Junaid Jahangir
Assistant Professor – MacEwan University
Posted: 05/08/2017 12:47 pm EDT Updated: 05/08/2017 3:51 pm EDT
Huffington Post

The Pan Malaysian Islamic Party clerics recently declared liberal Muslims as a threat to Islam as they reject the hudud (punishments under Islamic law). They vowed to wipe them out. Such rhetoric is not unique to Malaysia.

Identity politics allows Muslim scholars and their followers in the West to uphold draconian punishments under an ideal Islamic state. Dr. Mohammad Fadel notes that rejecting hudud as “cruel and unusual punishments … would have no purchase among believing Muslims.”

Catering to their religious constituents, popular Muslim academics engage in apologetics to make the classical Islamic position on homosexuality, apostasy, slavery and hudud palatable to modern sensibilities.

They downplay the application of the hudud by arguing that such punishments are impossible to apply and that the primary purpose is to remind people of the enormity of their sins. They apologetically claim that such punishments are rarely inflicted and are often politically motivated.
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