Just so that you know, Sharia "law" is just six principles:

1. The right to the protection of life. 2. The right to the protection of family. 3. The right to the protection of education. 4. The right to the protection of religion. 5. The right to the protection of property (access to resources). 6. The right to the protection of human dignity.

That's it. At its base, eerily similar to the bill of rights. The term "shariah law" is a misnomer, because shariah is not law, but a set of principles.

Controversial laws like stoning people or requiring women to be totally covered aren't in the Sharia. Those are custom interpretations by certain sects. That's why say Islamic-based laws in Saudi Arabia are radically different from those in Egypt.

Just thought I'd share that. It really irked me this summer when everyone was throwing around arguments against "infecting the constitution with Sharia" even though no one actually knows what Sharia is.

The same is true of Sharia law. It has a lot of baggage. And it doesn't always read as a Westerner might naively like to read it. In particular when it comes to Sharia law, opposition tends to center on items 2 and 4 on your list.

On #2, Sharia law protects the family, but with different definitions and severity than Western society accepts. Consider the asymmetry between men and women for divorce. Consider the punishments for adultery. Both are widespread in Sharia law, and neither is palatable to Western audiences.

More problematic is item 4. It is not (as it is in the US constitution) the protection of freedom of religion. Instead it is the protection of the Islamic religion. (With limited protections for peoples of the book.) Thus we get anti-blasphemy rules, punishment for converting Muslims to another faith, etc. This is in direct conflict with core precepts of the US Constitution. This is not an accident of interpretation. It is a central feature of having a system of law whose purpose is to support a specific religion.

It's much less clear than this. Highly recommend watching this show:

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/inside-the-kor...

I think it's important to distinguish between a religion or ideal - say, Christianity, or democracy - and what people do under that name. If church X doesn't follow the clear teachings of Jesus, that doesn't reflect poorly on Jesus, but on church X. If nation Y has rigged elections, that doesn't reflect poorly on democracy, but on nation Y.

It is important to be able to ask theoretical questions like "is capitalism inherently flawed?" and separate them from "how is it being practised in this situation?" If capitalism + government meddling = failure, it's unfair to say that capitalism failed. Rather, we should say that capitalism wasn't practiced.

I think the poster is just asking for the same kind of logical distinction.

Granted, many of them limit shariah law, such as in the case of Jordan, which limits it to "matters involving personal law such as marriage, divorce, inheritance and child custody." But they still have it.

I wouldn't say countries like UAE, Kuwait, Turkey and many Mediterranean islamic countries are way behind. It also helps that Western countries are eroding mentioned freedoms and values themselves. See for example burqa ban in France. Now that's what I call a country without a freedom of religion.

True, France has had some steps backwards lately, such as the expulsion of Roma. However, I think it's still reasonable to hold the middle eastern countries to a higher standard than they currently maintain. So I'm not sure what you mean by "it also helps that Western countries are eroding freedoms"; it helps who? what?

Anyway, I absolutely agree that Arab peninsula states still have some horrific human rights issues to deal with, especially when it comes to foreign and especially "third-world" immigrants.

But that brings us too far from the original discussion concerning Sharia law because that has nothing to do with immigrant rights, which they essentially don't have being treated as second-class at best or slaves at worst.

Keep in mind that there are four big schools of thought (and that's just in Sunni Islam). Saudi Arabia and the gulf conform to one of those, and it's traditionally more conservative.

So it is only after you've voluntarily agreed to be bound that the court can proceed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7233040.stm

Wikipedia's explanation of Sharia is more complex than what you say: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia. Perhaps you could share why you think Wikipedia is wrong? The article states:

"Sharia (Arabic شريعة Šarīʿa; [ʃaˈriːʕa], "way" or "path") is the sacred law of Islam. Muslims believe Sharia is derived from two primary Sources of Islamic law; namely, the divine revelations set forth in the Qur'an, and the sayings and example set by the Islamic Prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh ("jurisprudence") interprets and extends the application of Sharia to questions not directly addressed in the primary sources by including secondary sources. These secondary sources usually include the consensus of the religious scholars embodied in ijma, and analogy from the Qur'an and Sunnah through qiyas. Shia jurists replace qiyas analogy with 'aql, or "reason"."

The article further explains that Sharia covers areas of life such as diet, dress code, sexuality, personal morality, and the punishments prescribed for crimes - the aspects of law in Islamic countries that Westerners view as harsh and sometimes barbaric. For example, punishing theft with hand amputation is part of Sharia. In five Islamic countries under Sharia law the crime of Sodomy is punishable by death.

"Sharia" is no more a specific set of laws than Anglo-Saxon "Common Law". But it is a certain way of creating and judging law based on Islamic religious tradition that is incompatible with a modern secular state.

So if I were to use the term "Sharia" to refer to a strict and expansive system of law based on the Muslim religion, I would be correct.

1. Things from the Qur'an 2. Things from the Hadith (sayings of the Prophet)

-------------

Modern Sharia law is based on three things:

1. Qur'an 2. Hadith 3. Fiqh (which is the interpretations)

-----

That's the issue. The Fiqh part is very different from region to region and from sect to sect. Often, the really obscure laws that are brought up in arguments (take female genital mutilation for example) are often part of the Fiqh than the Sharia. That's also why, like I mentioned before, "Sharia" can be very different in Egypt compared to in Saudi Arabia.

Sharia is a topic of highly emotional argument right now, with lots of bigotry, ignorance, and fear-mongering. That's enough reason to suspect Wikipedia might be wrong.

Wikipedia is terrible on anything like that. On things nobody much cares about, like the history of the Marvel villain MODOK, it's great.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia#Contemporary_practice

There are definitely lots of people who choose to view Sharia this way, and invariably this kind of interpretation seems to have prevailed in practical settings. So what makes your view of Sharia the One True Interpretation? Do you even have some references, from the relevant religious authorities, to the effect that these six principles you enumerate are all of Sharia and nothing else?

Sadly, quite a few of the people who are ignorant about what Sharia is are probably also ignorant about what is written in the US Constitution. We're equal opportunity ignorant here in the US. :(

In most western societies our legal system has evolved to the point where we recognize that the punishment should fit the crime. The problem, as I see it, is that most modern muslim societies haven't progressed to this point yet. They still practice barbaric customs such as cutting the hands off of thieves, or public stonings.

As a whole, humanity needs to denounce all barbaric punishments and legal systems, regardless of origin. The thing that is so ironic to me is that some of the same religious conservatives in the US that are speaking out against Sharia law, if you ask them, will tell you they want the US to go to a biblical law system. They are pretty much one and the same at that level.

Yes, there's a fair share of the problems, but I can honestly just think of a few (3 or less) that truly practice the old barbaric stuff. Most, even though have other problems, have at least progressed away from that.

That's not true. You really shouldn't just make things up to support an argument.

I found the complaint that the rules weren't in English really amusing. Why should a country's national ccTLD rules be in English? It's a domain space for that country, not for making convenient short URLs for Americans to use on Twitter.

So I'm not American, so this isn't about imperialist America wanting everything to be in English.

The issue is the Libyans WANT international folks to buy their domains - they have all of the site in English, English-speaking pre- and post-sales support and even the domains themselves are sold in US$.

The issue I'm suggesting is that if you are going to put regulations up for the use of the domain that include needing to be in compliance with Libyan Law, it's quite unhelpful not to provide ANY resources or links to where I can read Libyan Law in English (ie the same language the website is selling the domain in).

As it happens I can't find any online resource for explaining to me the gist of Libyan Law in English.

Why would a country run under Sharia law want to allow services like bit.ly and others to use their ccTLD to link to porn and other things they find offensive?

Well with that chain of thinking then bit.ly, and everyone who uses it, should be very worried. Thus I hardly think this is a "rant" as you later describe my post!

It's our internet and we're just letting you weird foreigners use it'.

That's actually your somewhat judgmental opinion. Like I said, I'm not American so this "weird foreigners" remark is off-base.

Also, the kind of xenophobia, intentional or not (note that I heavily implied it was not the result of conscious thought), that leads to the 'weird foreigners' attitude is in no way unique to America. I'd imagine there's just as much of it in London as there is in Edinburgh as there is in San Francisco.

Oh, and yes, bit.ly should be worried. They should've taken this into account when planning their business and doing risk assessment.

Even if they could give you their entire body of law (including court decisions!), there'd be sure to be translation errors, or laws which you can't understand without cultural context. Then they'd have people complaining about getting misled. The answer is to consult a Libyan lawyer.

No, he's warning others that because Libya control this particular TLD, and police it using a set of laws that aren't available in English, it's to be considered unsafe for those who do not read Arabic.

I strongly doubt that this sort of action by NIC.ly is about money, it's about them - probably after having received political pressure - wanting to enforce their local moral/ethical standards on their ccTLD domains, particularly those held by people from outside Libya.

The moral/ethical stance is a complete pretext. If Libya was really worried about morality, they'd do something about their atrocious human rights record.

The assumption that your morality is the only one that matters pretty much reinforces the point I was trying to make with my original comment.

In any event, NIC.ly can take back any domains it wants to. You're playing under NIC.ly's rules, and if they change their rules that's their business.

Who do you think they fear a backlash from? If they change their rules to prohibit all non-Libyan registrants, they can reclaim any domains they like. I sincerely doubt that the Libyan government and NIC.ly really care what people moan about on Twitter and tech blogs.

What do you think they're planning to do with these 'valuable' domains? Nothing, because they actually have absolutely no value to anyone who hasn't already established their branding around it.

All these guys want to do is reclaim their country's TLD for their country and to exclude things that offend their local values.

And they're entirely entitled to do that.

I imagine they're more pissed of from the US repeatedly dropping bombs on them than .... what 4chan DDoSing NIC.ly ?

Agreed, it's their privilege to put the rules up in just their home country language. After all, if you're a foreign entity you will have to abid by the local customs, and part of that is the language.

What's more stinging about this case is that it seems to me that the 'rule change' to limit two letter domains to 'locals only' is arbitrary and was created with the specific idea in mind to recover this domain.

Another red flag for me is that there is apparently plenty of adult content on .ly domains: (NSFW)

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3A.ly+porn

So in all I think he has a point, but the real lesson here is to simply not bother with such domains and register them in a place where you have a fair expectation of respect for your rights and where you can actually read and understand the rules.

If some entity would try to take ww.com away from me you can be assured I'd put up a fight and given that it would be in a jurisdiction that has a legal system that seems to work (for the most part) I'd be fairly confident about the outcome.

If it had been a .ly domain I wouldn't have spent $.10 on it.

Yeah but as I said above, the process for buying the domain is VERY intentionally internationalized - everything is in English, you pay in US$ not local currency, etc.

I would agree with you if I had gone in there and essentially bought a domain that was only really intended for local use (some ccTLDs are like that).

But when they WANT international sales and are encouraging it, it doesn't seem right not to ensure that international customers can discover what Libyan Law says if the regulations for these same domains depend on it.

Unless of course you were a foreigner, especially an Libyan one then the outcome might not be so confidence inspiring.

I think it's ultimately a bit of a caveat emptor situation though: if they're not going to publish their rules in English, it means you're likely to get screwed.

Which is to be expected from a dictatorship run by a guy who dresses like the Beatles on the cover of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts club band.

I know that it's a lingua franca, and that there is a certain expectation that important information online will be in English - but even as someone who only speaks/reads English I think that's an unfair and unreasonable expectation.

Regardless of country, if you can't read and understand the rules/signage, you'd better have a 'native guide' or you're going to do something wrong and not understand how to put things right. That's as true for Libya/.ly as it is for Germany/.de or China/.cn.

I think that's the most important bit here, even if you understood the rules and had them translated and you abided (sp?) religiously (in this case that is to be taken literally it seems) by them, you could still lose your domain.

So building on a .ly is building on quicksand, and likely that goes for a whole bunch of other tlds.

I think that you're a lot less likely to run into 'oddities' in Germany than you are in China or Libya.

60+ years after the end of the war, it might not be immediately obvious, especially to an American used to 'first amendment rights', that your web page with screenshots from Wolfenstein 3D is possibly illegal.

And that's just an 'oddity' that I, someone who has never even been to Germany, know about.

Particularly in relation to their data protection rules (for example).

But you're also running a huge risk because if they find you in violation the fines start to get nasty. We had a client in the UK that was providing hit/redirect statistics, including full IP addresses, to German clients. Under the rules that is illegal - they were fined in the region of millions of euros for it.

every law is applied like that

I know the article jumped from one to the other but it is not so simple.

Is .ly really such a hot internet property that it's worth all that? It's trendy right now, but that won't last.