Salam alaikum brothers and sisters, the debate video of yesterdays explosive debate on sharia law vs secular democracy, is now up! Watch and see what happened during my debate with a leading member of nottingham’s agnostic humanist and secular society.
After the debate, a vote was taken, and the majority of 75% voted that sharia WAS more tolerant than secular democracy! Alhamdulillah.
The debate is certainly one to watch with your thinking caps, and copious amounts of popcorn. Put your comments below.
Categories: Debates, Featured, Liberalism & Secular Democracy, MDI UK, Videos, Zara Faris
The Muslim Debate Initiative 
Just one point this time…. India as a secular democracy may ban gay rights…. America as a secular democracy may not want to. In a secular democracy rights are derived from the people. If the people are good Muslims then you will have an Islamic secular democracy…. The only viable type of Islamic state.
Using your logic, why not argue for Anarchism? Because, according to your line of thinking, ‘If the people are good Muslims’, they would act right, and not need a government then.
Consequently, your argument is absurd.
Thank you for replying. Using reductio ad absurdum is not worthy of an experienced debater such as yourself. Nevertheless I shall humour you.
When I say “good Muslims” I do not mean perfect people who will never do any wrong. There has never been anyone like that (apart from the Prophets). Therefore government is needed to arbitrate any disputes which may occur amongst good people who make mistakes. If enough people recognise Islam as something which is fair and just, then arbitration will happen on the basis of Islam within a secular state. Secularism and Islam are not mutually exclusive.
A government’s primary function, however, is not to enforce morality. It is to a run a state, most of which would not require Islamic rulings. What does Islam say about things like Unions, railway services, water services, gas services, tax (apart from zakat), privatisation etc?? Nothing. The only time the state will need Islam is when it comes to enforcing law (not morality… There is a difference) and that is only if people deem Islam worthy enough to occupy this position. If there are enough God conscious people in a country then Islam will naturally be voted in.
I must say that a lot of what you said in this debate is actually closer to secularism than what your opponent seemed to be saying in “secularism’s” defence. Indeed, I feel your opponent hardly ever actually addressed the question at hand. However one point I must make about your section is that a lot of what you said is not a product of secularism but of American imperialism (e.g. Detentions without trial, extrajudicial killings etc). Like I have said in a previous comment on one of your articles, the West is not liberal/secular just because it says it is. That would be like calling Saudi an Islamic state just because they say they are.
The Islamic sharia actually has a lot to say on matters of state such as privatisation, taxation, social rights etc.
Do not let your ignorance of such knowledge be your base of argumentation in such affairs.
Maybe you should do research and read the lengthy books written by Islamists, such as HT, on such state matters and understand that your point is further absurd for indeed in an Islamic state all matters of governance are not based upon men who argue and decide independent of guidance I.e. secularism.
What got me most was that at the beginning of the debate the liberal speaker bemoaned the lack of research in today’s so-called Muslim countries, and yet his own research for arguing the case against the Sharia was mainly based on some works by Sam Harris and a number of quotes taken from skepticsannotatedbible.com/ – a website devoted to producing over- simplified, distorted and in many cases downright insulting one- or two –sentence i”nterpretations” of verses from the the Bible and Qur’an.
This is the standard of ‘scholarly research’ he brought with him to the debate
It reduced his arguments to the level of a children’s playground and made a mockery of the debating tradition.
Brother Abdullah would have done better to leave the likes of Hobbs and Locke at home and instead arm himself with a copy of “Wallace and Gromit tour the White House”…that way the ‘debate’ would have been more balanced.
On the other hand, I think the question and answer session was instructive and well worth watching.
That secular guy seemed to be very..offended and almost childlike in his manner, “research” (aka google search), and counter argument.
GG to abdullah did a great benefit for all of us to learn from and a model for debate
The question I have about instituting an Islamic Sharia state is that in Islam there is much difficulty in arriving with consensus on issues, especially controversial and pressing topics. And those differences in opinions among scholars and schools of thoughts manifest themselves in numerous and distinct groups who seek to argue for their positions, most often in violent ways. What guarantee is there that a country will not plummet into years of civil wars among various factions of Islamic ideologies who are all vying to rule. Yes, theoretically Sharia seems very plausible as system of governance, but in reality, it hasn’t really paned out so convincingly. W have to look no further at Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc.
Secular Democracy is a facade for the same people in power to put forward the candidates they choose for us to then decide on. In that respect any ideals Democracy is supposed to stand for are not relevant to its reality, the significance of a system is not what it looks like on paper but what it produces in real life and in that regard the wisdom of the Qur’an is superior to the eye candy of Democracy.
While it will be a few more decades before these “Academics” realise that government should legislate by what is good for mans nature, in all regards of the science and knowledge we now posses, for society to be balanced, the Quran has already done that 1400 years ago. In fact religion has been doing that from the first day man came to be on this earth, had the message only been preserved, they would understand what it actually says, but mans imbalance due to his excess will distort his perception of what he is looking at, so now to him gold looks like dust and dust looks like gold.
I wrote Sharia Law on Google, But it only gives us anti-islamic result.
Don’t trust Google, when it comes to Justice and Islam.
i read some article about anti-islamist and laughed at them, because how biased they are.
i mean Anti-Islamic websites and Journals.