of aborting a pregnancy caused by rape or incest, state sponsored executions although 4% of those killed are thought to be innocent, a ‘justice’ system that punishes the poor more severely than the wealthy; three strikes and spend the rest of your life in jail for even minor violations, “United States represents about 5 percent of the world’s population, it houses around 25 percent of the world’s prisoners”. Killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people for fake WMDs. A caste system that almost guarantees that if you are born poor you will die poor. Apartheid like school districts. Government ‘representatives’ fighting over the right to pray in schools and other government functions while cutting food aid to poor kids and taxes to the wealthy. How much support for Sharia Law do you put in you gas tank each week?
While I find Sharia law abhorrent for its brutality, the US has its own form of reprehensible justice that wears the cloak of Christianity. Instead of focusing on the barbaric justice systems of other countries, the focus needs to be adjusted in order to remedy the injustices on our own shores.
Another stupid law by those stupid people who worship the pedophile
“All though I against the use of sharia law both there and here….”
Uh-oh, looks like someone hasn’t had their coffee yet.
So, just to be clear, you’re not recommending Brunei as a tourist destination?
All though I against the use of sharia law both there and here, I am also aware that harsher portions can be overlooked by judges or prosecutors. For example, Arizona had a ‘notorious cohabitation and adultery’ statute on the books for some 60 years. During that time it was used only twice, both unsuccessfully. Guess what the defense was?
Yes. Spraying defenseless people with pepper spray, droning weddings, entering homes in the middle of the night and slaughtering defenseless people, bombing cities, leaving mines where children play, terrorizing populations to take control of their resources, are much more humane.
Of course it’s obvious said “sultan” does not EVER expect to be on the receiving end of any of this punishment – so easy to prescribe what should be the punishment for others in that circumstance !
That little word “should” again – evidence of a pompous closed mind !!!
Solution to this problem… Several Rockets launched at the ‘Sultan’s’ Castle….
Thank you for the info Salamander. I have corrected the post.
“…the edict eventually proscribes the stoning to death…”
To “proscribe” is to forbid, not to permit.
For example, “The proper role of religion should be to proscribe inhumane treatment of others”.
Oh no!!! Oklahoma had its ban on sharia law overturned. They had better get crackin on rewriting a new one. At least N. Carolina, Arizona, Kansas, S. Dakota, Tennessee, and Louisiana are covered.
We should cut all ties to Brunei. Tourists should avoid it like the plague. Sharia law is dangerous to humans, particularly Westerners. It is time to take a stand.
By the way, I don’t care if they keep Sharia law or not. I just think we should have nothing to do with countries who have it and I am pretty sure Brunei is not the only one from which we need to disengage.