Practical Sharia - IV.

Slandering Allah (s.w.t.), Prophet (S) or Imams (a.s.)

Q194: During verbal disputes, some people unfortunately employ words in a non-serious manner that imply disbelief in Allah (s.w.t.) or articulate that which is inappropriate for the infallible ones (a.s.). Is it obligatory to impose a penalty (hadd) on them for that?

A: As long as they are not serious and do not mean what they are saying, there is no shar'i penalty on them but they are deserving of ta'zir. (FM, p. 419)

Q195: [What i]f they are serious and intend to slander Allah (s.w.t.), the Prophet (S), the Imams (a.s.), religion or school of law (madhhab) and persist in this[?]

A: The ruling upon them is death. (FM, p. 419) [Emphasis added.]

This is kind of one of those defining , state of the art, "rubber meets the road" moments of Islam. Shia version in this case, but vintage Islam no matter how you slice it.

Persistent slander of even just "the Imams," "religion" or [a] "school of law" is thus a deadly enterprise according to the Ayatullah al Uzama Syed Ali al-Husaini Seestani, the number one as-yet-unassassinated Shia ayatollah in Iraq.

Would persisting in one's opinion that a particular Imam is, say, misguided be slanderous? And is there any possibility of debate on whether that opinion is well founded? Or is mere criticism simply slander? What about written opinions where there's no verbal dispute?

And what procedural safeguards are there in the determination of guilt, who gets to pronounce the death sentence, is there any appeal from a death sentence, and who gets to carry out the death sentence? Is there any coherence, logic, or consistency to the sharia? What do the imams of Fallujah do when their fatawa differ from those of the imams in Sadr City, Delhi or Lodi?

These questions are questions The Colonel intends to pursue for later discussion, if he survives.^[1]

Notes
^[1] See Practical Sharia II, below, where The Colonel suggests, in a nice way, that the sheikhs/imams of Suez are weed-eating, camel-humping, oxygen thieves.