Angry in the Great White North

Ayatollah Khomeini said it best, when he dismissed the role of the people and their legislative representatives in an Islamic state:

Khomeini himself opposed the principle of democracy in his book Hokumat-e Islami: Wilayat al-Faqih, where he denied the need for any legislative body saying, "no one has the right to legislate ... except ... the Divine Legislator"

Don’t listen to those who speak of democracy. They all are against Islam. They want to take the nation away from its mission. We will break all the poison pens of those who speak of nationalism, democracy, and such things.

No legislature required, because the body of law is complete and perfect. Government then reduces to a judiciary that determines the guilt of the accused, an executive that enforces the law, and bridging those two branches of government is the police, tasked with enforcing the law on the citizenry, whose only role is to submit.

The curious thing is that this doesn't seem to happen. The more a jurisdiction seems to rely on Sharia law, the more the mob becomes involved.

Consider the case of British teacher Gillian Gibbons, who faces prosecution for allowing the children in her class in Sudan to name a teddy bear Mohammed:

A major security operation was under way today as a British teacher charged with inciting hatred and insulting religion was brought before a court in Sudan.

Trucks protected by armed police transported Gillian Gibbons from her cell at the CID headquarters in Khartoum where she had been kept in custody following her arrest on Sunday for allowing pupils to name a school teddy bear Mohammed.

Now this makes sense. The wheels of justice must be allowed to turn. The judiciary must come to a decision on Gillian Gibbons without worrying about their personal security or the security of the accused.

Their only consideration is whether Gibbons broke the law as handed down by Allah, right?

Wrong.

In fact, a lot is riding on the foam-flecked ranting of the mob outside:

Extreme Islamic groups said Mrs Gibbons "must die" and urged Muslims to hold street protests after prayers tomorrow.

One lawyer said that if Mrs Gibbons pleads guilty and makes profuse apologies, she could emerge with a "relatively minor penalty", such as a hefty fine or a jail term equivalent to the four days she has already spent in custody.

But he warned that rising anger in Sudan, as news of the case spread, might affect the court's decision.

How can the mob affect the court's decision? Either she broke Islamic law or she did not. Whether a majority of people believe she did or not is not relevant. Whether there are a few muttering malcontents or a screaming mob of thousands is not relevant. In fact, the idea that the rage of the people can somehow influence the findings of the court suggests that the Sharia is really the law of the mob and not the law of the Prophet.

Followed to it's logical conclusion, this sort of thinking might convince some people that there is nothing at all divine about Sharia. Not only is it not divine, it isn't even particularly human, but is merely the law of the jungle. And if the Sharia is not legitimate, then what of the legitimacy of Islam as a religion that presents itself as having the secret of how to order the secular world.

That lawyer ought to be careful, or he might find himself torn to little pieces.

In an Islamic state, the people do not decide what is right and what is wrong. Only Allah can do that.

To suggest that the Sharia legal system is really just chaotic mob of people, each trying to outdo his neighbour in showing just how enraged he is in order to curry favour with Allah, is an insult to the Sharia, to the Prophet, and to Allah.

In fact, I'd expect anyone who levelled this sort of criticism against an Islamic state would find himself beseiged by a crowd of unemployed and sexually-frustrated men, each taking in turn to scream out an increasingly longer list of horrific tortures that should be visited upon the slanderer as punishment for suggesting that a community ruled under Allah's divine laws is anything but the pinnacle of civilization.

I'd be willing to bet the word irony never appears in the Koran.