Daniel Pipes has a piece today on the University of Pennsylvania Law School’s plan to draft a criminal code for the Islamic country of the Maldives, based on shari’a: U Penn Prof for Shari’a.

Robinson’s preliminary thoughts for reform include such basics as making the judiciary an independent branch of government, limiting the police’s right to search, establishing the defendants’ right to legal counsel, and ending the present practice of relying primarily on confessions as the basis for establishing criminal liability.

These are worthy objectives, to be sure, but Professor Robinson should stand back from this project and reassess it. This leading scholar, through his work in the Maldives, will render more acceptable Shar’i provisions about killing apostates from Islam, subjugating women, keeping slaves, and repressing non-Muslims (in this light, note the matter-of-fact comment in the course description that “as a matter of law, all citizens [of the Maldives] are Muslim”).

Rather than cleanse and modernize the Shar’i code, I appeal to Professor Robinson to reject the Maldive commission and take a totally different approach in his seminar, critiquing that code’s criminal provisions from a Western point of view. He and his seminar students would then show how this religiously-based legal system contradicts virtually every assumption an American makes, such as the separation of church and state, the abolition of forced servitude, the right not to suffer inhumane punishments, freedom of religion and expression, equality of the sexes, and on and on.

The Shari’a needs to be rejected as a state law code, not made prettier.

The article also includes a reply from Paul H. Robinson, the professor in charge of the seminar, who sees this as a chance to influence the shari’a code to move in a more liberal direction, a view that seems incredibly naïve. As Dr. Pipes writes, shari’a is based on a philosophy diametrically opposed to Western ideals such as the separation of church and state.

UPDATE at 7/26/04 9:30:13 am:

LGF reader Earl points out a fascinating post at Boston Indymedia, excerpting from a classic text on Islamic law titled Reliance of the Traveller (the Indymedia Morlocks moved the post to their “hidden” area, of course): What is the Shariah?