Imam al-Qarafi said, “Whoever issues legal rulings to the people merely on the basis of what is transmitted in the compendia (law books) despite differences in their customs, usages, times, places, conditions, and the special circumstances of their situations has gone astray and leads others astray. His crime against the religion is greater than the crime of a physician who gives people medical prescriptions without regard to the differences of their climes, norms, the times they live in, and their physical natures but merely in accordance with what he finds written down in some medical book about people with similar anatomies. He is an ignorant physician, but the other is an ignorant jurisconsult but much more detrimental.” (taken from Umar F. Abd-Allah’s “Islam and the Cultural Imperative”)

The Muslim community’s fatwa-fixated discourse has recently resurrected the question of whether a wife’s medical bills are the obligation of her husband. That this question even arises is grounds for concern. Ours is a religion of practicality that contains the concept that “no soul is given a burden greater than it can bear.” People in situations of hardships are regularly given a concession…but rarely do we free people of the obligation on the account of a minority that cannot, for whatever reason, fulfill it.

Why is it then that paying a wife’s medical bills instead elicits lengthy (and defensive) arguments from medieval fiqh texts, some of which conclude that, literally, food and shelter is what is mentioned in Quran and therefore it is not his obligation? This explains why the devaluation of contemporary tafasir or contemporary vocabulary in traditionalist circles is problematic. We find that relying solely upon medieval texts results in a definition of marriage as the “purchasing of a woman’s private parts.” This application of opinions from a different social context has resulted in well-meaning scholars resurrecting another opinion as a sort of feminist counterargument: that a man should provide a housekeeper or pay her wages to do housework! We are even seeing the notion that a woman should receive wages for breastfeeding her own child crop up, even though I know of no woman who would accept such a wage. Ironically, when women jump on board with these opinions they are contributing to a paring down of the definition of female marital duties to that of a sex provider, thus reinforcing the conception of another era.

The more hard-hearted among the laymen have taken with gusto to the idea that a man is not responsible for his wife’s medical bills. Is this the end of muruwwa (chivalry)? Should fiqh be divorced from ethics? It dawned on me as my husband and I discussed divorce in his native country. He stated that it was normal for a man to allow his irrevocably divorced wife to keep all the furniture in the house, indeed to keep the house itself. ‘But isn’t she not entitled to anything according to Islamic law,?’ I asked. He stated (quite uncontroversially) that yes, according to the law, but not according to muruwwa.

The law is concerned with explicating the bare minimum of what is due between husband and wife in terms of rights. It is not a field of counseling and not a field of spiritual tazkiya. While it may be better for a man to forfeit some of his property, it is not legally required. But in the fatwa-based discourse of modern Islam, we seem to be highly preoccupied with what the court of law can extract from us, not what a sense of higher ethics would demand.

In truth, most men will pay their wife’s medical bills without blinking an eye. In truth, most women could not conceive of being paid for what seems to be their natural duty to feed their child and cook some meals here and there. So why are we making a controversy out of nothing?

Great things happen when we go above and beyond what is minimally required of us. We delight our spouses and they, in turn, exceed what is required of them. Allah says,

هل جزاء الإحسان إلا الاحسان

Is the reward of good anything but good?’ (55:60) Could it be that we are so fearful of mistreatment from our spouses that we hold back our love and generosity to see what the other side will offer up first؟ Marriage becomes a game of poker as we wait for the other person to reveal their hand. Is that what Allah meant when He called marriage a strong covenant, ميثاق غليظ (4:21)? There is a responsibility among the scholars to think for themselves, to look at the prejudices that plague every era, and to consider the detrimental ramifications of perpetuating such opinions. It is a testament to this that the scholars of many Muslim countries now consider medical bills to be among the duties of a husband. We thank them for taking a stand that is appropriate to their time, to the sensibilities of modern people, and returning us to the basic thrust of the merciful prophetic sunnah.

Tricia currently ministers to incarcerated Muslim women and is completing certification in Hartford Seminary’s Islamic chaplaincy program.  Tricia participated in the Deen Intensive Foundation’s 2008 Rihla. A Master’s degree holder in Near Eastern Studies, she blogs in her spare time at The Civil Muslim and State of Formation.

On Monday, March 26 2012, the United State Supreme court began hearings to determine the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, and while the court jurists will examine the legality of the behemoth law, the rest of us may find ourselves not in a policy debate, but rather returning to a deeper, moral conversation: what kind of people are we? What kind of country do we want? Who do we care for?

The Supreme Court hearings ended on March 28, 2012, covering three different aspects of the Affordable Care Act, and their decision will probably arrive in the early summer. A variety of developed nations have adopted different strategies for distribution of health care services, and in 2009 the USA adopted legislation which would allow individuals to purchase affordable health insurance coverage through an insurance marketplace. The health insurance industry reluctantly agreed to massive reforms, such as abolition of lifetime caps, no increased rates for people with pre-existing conditions, free preventive health screening, etc, on the condition that every American be required to purchase health insurance. Health insurers claim they need a pool of healthy people to invest in the system before their companies will be able to manage the financial risks of reform. Seven states which had previously enacted pre-existing condition laws without mandating coverage saw insurers dropping out of the market, no new individual policies, and/or massively increased premiums. At the heart of the Supreme Court hearings will be the question of whether the individual mandate, sometimes called the individual responsibility, to purchase health insurance is constitutional. If the individual mandate or personal responsibility clause is struck down by Supreme Court, the next question is what will happen to the rest of the Affordable Care Act. The other case which will be heard by the Supreme Court is that a number of states have rejected the expansion of Medicaid  to +133% of the poverty level under the Affordable Care Act.

The conservative push-back to the Affordable Care Act, funded in a large part by the Koch brothers, has been substantial. The argument by conservatives runs along the lines “the government is forcing me to buy something”, they are “infringing on my liberty”, and “next they will force me to buy carrots”.

The government’s rationale is that you must pay your fair share of health insurance because when you do not pay you infringe on the liberty of everyone else in the community. When you cannot pay your hospital bill, the hospital takes an economic hit which it then passes onto the insurance companies, which then pass the cost onto all consumers in the form of increased premiums. Mandating the intake of carrots or broccoli is not the same as mandating healthcare coverage. These are very different markets. No one comes into the grocery store and claims they will drop down dead on the spot if they are not given $20,000 worth of broccoli. If they did, we probably would see some kind of reform in the produce department.

At the core of this conservative argument is the premise, “I am most fully an American when I stand alone. Americais about personal freedom. A mandate for the common good makes me less of an American.” And this is the crux of our moral conversation. What is our personal responsibility for the common good? The individual mandate requires individuals to purchase insurance, particularly young, healthy people, but despite the hysteria, it will not affect most Americans. Americans are being asked to financially contribute to a system they may not use in order to pay for the health care of the poor, elderly, extremely sick, and handicapped. In order for the Affordable Care Act to function, we must make financial sacrifices and have faith that the government will act with justice. If you feel that our government cannot act with justice, then we need to have that conversation. If you firmly believe “society can’t say nuthin’ to nobody” because it impinges on personal freedom, then we need to talk about what kind of a society you do envision.

If Muslims are taught hadith such as “A Muslim wishes for her neighbor what she wants for herself”  or are reminded of scripture “You will never come to piety unless you spend of things you love; and whatever you spend is known to God”(Qur’an 3:92), then where do these ethics lead us? At what cost are we willing to fulfill these precepts of our faith?

The values that I bring to this debate are based on the stories that people have told me. I have heard parents of handicapped children working two or three jobs to cover their child’s medical expenses, a neighbor who hasn’t had a preventive Pap smear test in ten years because it isn’t covered by her medical insurance, a woman who was diagnosed with a complicated pregnancy and flew back to Palestine for medical treatment, a man with tears in his eyes telling me he and his wife are just praying she can make it to age 65 when her brain cancer can be treated through Medicare- in the meantime she is having seizures and his company insurance won’t cover her treatment, a girls’ basketball team from a very poor inner-city neighborhood unable to compete at the state championships because not all the girls were vaccinated, and the list goes on. But the story which initially motivated me is by far the most personal: my own uninsured mother fighting metastatic breast cancer as my father’s lifetime of financial gain collapsed into an overwhelming debt of medical bills.

The funny thing about stories is that they can be interpreted different ways. Watching my parents’ experience catapulted me into a realm of grassroots activism, while my mother’s death had a completely different effect on my father. He continues to vote Republican, subscribes to the ideas of Ayn Rand, and believes that we should all fend for ourselves.

 Nabeela Rehman, PhD is a freelance writer in Willowbrook, Illinois. Her work has appeared in the Islamic Monthly, Chicago Parent, Chautauqua and Darien-Illinois Patch. She has also volunteered for the Illinois Campaign for Better Health Care to promote health care justice. Email: nabeelar@hotmail.com

ADEEL AHMED

On the occasion of Mawlid, the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, a young 23-year-old former columnist for Saudi Arabia’s Al-Bilad newspaper tweeted a conversation he imagined he would have if he were to meet the Prophet Muhammad.

-On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you.

-On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more.

-On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more.

Almost immediately after the posts he was running for his life. He hopped a plane in Jeddah hoping to reach New Zealand. In Malaysia, where he had to change planes, he was stopped and held until a private plane arrived to take him back home to Saudi Arabia. Now, he sits in a Saudi jail awaiting a possible death sentence.

Yes, death.

Saudi cleric Nasser al-Omar called for Kashgari to be tried for apostasy. Outrageous, I first thought, living here in the Western world. Although I don’t believe that the tweets validate in labeling Kahsgari as an apostate even if he did insult the Prophet Muhammad, let’s just agree with al-Omar’s point of view. If Kashgari is an apostate like al-Omar says, we must look into what Islam says about capital punishment, apostasy and those two linked together.

The Qur’an states: “…Take not life, which God has made sacred, except by way of justice and law. Thus does He command you, so that you may learn wisdom” (6:151). Key words here are “by way of justice and law.” It is clear that capital punishment can be applied by a court as long as it is justifiable and lawful, which fall under two crimes: intentional murder and Fasad fil-ardh, or spreading mischief in the land. The term “spreading mischief in the land” is generally interpreted as crimes that affect a community as a whole and destabilize society. These include treason/apostasy, terrorism, land, sea and air piracy, rape and adultery.

That being said, it must mean that al-Omar’s argument to punish Kashgari with the death sentence for apostasy is valid, correct? No. What al-Omar fails to realize is how that ruling originated and under which circumstances.

During the time of war, if one were to abandon his Muslims by committing treason and declaring himself as an apostate and then fight against Muslims, it would be valid to punish the individual with the death sentence. However, Kashgari is not fighting against his home country, and as a result, is not committing treason. The problem rests in that al-Omar, along with many others, tie apostasy to treason instead of realizing that apostasy is not always linked to war and treason, especially not in this day and age. So, if he is an apostate, should the death sentence apply? Is speaking ill of the Prophet Muhammad considered an act of mischief large enough to punish Kashgari with capital punishment, given that he is considered an apostate?  This is where I searched further to see what Islam says about punishments for the act of apostasy on its own, without being linked to treason.

In Surah 4: 137, the Qur’an reads, “Behold, as for those who come to believe, and then deny the truth, and again come to believe and again deny the truth and thereafter, grow stubborn in their denial of the truth, God will not forgive them, nor will He guide them in any way.” With this passage it’s evident that even after rejecting Islam twice, no punishment is prescribed for the apostate.

Furthermore, Dr. Maher Hathout, a leading American Muslim spokesperson, underscores in his recent book “In Pursuit of Justice: The Jurisprudence of Human Rights in Islam” that while apostasy may be a sin in the eyes of God, it is not considered criminal behavior.

Subhi Mahmassani, an Islam scholar and jurist from Lebanon, has observed that the death penalty was meant to apply not to simple acts of apostasy from Islam, but when apostasy was linked to an act of political betrayal of the community. The Prophet never killed anyone solely for apostasy. This being the case, the death penalty was not meant to apply to a simple change of faith but to punish acts such as treason, joining forces with the enemy and sedition. [Arkan Huquq al-Insan fi l-Islam (Bases of Human Rights in Islam), Beirut: Dar al-‘Ilm li-l-Malayin, 1979, cited in Kamali, as above]

Executing a person because of conversion to another faith or out of faith clearly contradicts the Qur’an, the ultimate source of Islamic law. Without the apostasy being linked to treason that leads to a matter of national security or security of a Muslim community, capital punishment cannot be permitted.

The question now remains, if Islamic law prohibits capital punishment for apostasy, where did Muslims get the idea that it is valid? In Josef Van Ess’s book “The Flowering of Muslim Theology” he observes this issue and the first execution of someone who spoke ill of the Prophet Muhammad. Dating back to the 8th Century, Syrian scholar Muhammad Ibn Said Al-Urdunni was executed for statements he made about the Prophet Muhammad. Al-Urdunni stated that, although Prophet Muhammad was the last prophet, if Allah wanted, He would and could create another Muhammad. He simply was stating that Allah, the Almighty, has the ability to do whatever he wants, which includes creating another Muhammad. It is as unknown as to whom exactly made the final decision to charge Al-Urdunni with apostasy, but the Syrian government issued the death sentence for disrespecting the Prophet Muhammad by even imagining that there could be another prophet after him. The intentions behind the Syrian government are unknown, however, one is to assume that they could have been trying to set an example for Muslim citizens—if Al-Urdunni is executed, people will not dare to speak ill of the Prophet. It seems that al-Omar is using the same philosophy of the 8th Century government in Syria. But we sit here now, in the 21st Century with the same problem that Syrians tried to squash in the 8th Century. So, does al-Omar really believe that the death sentence will in fact put fear in citizens from talking badly about the Prophet?

It is unfortunate that Muslim scholars don’t stand together to stop al-Omar and the Saudi government from this to move forward. Apostasy is not the equivalent of treason. Kashagri wasn’t out to destroy a Muslim community. There should not even be a trial. Under Islamic law, people of other faiths and people who leave Islam are not to be harmed.

The problem is that Saudi Arabia strives to both move forward in the world of high technology while they govern strict limitations and boundaries upontheir citizens. Their strong and strict Wahabbi interpretation of Islamic law will be a crutch for Muslims all over the world, especially the Western world, where Muslims constantly try to prove that Islam is a religion of peace and forgiveness and that Muslims can coexist in a world with other religions. The decision on Hamza Kahsgari’s case will leave a mark. It can either be a huge step in the right direction or send Muslims back another ten.

Adeel Ahmed is an actor and writer. His work has been featured at Sundance and SXSW. Credits include Law & Order CI, Saturday Night Live, Domestic Crusaders. He will next be seen on Hum TV’s drama series Hum Tho Huay Pardesi as well as Rangoon on Theatre Row in New York City. 

My father always said, “You don’t understand the price of freedom.” But I do know I understand the price of being robbed of my right to grow up around grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. I know the price of growing up nation-less. The price of having no national identity. The cost of not knowing who I am or where I am from.

I am the daughter of a mother wanted for execution in Syria for simply owning a dream to think freely, and of a father who would not bow to the country’s criminal silence. They escaped in 1980, reunited in Jordan, moved to Iraq, United States, Canada, then once again back to the United States. They stamped each country with the birth of a child, clinging to their dream of returning to Syria. I was born in Montreal, Canada.

As a child, I was Syrian. But as a teenager, I was lost. In America, I wasn’t American. On my two visits to Syria, I wasn’t Syrian. I couldn’t own pride to a country that stripped my mother and father from the right to live or the right to return. I didn’t understand the fear, the silence, the poverty, or why my grandfather hung a two foot portrait of the President Hafez Assad right above his television. When my 13 year old cousin pointed his finger at me and accused his uncle, my father, for being too much of an arrogant doctor in America to even pay a small visit to his family in Syria, I opened my mouth to unleash my rage only to find my grandfather’s strong palm glue itself to my lips.

At 24, after I completed Graduate School, still without an identity or nationality to boast, I decided that I would embrace the identity of being an “American,” and accept my Syrian heritage as something that belonged to my parents, something of the past. I slowly erased that image from my memory.

After the revolution in Tunisia dominoed its way to Syria, and peaceful protestors were instantly captured, detained, and had their hearts foam out of their mouths, I didn’t understand why my mother and father were depriving themselves of sleep at night. I was offended that when I flew across the country to visit them over the holidays, they were not emotionally with me as we sipped our nightly tea. They were glued to their computer screen at home, signed into Skype, talking, arranging, organizing, doing anything and everything within their human power to help the people of Syria. They even traveled to Turkey and lived with 8,000 Syrian refugees in Antakya for one month as an in-house doctor and emotional supporter sleeping in their tents and using their overcrowded toilets.

For 10 months, I prayed for the dead, the detained, and the tortured. I followed the news for ten days then abandoned it for twenty. I wanted to put this past behind me. I wanted to convince myself that there was nothing more I could possibly do. But as the symphony of protestors grew louder and stronger, bouncing off high concrete walls, over a web of narrow ancient alleys every time a child was sniped, a woman beaten, and a man burned to death only after breaking his back and slicing off his fingers, my heart began to feel alive. I began to see a different purpose to this life. Was it simply to get an education, dine at fancy restaurants, travel, have children, and move into a large home while the blood of others gushed into rivers, or children die of starvation? Where were the Syrians finding the courage to persist? Where had their fear and silence gone? I no longer wanted to continue my perfectly played out movie, or worry about things that really didn’t matter.

My numbness to the image of tortured body after body after body for the past 10 months burst. I finally understood my parents’ overworking their mind, body, and heart. I understood how they went two days without feeding their stomachs because they had no time to stop. No interest.  They had no time to even grow hungry. My parents outran death, literally, when 40,000 others couldn’t.  For 26 years they told me and my siblings that this life was only a journey, and the purpose of that journey was to make it to heaven. “Never get too comfortable,” my father said. “Be the last to eat and the first to serve.” Just as my parents began to grow numb to the idea of ever returning to Syria, watching the last flicker of fire fade, a few boys in the village of Daraa relit the match.