I can't shake what I heard, saw once on the BBC from someone whose career in London I followed. Don't know if you know him, you wouldn't like him: Anjem Choudary. A very well-known noise maker around London, complaining about secularism, Judaism, this kind of thing, been trouble with the law a few times.
And was interviewed on BBC, went on about how nothing would change until the green flag of Islam was flying over Downing Street and Buckingham Palace, and so forth.
And was asked, I thought quite mildly by BBC interviewer, said, well if this is the way you feel about Sharia, about the total Islamic rule, wouldn't you feel happier moving to a country where they already had it?
Which is a polite question, a rather cheap one, I mean, but still. Didn't prepare me for the answer, which Choudary looked straight at the guy and straight into camera, said what "makes you think this is your country?"
In Islam, humans have the right to govern human societies and manage the affairs of humans.
... until they are offered Islam.
As far as Islam is concerned, the world already belongs to Allah. And it’s not merely the case that only Allah may be worshipped (per the shahada), but also only Allah may rule. Humans can form their little governments and make their little rules while they don’t know better. Until Islam comes to save them from the tyranny of human laws, so they can be freed to submit to Allah instead, who is already in charge of everything, the people just didn’t know.
In theocracies like Iran, they don’t really “make” laws. All the laws, everything humanity will ever need has already been given to them by Islam. These theocratic governments don’t actually create laws, they find them in the scripture. Allah has already told them whether ringtones are haram or halal, his human agents just need to be pious enough to recognize his wisdom.
That’s why an Islamist lunatic like Anjem Choudary can deadpan say “what makes you think this is your country?” He already knows that it’s Allah’s land.
Well now, just you transfer yourself to Somalia last week.
A girl of 13, probably out for the first time unsupervised in her life. Things must have been very bad if she was allowed out without male supervision to begin with. But there's enough chaos to explain that. She's immediately pounced upon by a group of older men and very thoroughly raped and sodomized and beaten.
And she goes to the religious court for redress, and the religious court knows its business. And it knows its texts very well, and it says "we don't know that it's true what you say, that men abused you in this manner. But we can tell you've had sex. In fact, judging by your injuries, we can tell you've had a great deal of sex lately. But you're not married, so you're guilty of adultery."
So now, before your wounds have stopped hurting, you're going to be buried up to your waist in hot sand and laughing men will now take part in the only other cultural activity that gratifies the male sex in that part of the world, which is stoning that young woman to death.
The people who did this knew exactly what they were doing, and they were in perfect conformity with their holy books, and they absolutely do not believe that anything happens randomly. They are not under the illusion that heaven is indifferent. They're not under the illusion that we are biologically created, that we're here because of the laws of natural selection and random mutation. They don't believe anything of the sort.
They're utterly consoled by the idea that heaven intervenes and cares about every action, otherwise they wouldn't put themselves to the trouble of raping, torturing and murdering a thirteen-year-old whose last moments you might want to take just a few seconds to imagine.
