[Mb-civic] Islamization of the Republican Party

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

uan Cole.com - Mar 22, 2005
http://www.juancole.com/ 

The Schiavo Case and the Islamization of the 
Republican Party

by Juan Cole

The cynical use by the US Republican Party of the Terri 
Schiavo case
repeats, whether deliberately or accidentally, the tactics of 
Muslim
fundamentalists and theocrats in places like Egypt and 
Pakistan. These
tactics involve a disturbing tendency to make private, intimate 
decisions
matters of public interest and then to bring the courts and the 
legislature
to bear on them. President George W. Bush and Republican 
congressional
leaders like Tom Delay have taken us one step closer to 
theocracy on the
Muslim Brotherhood model.

The Muslim fundamentalists use a provision of Islamic law 
called
"bringing to account" (hisba). As Al-Ahram weekly notes, "Hisba
signifies a case filed by an individual on behalf of society when
the plaintiff feels that great harm has been done to religion."
Hisba is a medieval idea that had all be lapsed when the 
fundamentalists
brought it back in the 1970s and 1980s.

In this practice, any individual can use the courts to intervene
in the private lives of others. Among the more famous cases of 
such
interference is that of Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid in Egypt. A 
respected
modern scholar of Koranic studies, Abu Zaid argued that, 
contrary
to medieval interpretations of Islamic law, women and men 
should
receive equal inheritance shares. (Medieval Islamic law granted
women only half the inheritance shares of their brothers). Abu 
Zaid
was accused of sacrilege. Then the allegation of sacrilege was 
used
as a basis on which the fundamentalists sought to have the 
courts
forcibly divorce him from his wife.

Abu Zaid's wife loved her husband. She did not want to be 
divorced.
But the fundamentalists went before the court and said, she is a
Muslim, and he is an infidel, and no Muslim woman may be 
married
to an infidel. They represented their efforts as being on behalf
of the Islamic religion, which had an interest in seeing to it that
heretics like Abu Zaid could not remain married to a Muslim 
woman.
In 1995 the hisba court actually found against them. They fled 
to
Europe, and ultimately settled in Holland.

Likewise, a similar tactic was deployed against the Egyptian 
feminist
author, Nawal Saadawi, but it failed and she was able to remain 
in
the country.

One of the most objectionable features of this fundamentalist 
tactic
is that persons without standing can interfere in private affairs.
Perfect strangers can file a case about your marriage, because 
they
represent themselves as defending a public interest (the 
upholding
of religion and morality).

Terri Schiavo's husband is her legal guardian. Her parents have 
not
succeeded in challenging this status of his. As long as he is the
guardian, the decision on removing the feeding tubes is 
between him
and their physicians. Her parents have not succeeded in having 
this
responsibility moved from him to them. Even under legislation 
George
W. Bush signed in 1999 while governor of Texas, the spouse 
and the
physician can make this decision.

In passing a special law to allow the case to be kicked to a 
Federal
judge after the state courts had all ruled in favor of the 
husband,
Congress probably shot itself in the foot once again. The law is
not a respecter of persons, so the Federal judge will likely rule
as the state ones did.

But the most frightening thing about the entire affair is that
public figures like congressmen inserted themselves into the 
case
in order to uphold religious strictures. The lawyer arguing 
against
the husband let the cat out of the bag, as reported by the NYT: '
The lawyer, David Gibbs, also said Ms. Schiavo's religious 
beliefs
as a Roman Catholic were being infringed because Pope John 
Paul II
has deemed it unacceptable for Catholics to refuse food and 
water.
"We are now in a position where a court has ordered her to 
disobey
her church and even jeopardize her eternal soul," Mr. Gibbs 
said.
' In other words, the United States Congress acted in part on 
behalf
of the Roman Catholic church. Both of these public bodies 
interfered
in the private affairs of the Schiavos, just as the fundamentalist
Egyptian, Nabih El-Wahsh, tried to interfere in the marriage of
Nawal El Saadawi.

Like many of his fundamentalist counterparts in the Middle 
East,
Tom Delay is rather cynically using this issue to divert attention
from his own corruption. Like the Muslim fundamentalist 
manipulators
of Hisba, Delay represents himself as acting on behalf of a 
higher
cause. He said of the case over the weekend, ' "This is not a
political issue. This is life and death," ' Republican Hisba will
have the same effect in the United States that it does in the 
Middle
East. It will reduce the rights of the individual in favor of the
rights of religious and political elites to control individuals.
Ayatollah Delay isn't different from his counterparts in Iran.

***

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