Stupidity and the Shari'a in Our Times
On a tip from Zuhair (made famous in my memoir) and given a rare opportunity to actually get to one degree of separation from the members of Al Qaeda, I asked a vegetable seller about cucumbers and tomatoes.
Buying vegetables in Baghdad, actually all of Iraq, feels like a trip through history. There are people with wooden stands that look as if they have been around for thousands of years, all containing various crates of vegetables. An old and dusty scale sits somewhere near the proprietor, and as vegetables are selected, he places them on the scale, along with some iron weights and announces a weight that always seems to be suspect, as I cannot determine the weight amount, or that it has reached equilibrium as he carries out this operation. As he was doing this, he let it be known he was in the Anbar while Al Qaeda controlled it, and I felt I had to ask him about their alleged prohibition of salad.
"Yes, yes, he replied." No cucumbers and tomatoes together. Even placing them side by side in these crates would have led at least to a whipping, maybe death. I was puzzled, my brother in law was not. He told me that in fact when he was in Kirkuk the graffiti forbade three things: salads (which in Iraq is basically cucumber and tomatoes), shorts and beauty products for men. This was hard to understand.
"Look at this," the vegetable seller said to me, holding up a tomato. "What does it look like?"
"A tomato," I said.
"No, it is a tomato, but what does it look like."
"It looks like a tomato, that's what leads me to conclude it is a tomato. If it looked like a horse, I'd say it was a horse. It does not. It looks like a tomato. It is a tomato." I think I am making a philosophical point, maybe Hume or something, but it's almost 120F outside and I don't want to be dilly dallying asking about Al Qaeda. If the terrorists don't get me, the police might. Hume can wait.
"Okay," he relents, "what else might it resemble? Notice it is red, like a woman's lipstick. It is soft and round. Get it? It reminds you of a woman's flesh."
"I see," I said. But I thought, man do you need a wife if you look at a tomato and think that.
Then he picked up the cucumber and was about to ask me what I thought it looked like, when I cut him off. That one I could follow better. If a tomato was a woman, I could well assume what a cucumber was.
"So the idea is that it reminds people of sex, it's the mixing of the man and the woman, the cucumber and the tomato, and unlawful sex at that, and so they forbade it."
I paused, trying to process all of this. I spend my life reading through books and carefully considered arguments concerning outcomes in Islamic law. Now here I was faced with what appeared to be utter nonsensical, ridiculous stupidity of the highest order, and I had no idea how to react. Ask me about Qaradawi's ideas of female genital mutilation, I can talk. Explain to me how cucumbers and tomatoes in a dish resemble sexual intercourse, and I am at a loss. Finally, a thought occurred to me. I asked "what if you married the two of them?"
"What?"
"If I married the cucumber and the tomato and made them lawful partners, would that be okay? Then it's lawful sex," I said. I couldn't believe I was having this conversation.
"I thought you were a professor. How can a cucumber and a tomato get married? They're vegetables," he replied. And with this sound logic, the conversation soon ended. Though I did manage to gather two other pieces of information, one that Al Qaeda used to behead dogs in Falluja for unlawful fornication and two that in Diyala they put diapers on the goats to hide their very obvious genitals. (He had pictures).
Lest one think that this sort of nonsense is limited to Sunni extremists, and in the interests of nonsectarianism, let me add to this laundry list the case of Dr. Sameer (made up name). Dr. Sameer is a Shi'i who works in a hospital in a Sunni district of Baghdad but lives in Sadr City, controlled by the Mahdi Army. Constantly fearing for his safety, he attempts to disguise his movements, both from Sunni and Shi'i militants. The Sunni militants seem to find out, but let him alone, he is working to save Sunni lives by and large after all, but when the Mahdi army finds out, they interrogate him and, unsatisfied with his explanation that this happens to be his place of work and that he provides medical aid without discrimination, sentence him to 25 lashes as punishment for his medical care for Sunnis.
I have always wondered why it is that there is such a broad gulf between me and so many of my Islamic law colleagues on how to approach the shari'a in law schools, why realism is so underappreciated as a technique in Islamic law and so embraced elsewhere. I think part of the reason might be precisely this kind of drivel. If one takes the position that the shari'a above all else is normative theory, and that what happens in the world is less important than what jurists in ivory towers develop as ideas on what ought to be, then you can just wave this away. Clearly the elaborate theories of the jurists have very little to do with much of this. Under that definition it isn't Islamic law, it's just idiots spouting nonsense.
But if you say, as I do, that in law school we should do law, not because the shari'a cannot be thought of any other way, but because this is our value added benefit, that we're really good at knowing the effects and consequences of law, it's our training, then you have to deal with this stuff. And as a Muslim, I can say that's pretty hard to do.
Like it or not, this was law in the Anbar for a while, or Sadr City. These were Muslims, and they issued rules. No salad. No giving medical aid to Sunnis. You knew about it and took care not to violate them. When you did, you tried to hide it. If you couldn't, they took you to a judge. You had a trial, you said what you wanted, and the guy ruled. Why isn't it law? Why isn't it a form of Islamic law when the basis of the ruling is supposed to be Islam? Yes, divorced from historical traditions, yes unpopular to the point of not lasting very long, yes not really soundly reasoned, but the application of binding judgments by quasi official actors responsible for regional governmental administration certainly, it looks like law to me. And a form of Islamic law, in that it explicity called on Islam as its justification and basis for the administration of the law. No, not the Islamic law of Sistani, or Qaradawi, or even Ibn Baz, but a form of Islamic law all the same, just because people like me (and just about every Iraqi I know) think they made a mess of the sacred texts doesn't make it all of a sudden Martian law and not a form (a marginal form, a largely discredited form, but in some circles no matter how small still a form) of Islamic law.
That's not a terribly appealing picture, to me or any Muslim I know. But if the law is what it does, and it does this, then I think we have to deal with it as a form of Islamic law to be combatted. Discuss it, address it, wonder as to its causes and consequences, gauge its popularity, when unpopular (as this is), use it to discredit Al Qaeda ("you think these guys represent true Islam? Do you like salad?"), basically treat the law as the social fact that it is, and rather than decry how much of a mess it makes of historical understandings of the shari'a, or press policymakers not to call it Islamic (as if that semantics will help), find a way to mold these various social facts to create a more preferred state of affairs. That's all I think that realism seeks to do. It's not I stress again the only approach, but I think a useful one that deserves more consideration than it is getting.
HAH
Buying vegetables in Baghdad, actually all of Iraq, feels like a trip through history. There are people with wooden stands that look as if they have been around for thousands of years, all containing various crates of vegetables. An old and dusty scale sits somewhere near the proprietor, and as vegetables are selected, he places them on the scale, along with some iron weights and announces a weight that always seems to be suspect, as I cannot determine the weight amount, or that it has reached equilibrium as he carries out this operation. As he was doing this, he let it be known he was in the Anbar while Al Qaeda controlled it, and I felt I had to ask him about their alleged prohibition of salad.
"Yes, yes, he replied." No cucumbers and tomatoes together. Even placing them side by side in these crates would have led at least to a whipping, maybe death. I was puzzled, my brother in law was not. He told me that in fact when he was in Kirkuk the graffiti forbade three things: salads (which in Iraq is basically cucumber and tomatoes), shorts and beauty products for men. This was hard to understand.
"Look at this," the vegetable seller said to me, holding up a tomato. "What does it look like?"
"A tomato," I said.
"No, it is a tomato, but what does it look like."
"It looks like a tomato, that's what leads me to conclude it is a tomato. If it looked like a horse, I'd say it was a horse. It does not. It looks like a tomato. It is a tomato." I think I am making a philosophical point, maybe Hume or something, but it's almost 120F outside and I don't want to be dilly dallying asking about Al Qaeda. If the terrorists don't get me, the police might. Hume can wait.
"Okay," he relents, "what else might it resemble? Notice it is red, like a woman's lipstick. It is soft and round. Get it? It reminds you of a woman's flesh."
"I see," I said. But I thought, man do you need a wife if you look at a tomato and think that.
Then he picked up the cucumber and was about to ask me what I thought it looked like, when I cut him off. That one I could follow better. If a tomato was a woman, I could well assume what a cucumber was.
"So the idea is that it reminds people of sex, it's the mixing of the man and the woman, the cucumber and the tomato, and unlawful sex at that, and so they forbade it."
I paused, trying to process all of this. I spend my life reading through books and carefully considered arguments concerning outcomes in Islamic law. Now here I was faced with what appeared to be utter nonsensical, ridiculous stupidity of the highest order, and I had no idea how to react. Ask me about Qaradawi's ideas of female genital mutilation, I can talk. Explain to me how cucumbers and tomatoes in a dish resemble sexual intercourse, and I am at a loss. Finally, a thought occurred to me. I asked "what if you married the two of them?"
"What?"
"If I married the cucumber and the tomato and made them lawful partners, would that be okay? Then it's lawful sex," I said. I couldn't believe I was having this conversation.
"I thought you were a professor. How can a cucumber and a tomato get married? They're vegetables," he replied. And with this sound logic, the conversation soon ended. Though I did manage to gather two other pieces of information, one that Al Qaeda used to behead dogs in Falluja for unlawful fornication and two that in Diyala they put diapers on the goats to hide their very obvious genitals. (He had pictures).
Lest one think that this sort of nonsense is limited to Sunni extremists, and in the interests of nonsectarianism, let me add to this laundry list the case of Dr. Sameer (made up name). Dr. Sameer is a Shi'i who works in a hospital in a Sunni district of Baghdad but lives in Sadr City, controlled by the Mahdi Army. Constantly fearing for his safety, he attempts to disguise his movements, both from Sunni and Shi'i militants. The Sunni militants seem to find out, but let him alone, he is working to save Sunni lives by and large after all, but when the Mahdi army finds out, they interrogate him and, unsatisfied with his explanation that this happens to be his place of work and that he provides medical aid without discrimination, sentence him to 25 lashes as punishment for his medical care for Sunnis.
I have always wondered why it is that there is such a broad gulf between me and so many of my Islamic law colleagues on how to approach the shari'a in law schools, why realism is so underappreciated as a technique in Islamic law and so embraced elsewhere. I think part of the reason might be precisely this kind of drivel. If one takes the position that the shari'a above all else is normative theory, and that what happens in the world is less important than what jurists in ivory towers develop as ideas on what ought to be, then you can just wave this away. Clearly the elaborate theories of the jurists have very little to do with much of this. Under that definition it isn't Islamic law, it's just idiots spouting nonsense.
But if you say, as I do, that in law school we should do law, not because the shari'a cannot be thought of any other way, but because this is our value added benefit, that we're really good at knowing the effects and consequences of law, it's our training, then you have to deal with this stuff. And as a Muslim, I can say that's pretty hard to do.
Like it or not, this was law in the Anbar for a while, or Sadr City. These were Muslims, and they issued rules. No salad. No giving medical aid to Sunnis. You knew about it and took care not to violate them. When you did, you tried to hide it. If you couldn't, they took you to a judge. You had a trial, you said what you wanted, and the guy ruled. Why isn't it law? Why isn't it a form of Islamic law when the basis of the ruling is supposed to be Islam? Yes, divorced from historical traditions, yes unpopular to the point of not lasting very long, yes not really soundly reasoned, but the application of binding judgments by quasi official actors responsible for regional governmental administration certainly, it looks like law to me. And a form of Islamic law, in that it explicity called on Islam as its justification and basis for the administration of the law. No, not the Islamic law of Sistani, or Qaradawi, or even Ibn Baz, but a form of Islamic law all the same, just because people like me (and just about every Iraqi I know) think they made a mess of the sacred texts doesn't make it all of a sudden Martian law and not a form (a marginal form, a largely discredited form, but in some circles no matter how small still a form) of Islamic law.
That's not a terribly appealing picture, to me or any Muslim I know. But if the law is what it does, and it does this, then I think we have to deal with it as a form of Islamic law to be combatted. Discuss it, address it, wonder as to its causes and consequences, gauge its popularity, when unpopular (as this is), use it to discredit Al Qaeda ("you think these guys represent true Islam? Do you like salad?"), basically treat the law as the social fact that it is, and rather than decry how much of a mess it makes of historical understandings of the shari'a, or press policymakers not to call it Islamic (as if that semantics will help), find a way to mold these various social facts to create a more preferred state of affairs. That's all I think that realism seeks to do. It's not I stress again the only approach, but I think a useful one that deserves more consideration than it is getting.
HAH
This sounds more like an exercise of authority than enforcement of a proper law. After all, there doesn't seem to be accountability of any kind when the laws, as such, are enforced in a wrong way.
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What's the wrong way? The judge made his ruling in the Sadr City case, the Mahdi Army enforced it. We're speculating, but I think that if the judge had ordered 15 lashes, he'd have received 15, if 5, 5 and if 40, then 40. I don't think they had decided on 25 lashes regardless of what the judge said. I don't think they would have contravened a different judicial punishment, I think they could have found themselves in trouble if they did. Again, it's a guess, but I have no reason to think otherwise.
I suppose that if the judge said it's okay to treat Sunnis, and let's all go get a beer after this proceeding is done, they'd ignore that, or maybe kill the judge but that's really assuming an impossible state of affairs, akin to our Supreme Court ordering 25 lashes. You couldn't get to be a judge in the system if you thought that way.
HAH
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On a salad the ingredients are sliced or diced and their appearance has changed. Or maybe if the tomato is wrapped in a lettuce (or other edible) leaf it would be acceptable. After all even if they are on different plates they would end up together in the consumer's stomach.
Interesting piece thanks
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Interesting theory, a veiled tomato. Anyway, good point on the stomach, though they might not even eat them at the same meal for all I know. The guy had said if they bought both, they had to be in separate bags and handed to the purchaser separately, one for the left hand, and one for the right. The irony of course is that while Al Qaeda claims to be ridding the world of the sexual messages that in their eyes overwhelm the West and that distract the believer from God, they are obviously rather sex obsessed themselves, to be finding the mixing of cucumbers and tomatoes as stimulating the prurient interest.
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Well I believe other religions do ban having certain classes of comestibles on the same plate. They have different reasons, maybe, but they could be just as mystifying as Al Qaeda's reasons if I knew why.
As for "ridding the world of the sexual messages that ... overwhelm the West ..." etc that is possibly the very reason they can't allow the conjunction. They have repressed and sensitized themselves, making virtually everything a trigger, so they can't stop thinking about it.
The imagery in "the West" has desensitized us to a large extent. It must be torture for an Al Qaeda fanatic to walk the streets of European cities.
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Excellent point on repression and sensitization, thanks.
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