Life under Sharia law
A year or two ago, the press reported on a rather charming religion called the Sky Kingdom cult that had popped up in Malaysia. The worshippers had built a Disney-esque little temple that centered on a giant teapot that symbolized the beneficence of love and the purity of water pouring from heaven. As is typical for a religion that always seems to operate from the paranoid viewpoint, the Malaysian government (which is Islamic), declared the little shrine heretical and leveled it. While regretting the destruction of this charming site, I thought that was the end of it. I was wrong. The Muslim government is also working hard on leveling the worshippers as well:
A sharia court in Malaysia jailed a woman for joining a “tea-pot worshipping” cult.
Kamariah Ali, a 57 year old former teacher, was arrested in 2005 when the government of the Muslim majority country demolished the two storey high sacred tea pot and other infrastructure of the “heretical” Sky Kingdom cult.
For the eccentric sect, which emphasised ecumenical dialogue between religions, the tea pot symbolized the purity of water and “love pouring from heaven”.
But in Malaysia, despite constitutional guarantees of freedom of worship, born Muslims such as Mrs Ali are forbidden from converting to other religions. (Emphasis mine.)
Passing sentence, the Sharia judge Mohammed Abdullah said: “The court is not convinced that the accused has repented and is willing to abandon any teachings contrary to Islam. I pray God will open the doors of your heart, Kamariah.”
So, there it is in a nutshell: freedom of worship in a sharia country means freedom to worship as you please so long as you don’t have the misfortune to be born Muslim. (For the significance of this “being born or raised a Muslim” issue vis a vis Obama, check this out.) More interestingly, the judge genuinely seems to believe that tossing a person in prison is the way to reach that person spiritually. This is brute force conversion that doesn’t even pretend to enter the marketplace of ideas and explain why Islam is better than any alternatives. It’s tempting to say that this is because Muslim enforcers suspect that they can’t win in the marketplace of ideas, but I believe it probably simply has more to do with the culture of coercion that Muhammad built right into the religion.
As it is, I don’t think that Kamariah Ali is going to bend very far, even if placed in prison as part of of her constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. The same story reports that, back in 1992, she was already imprisoned for 20 months for the “sin” of rejecting Islam. If 20 months in an Indonesian prison doesn’t make you recant the first time, does this judge really think it’s going to make her recant the second time?
As for me, I keep my eye open for creeping sharia. For when it comes to a truly Muslim country, life is precisely the same as it is in a truly Communist country: outside of a select cadre of true believers who are then, ironically, relieved from the harsher burdens of their belief system (collectivism, renunciation of alcohol, etc.), life for everyone else is an always scintillating blend of bad and worse.
