THE SCHIAVO CASE AND THE ISLAMIZATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

THE SCHIAVO CASE AND THE ISLAMIZATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
____________________________________________________________________

INFORMED COMMENT
Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
http://www.juancole.com/
By Juan Cole

The cynical use by the US Republican Party of the Terri Schiavo case
repeats, whether deliberately or accidentally, the tactics of Muslim
fundamentalists and theocrats in places like Egypt and Pakistan. These
tactics involve a disturbing tendency to make private, intimate decisions
matters of public interest and then to bring the courts and the legislature
to bear on them. President George W. Bush and Republican congressional
leaders like Tom Delay have taken us one step closer to theocracy on the
Muslim Brotherhood model.

The Muslim fundamentalists use a provision of Islamic law called "bringing
to account" (hisba). As Al-Ahram weekly notes, "Hisba signifies a case
filed by an individual on behalf of society when the plaintiff feels that
great harm has been done to religion." Hisba is a medieval idea that had
all be lapsed when the fundamentalists brought it back in the 1970s and
1980s.

In this practice, any individual can use the courts to intervene in the
private lives of others. Among the more famous cases of such interference
is that of Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid in Egypt. A respected modern scholar of
Koranic studies, Abu Zaid argued that, contrary to medieval interpretations
of Islamic law, women and men should receive equal inheritance shares.
(Medieval Islamic law granted women only half the inheritance shares of
their brothers). Abu Zaid was accused of sacrilege. Then the allegation of
sacrilege was used as a basis on which the fundamentalists sought to have
the courts forcibly divorce him from his wife.

Abu Zaid's wife loved her husband. She did not want to be divorced. But the
fundamentalists went before the court and said, she is a Muslim, and he is
an infidel, and no Muslim woman may be married to an infidel. They
represented their efforts as being on behalf of the Islamic religion, which
had an interest in seeing to it that heretics like Abu Zaid could not
remain married to a Muslim woman. In 1995 the hisba court actually found
against them. They fled to Europe, and ultimately settled in Holland.

Likewise, a similar tactic was deployed against the Egyptian feminist
author, Nawal Saadawi, but it failed and she was able to remain in the
country.

One of the most objectionable features of this fundamentalist tactic is
that persons without standing can interfere in private affairs. Perfect
strangers can file a case about your marriage, because they represent
themselves as defending a public interest (the upholding of religion and
morality).

Terri Schiavo's husband is her legal guardian. Her parents have not
succeeded in challenging this status of his. As long as he is the guardian,
the decision on removing the feeding tubes is between him and their
physicians. Her parents have not succeeded in having this responsibility
moved from him to them. Even under legislation George W. Bush signed in
1999 while governor of Texas, the spouse and the physician can make this
decision.

In passing a special law to allow the case to be kicked to a Federal judge
after the state courts had all ruled in favor of the husband, Congress
probably shot itself in the foot once again. The law is not a respecter of
persons, so the Federal judge will likely rule as the state ones did.

But the most frightening thing about the entire affair is that public
figures like congressmen inserted themselves into the case in order to
uphold religious strictures. The lawyer arguing against the husband let the
cat out of the bag, as reported by the NYT: ' The lawyer, David Gibbs, also
said Ms. Schiavo's religious beliefs as a Roman Catholic were being
infringed because Pope John Paul II has deemed it unacceptable for
Catholics to refuse food and water. "We are now in a position where a court
has ordered her to disobey her church and even jeopardize her eternal
soul," Mr. Gibbs said. '

In other words, the United States Congress acted in part on behalf of the
Roman Catholic church. Both of these public bodies interfered in the
private affairs of the Schiavos, just as the fundamentalist Egyptian, Nabih
El-Wahsh, tried to interfere in the marriage of Nawal El Saadawi.

Like many of his fundamentalist counterparts in the Middle East, Tom Delay
is rather cynically using this issue to divert attention from his own
corruption. Like the Muslim fundamentalist manipulators of Hisba, Delay
represents himself as acting on behalf of a higher cause. He said of the
case over the weekend, '"This is not a political issue. This is life and
death,"'

Republican Hisba will have the same effect in the United States that it
does in the Middle East. It will reduce the rights of the individual in
favor of the rights of religious and political elites to control
individuals. Ayatollah Delay isn't different from his counterparts in Iran.

Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan

Copyright © 2005 Juan Cole