The U.N. Shariah for the Muslim World

By Khalid Baig

The battle against Shariah-based Muslim personal laws in Muslim countries is being fought from the platform of the U.N. under the banner of "Universal Declaration of Human Rights."

The U.N. campaign to force the Muslim countries to take back the reservations to many of its commands regarding personal laws has been going on for some time. (Book Review "Feminism and Islam"). In December 1997 President Clinton announced that he had put the promotion of women's rights in the mainstream of American foreign policy. At the same time, speaking at the United Nations Economic and Social Council Chamber, Mrs. Clinton took the first steps in challenging the Shariah. "And in too many places today what we fail to see are the injustices done to women," she said without naming Islam, but with obvious reference. "In too many places female heirs are seeing less inheritance than male heirs. Inequitable divorce laws compel women to remain in cruel marriages. And courts of law require the testimony of two women to equal that of a solitary man." So the laws of inheritance, marriage, divorce, and testimony of a Muslim country are now to be dictated by the U.S.

Make no mistake about it. The First Lady was serious. The "rights" she was talking about were based on ethical laws that were "higher than the laws of even kings." Not only that. "The principles inscribed in the document whose birth we mark today [The controversial Universal Declaration of Human Rights] are not constructed, but revealed. Every great religion exposed and taught their truth." It may be quite revealing to note that her "revealed principles" include the rights of homosexuals to continue their abominable practices, as she mentioned in the same speech.

First Ladies do come with lecturing rights. After the glorious failure of her domestic health reform, the First Lady has taken up the safer cause of women and families in the world. And she is not alone. On a clear day one can see an endless number of experts of all sizes in the U.S. (and Europe) lecturing the Muslim world on how to manage its family lives. But there is something out of place with this picture. It reminds one of the chauffeur of the well known Pakistani judge and satirist, the late Justice M.R. Kayani. According to Kayani, his chauffeur used to dispense free advice on treating asthma to anyone who visited him. That is, whenever he got respite from his own asthma attacks!

Just a few months ago, President Clinton had convened a big conference of leaders from all over the country to handle the problem of 15 million at-risk youth in the U.S. Today every other child in the U.S. is born out of wedlock. Thirty-eight percent of children now live without a biological father. 6.6 million children live with divorced single parents, mostly mothers whose ex-husbands tend to fade away from their children. Twenty percent of children in the United States, ages 6-12, have not had a 10 minute conversation with a parent in a month. Their conversation is with TV, which acts as their mother, father, baby-sitter, and teacher. By the time they are teens, children have seen an estimated 18,000 violent murders on TV. This is family life USA. "Something is wrong with the entire American family," writes Martin Marty, professor at the University of Chicago in the Los Angles Times. "One has the weird sense that America is a country with many children but without adults."

In these homes child abuse, parent abuse, and spouse abuse are common. The single largest cause of injuries to American women is beatings by husbands and boy friends. The home, as the Surgeon general report indicated some time ago, has become the most dangerous place for the American women. Outside, there is a pandemic of sexual harassment. No place, from the lowest to the highest office in the country seems to be immune from it. Probably the First Lady has heard about Paula Jones.

Perhaps the greatest irony of this century is that a civilization that has put a nude or semi-nude picture of a woman on every square inch of available space, is giving lectures on the status of women to the civilization that treats them with dignity and respect. The greatest tragedy at the end of this century may be that the civilization that has totally messed up and destroyed the family life is now getting ready to dictate to the civilization that still has family life intact, on how to arrange its family affairs.

The contrast between the two could not have been starker. One gives the wife the right to be financially supported by her husband. The other takes away that right. One establishes a home with distinct roles for father, mother, and children. The other calls those roles a relic of the past and destroys the home along with them. One promotes haya, the other kills it. One promises peace and tranquility in this life and success in the hereafter. The other promises fun here but delivers nothing but misery here and the prospect of greater misery in the hereafter.

Why one should be forced to listen to dictates by the other?

Unfortunately, Muslim countries have brought this mess upon themselves by failing to stand up and speak out. While opposition to the 1994 Cairo Conference, where the agenda for this phase of the U.N. plan was first revealed, was strong among the Muslim masses, practical steps to check this agenda were not taken. While Saudi Arabia and Lebanon boycotted the conference, the OIC failed to take a unified stand. Subsequently the dictates of the U.N. plan (under the name of Social Action plan) have been followed by submissive or corrupt governments in Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Bangladesh and elsewhere. In Pakistan 40,000 young girls have already been recruited and put into service who can go to men and women, condoms in hand, and persuade them to use them. The plan is now to increase the number to 100,000. Contraceptive ads litter the entire landscape including the mini screen. Propaganda that human beings are a burden and the fewer the better has been carried out with such a force that no organized opposition to this fraud is anywhere in sight. At the Tehran Conference the OIC again failed to show any awareness of the magnitude of threat facing it today.

Muslim countries must make up their mind whether they will follow the revealed truth of the Islamic Shariah or the "revealed principles" of the "shariah" of rebellion against God, that are being impose upon them. If their governments do not do it, then the private organizations must take up the battle.