The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever (76 page)

In sum, sharia is the total collection of theoretical laws that apply in an ideal Muslim community that has surrendered to the will of God. It is based on divine authority that must be accepted without criticism. Islamic law is thus not a product of human intelligence, and in no way reflects a constantly changing or evolving social reality (as does European law). It is immutable, and the fiqh or the science of the sharia constitutes the infallible and definitive interpretation of the Sacred Texts. It is infallible because the group of Doctors of law have been granted the power to deduce authoritative solutions from the Koran and the traditions; and definitive because after three centuries, all the solutions have been given. While European, law is human and changing, the sharia is divine and immutable. It depends on the inscrutable will of Allah, which cannot be grasped by human intelligence—it must be accepted without doubts and questions. The work of the learned doctors of the sharia is but a simple application of the words of Allah or His Prophet: it is only in certain narrowly defined limits, fixed by God Himself, that one can use a kind of reasoning known as qiyas, reasoning by analogy. The decisions of the learned, having the force of law, rest on the infallibility of the community, an infallibility that God Himself conferred through Muhammed on his community [Bousquet, Hurgronje, Schacht].

Criticisms of Islamic Law

1. Two of the roots of Islam are the Koran and the sunna as recorded in the hadith. First, we have already given reasons why the Koran cannot be considered of divine origin—it was composed sometime between the seventh and the ninth centuries, full of borrowings from talmudic Judaism, apocryphal Christianity, the Samaritans, Zoroastrianism, and pre-Islamic Arabia. It contains historical anachronisms and errors, scientific mistakes, contradictions, grammatical errors, etc. Second, the doctrines contained therein are incoherent and contradictory and not worthy of a compassionate deity. Nowhere is there any proof for the existence of any deity. On the other hand, the Koran also contains praiseworthy, even if not particularly original moral principles—the need for generosity, respect for parents, and so on. But these are outweighed by unworthy principles: intolerance of pagans, the call to violence and murder, the lack of equality for women and non-Muslims, the acceptance of slavery, barbaric punishments, and the contempt for human reason.
   
2. Goldziher, Schacht, and others have convincingly shown that most—and perhaps all—of the traditions (hadith) were forgeries put into circulation in the first few Muslim centuries. If this fact is allowed, then the entire foundation of Islamic law is seen to be very shaky indeed. The whole of Islamic law is but a fantastic creation founded on forgeries and pious fictions. And since Islamic law is seen by many as “the epitome of Islamic thought, the most typical manifestation of the Islamic way of life, the core and kernel of Islam itself,” the consequences of Goldziher’s and Schacht’s conclusions are, to say the least, shattering.
   
3. Priestly Power:
   That there is a will of God, once and for all, as to what man is to do and what he is not to do; that the value of a people, of an individual, is to be measured according to how much or how little the will of God is obeyed; that the will of God manifests itself in the destinies of a people, of an individual, as the ruling factor, that is to say, as punishing and rewarding according to the degree of obedience…. One step further: the “will of God” (that is, the conditions for the preservation of priestly power) must be known: to this end a “revelation” is required. In plain language: a great literary forgery becomes necessary, a “holy scripture” is discovered; it is made public with full hieratic pomp…. With severity and pedantry, the priest formulates once and for all,…what he wants to have, “what the will of God is.” From now on all things in life are so ordered that the priest is indispensable.
   Muslim apologists and Muslims themselves have always claimed that there were no clergy in Islam; but in reality, there was something like a clerical class, which eventually acquired precisely the same kind of social and religious authority as the Christian clergy. This is the class I have been referring to throughout this chapter as “the learned doctors” or the “doctors of law,” otherwise known as the “ulama.” Given the importance attached to the Koran and the sunna (and hadith), there grew a need to have a professional class of people competent enough to interpret the Sacred texts. As their authority grew among the community, they grew more confident and claimed absolute authority in all matters relating to faith and law. The doctrine of “ijma” merely consolidated their absolute power. As Gibb says, “It was…only after the general recognition of ijma as a source of law and doctrine that a definite legal test of heresy was possible and applied. Any attempt to raise the question of the import of a text in such a way as to deny the validity of the solution already given and accepted by consensus became a ‘bid’a,’ an act of ‘innovation,’ that is to say, heresy.”
   The continuing influence of the ulama is the major factor why there has been so little intellectual progress in Muslim societies, why critical thought has not developed. Throughout Islamic history, but especially in recent times, the ulama have actively hindered attempts to introduce the idea of human rights, freedom, individualism, and liberal democracy. For example, the ulama reacted violently to Iran’s 1906–1907 constitution, regarding it as “un-Islamic”; they were totally opposed to the idea of freedom contained within it. The ulama have been involved in the process of Islamization in modern times in three countries in particular, Iran, the Sudan, and Pakistan. In each of these countries, “Islamization has effectively meant the elimination of human rights or their restrictions by reference to Islamic criteria.”
   
4. Is the sharia still valid?
   We may well ask how a law whose elements were first laid down over a thousands years ago, and whose substance has not evolved with the times can possibly be relevant in the twentieth century. The sharia only reflects the social and economic conditions of the time of the early Abbasids and has simply grown out of touch with all the later developments—social, economic, and moral. It seems improbable but we have progressed morally: we no longer regard women as chattel that we can dispose of as we will: we no longer believe that those who do not share our religious beliefs are not worthy of equal respect; we even accord children and animals rights. But as long as we continue to regard the Koran as eternally true, with an answer for all the problems of the modern world we will have no progress. The principles enshrined in the Koran are inimical to moral progress.
   

Without warning you are seized and brought before a Judge. Did you create a thunderstorm and destroy the village harvest? Did you kill your neighbor with the evil eye? Do you doubt that Christ is bodily present in the Eucharist? You will soon learn that questions of this sort admit of no exculpatory reply.

You are not told the names of your accusers. But their identities are of little account, for even if, at this late hour, they were to recant their charges against you, they would merely be punished as false witnesses, while their original accusations would retain their full weight as evidence of your guilt. The machinery of justice has been so well oiled by faith that it can no longer be influenced.

But you have a choice, of sorts: you can concede your guilt and name your accomplices. Yes, you must have had accomplices. No confession will be accepted unless other men and women can be implicated in your crimes. Perhaps you and three acquaintances of your choosing
did
change into hares and consort with the devil himself. The sight of iron boots designed to crush your feet seems to refresh your memory. Yes, Friedrich, Arthur, and Otto are sorcerers too. Their wives? Witches all.

You now face punishment proportionate to the severity of your crimes: flogging, a pilgrimage on foot to the Holy Land, forfeiture of property, or, more likely, a period of long imprisonment, probably for life. Your “accomplices” will soon be rounded up for torture.

Or you can maintain your innocence, which is almost certainly the truth (after all, it is the rare person who can create a thunderstorm). In response, your jailers will be happy to lead you to the furthest reaches of human suffering, before burning you at the stake. You may be imprisoned in total darkness for months or years at a time, repeatedly beaten and starved, or stretched upon the rack. Thumbscrews may be applied, or toe screws, or a pear-shaped vise may be inserted into your mouth, vagina, or anus, and forced open until your misery admits of no possible increase. You may be hoisted to the ceiling on a
strappado
(with your arms bound behind your back and attached to a pulley, and weights tied to your feet), dislocating your shoulders. To this torment
squassation
might be added, which, being often sufficient to cause your death, may yet spare you the agony of the stake. If you are unlucky enough to be in Spain, where judicial torture has achieved a transcendent level of cruelty, you may be placed in the “Spanish chair”: a throne of iron, complete with iron stocks to secure your neck and limbs. In the interest of saving your soul, a coal brazier will be placed beneath your bare feet, slowly roasting them. Because the stain of heresy runs deep, your flesh will be continually larded with fat to keep it from burning too quickly. Or you may be bound to a bench, with a cauldron filled with mice placed upside-down upon your bare abdomen. With the requisite application of heat to the iron, the mice will begin to burrow into your belly in search of an exit.

Should you, while in extremis, admit to your torturers that you are indeed a heretic, a sorcerer, or a witch, you will be made to confirm your story before a judge—and any attempt to recant, to claim that your confession has been coerced through torture, will deliver you either to your tormentors once again or directly to the stake. If, once condemned, you repent of your sins, these compassionate and learned men—whose concern for the fate of your eternal soul really knows no bounds—will do you the kindness of strangling you before lighting your pyre.

The medieval church was quick to observe that the Good Book was good enough to suggest a variety of means for eradicating heresy, ranging from a communal volley of stones to cremation while alive. A literal reading of the Old Testament not only permits but
requires
heretics to be put to death. As it turns out, it was never difficult to find a mob willing to perform this holy office, and to do so purely on the authority of the Church—since it was still a capital offense to possess a Bible in any of the vernacular languages of Europe. In fact, scripture was not to become generally accessible to the common man until the sixteenth century. As we noted earlier, Deuteronomy was the preeminent text in every inquisitor’s canon, for it explicitly enjoins the faithful to murder anyone in their midst, even members of their own families, who profess a sympathy for foreign gods. Showing a genius for totalitarianism that few mortals have ever fully implemented, the author of this document demands that anyone too squeamish to take part in such religious killing must be killed as well (Deuteronomy 17:12–13). Anyone who imagines that no justification for the Inquisition can be found in scripture need only consult the Bible to have his view of the matter clarified:

If you hear that in one of the towns which Yahweh your God has given you for a home, there are men, scoundrels from your own stock, who have led their fellow-citizens astray, saying, “Let us go and serve other gods,” hitherto unknown to you, it is your duty to look into the matter, examine it, and inquire most carefully. If it is proved and confirmed that such a hateful thing has taken place among you, you must put the inhabitants of that town to the sword; you must lay it under the curse or destruction—the town and everything in it. You must pile up all its loot in the public square and burn the town and all its loot, offering it all to Yahweh your God. It is to be a ruin for all time and never rebuilt. (Deuteronomy 13:12–16).

For obvious reasons, the church tended to ignore the final edict: the destruction of heretic property.

In addition to demanding that we fulfill every “jot” and “tittle” of Old Testament law, Jesus seems to have suggested, in John 15:6, further refinements to the practice of killing heretics and unbelievers: “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.” Whether we want to interpret Jesus metaphorically is, of course, our business. The problem with scripture, however, is that many of its possible interpretations (including most of the literal ones) can be used to justify atrocities in defense of the faith.

The Holy Inquisition formally began in 1184 under Pope Lucius III, to crush the popular movement of Catharism. The Cathars (from the Greek
katharoi,
“the pure ones”) had fashioned their own brand of Manicheanism (Mani himself was flayed alive at the behest of Zoroastrian priests in 276 CE), which held that the material world had been created by Satan and was therefore inherently evil. The Cathars were divided by a schism of their own and within each of their sects by the distinction between the renunciate
perfecti and
the lay
credentes
(“the believers”) who revered them. The
perfecti
ate no meat, eggs, cheese, or fat, fasted for days at a time, maintained strict celibacy, and abjured all personal wealth. The life of the
perfecti
was so austere that most
credentes
only joined their ranks once they were safely on their deathbeds, so that, having lived as they pleased, they might yet go to God in holiness. Saint Bernard, who had tried in vain to combat this austere doctrine with that of the church, noted the reasons for his failure: “As to [the Cathars’] conversation, nothing can be less reprehensible…and what they speak, they prove by deeds. As for the morals of the heretic, he cheats no one, he oppresses no one, he strikes no one; his cheeks are pale with fasting,…his hands labor for his livelihood.”

There seems, in fact, to have been nothing wrong with these people apart from their attachment to certain unorthodox beliefs about the creation of the world. But heresy is heresy. Any person who believes that the Bible contains the infallible word of God will understand why these people had to be put to death.

The Inquisition took rather genteel steps at first (the use of torture to extract confessions was not “officially” sanctioned until 1215, at the Fourth Lateran Council), but two developments conspired to lengthen its strides. The first came in 1199 when Pope Innocent III decreed that all property belonging to a convicted heretic would be forfeited to the church; the church then shared it both with local officials and with the victim’s accusers, as a reward for their candor. The second was the rise of the Dominican order. Saint Dominic himself, displaying the conviction of every good Catholic of the day, announced to the Cathars, “For many years I have exhorted you in vain, with gentleness, preaching, praying, weeping. But according to the proverb of my country, ‘where blessing can accomplish nothing, blows may avail.’ We shall rouse against you princes and prelates, who, alas, will arm nations and kingdoms against this land….” It would appear that sainthood comes in a variety of flavors. With the founding of Dominic’s holy order of mendicant friars, the Inquisition was ready to begin its work in earnest. It is important to remember, lest the general barbarity of time inure us to the horror of these historical accounts, that the perpetrators of the Inquisition—the torturers, informers, and those who commanded their actions—were ecclesiastics of one rank or another. They were men of God—popes, bishops, friars, and priests. They were men who had devoted their lives, in word if not in deed, to Christ as we find him in the New Testament, healing the sick and challenging those without sin to cast the first stone:

In 1234, the canonization of Saint Dominic was finally proclaimed in Toulouse, and Bishop Raymond du Fauga was washing his hands in preparation for dinner when he heard the rumor that a fever-ridden old woman in a nearby house was about to undergo the Cathar ritual. The bishop hurried to her bedside and managed to convince her that he was a friend, then interrogated her on her beliefs, then denounced her as a heretic. He called on her to recant. She refused. The bishop thereupon had her bed carried out into a field, and there she was burned. “And after the bishop and the friars and their companions had seen the business completed,” Brother Guillaume wrote, “they returned to the refectory and, giving thanks to God and the Blessed Dominic, ate with rejoicing what had been prepared for them.”

The question of how the church managed to transform Jesus’ principal message of loving one’s neighbor and turning the other cheek into a doctrine of murder and rapine seems to promise a harrowing mystery; but it is no mystery at all. Apart from the Bible’s heterogeneity and outright self-contradiction, allowing it to justify diverse and irreconcilable aims, the culprit is clearly the doctrine of faith itself. Whenever a man imagines that he need only believe the truth of a proposition, without evidence—that unbelievers will go to hell, that Jews drink the blood of infants—he becomes capable of anything.

The practice for which the Inquisition is duly infamous, and the innovation that secured it a steady stream of both suspects and guilty verdicts, was its use of torture to extract confessions from the accused, to force witnesses to testify, and to persuade a confessing heretic to name those with whom he had collaborated in sin. The justification for this behavior came straight from Saint Augustine, who reasoned that if torture was appropriate for those who broke the laws of men, it was even more fitting for those who broke the laws of God. As practiced by medieval Christians, judicial torture was merely a final, mad inflection of their faith. That anyone imagined that
facts
were being elicited by such a lunatic procedure seems a miracle in itself. As Voltaire wrote in 1764, “There is something divine here, for it is incomprehensible that men should have patiently borne this yoke.”

A contemporaneous account of the Spanish auto-da-fé (the public spectacle at which heretics were sentenced and often burned) will serve to complete our picture. The Spanish Inquisition did not cease its persecution of heretics until 1834 (the last auto-da-fé took place in Mexico in 1850), about the time Charles Darwin set sail on the
Beagle
and Michael Faraday discovered the relationship between electricity and magnetism.

The condemned are then immediately carried to the Riberia, the place of execution, where there are as many stakes set up as there are prisoners to be burnt. The negative and relapsed being first strangled and then burnt; the professed mount their stakes by a ladder, and the Jesuits, after several repeated exhortations to be reconciled to the church, consign them to eternal destruction, and then leave them to the fiend, who they tell them stands at their elbow to carry them into torments. On this a great shout is raised, and the cry is, “Let the dogs’ beards be made”; which is done by thrusting flaming bunches of furze, fastened to long poles, against their beards, till their faces are burnt black, the surrounding populace rending the air with the loudest acclamations of joy. At last fire is set to the furze at the bottom of the stake, over which the victims are chained, so high that the flame seldom reaches higher than the seat they sit on, and thus they are rather roasted than burnt. Although there cannot be a more lamentable spectacle and the sufferers continually cry out as long as they are able, “Pity for the love of God!” yet it is beheld by persons of all ages and both sexes with transports of joy and satisfaction.

And while Protestant reformers broke with Rome on a variety of counts, their treatment of their fellow human beings was no less disgraceful. Public executions were more popular than ever: heretics were still reduced to ash, scholars were tortured and killed for impertinent displays of reason, and fornicators were murdered without a qualm. The basic lesson to be drawn from all this was summed up nicely by Will Durant: “Intolerance is the natural concomitant of strong faith; tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous.”

There really seems to be very little to perplex us here. Burning people who are destined to burn for all time seems a small price to pay to protect the people you love from the same fate. Clearly, the common law marriage between reason and faith—wherein otherwise reasonable men and women can be motivated by the content of unreasonable beliefs—places society upon a slippery slope, with confusion and hypocrisy at its heights, and the torments of the inquisitor waiting below.