Most Criticized Questions About Sharia! Answered By Tom Facchine - Towards Eternity
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What is Sharia? When we use this phrase, we usually think of a system full of punishment and restriction. Is it really like that? Some people say that if a place is ruled by Sharia, women will be treated like second class citizens and won't be given any rights. What you say to that? What you say is good for the period when the Quran came out, but 1400 years have passed. Isn't it possible for mankind to have come up with a better system? So why do men have the right to marry four wives, but women don't have the right to marry four husbands? Imam Tom Facchine, we know that you have a degree in Sharia from the University of Medina. Today we're going to ask you some hard questions about Sharia.
I think we're going to make you sweat. Are you ready for that? Yep. Let's go. What is Sharia? When we use this phrase, we usually think of a system full of punishment and restriction. Is it really like that? The Sharia is a unity between law and ethics, which is very, very strange for people who live in today's society because they only imagine law to be about punishment. So when you pick up any book of fiqh, what's the first chapter in a book of fiqh? It's about water, it's about water. And then the next chapter is about prayer, and then the following chapter is about fasting, et cetera, et cetera. If someone asks, where are the Islamic books of law? This is the book that I would hand them.
A book that starts with water. And so we have to realize that we're talking about two different things. People, they want to skip right to the punishments and they want to think, well, what's, you know... Like, Sharia is such a scary thing. The punishments are at the very, very, very end because the idea is that the Sharia is teaching you how to be an ethical person. You can't be an ethical person without learning how to pray, learning how to purify yourself, learning how to discipline yourself.
So if you want to come and tell me that the Sharia is somehow cruel or extreme because it has this punishment or that punishment, I think it's much more cruel and much more extreme to have a system that's going to punish me without teaching me how to be an ethical person first. If there was a state where all the rules of Islamic Sharia were applied, how would it differ from other states? States are not just about the rules that they apply. They're also about the institutions that they have and the people that they form, the people that they educate. So you can't have a Sharia society just by putting all the rules on the books. That is actually going with the modern idea of what law is.
It's just about rules and punishments. That's not what the Sharia is about. The Sharia is about having institutions, having education, taking people from the time they are a young child and making them understand why they're here, why do they exist, what's the purpose for their existence? And then teaching them how to discipline themselves, teaching them how to follow rules, teaching them how to be a contributing member of society, and then also teaching them that there are limits and that the limits have to be respected. So if you want a real Sharia society, and this is the mistake that a lot of people make, it's not just about passing laws.
It's about developing institutions and building people. I'm saying that people don't get educated into how to be a good person. People are only educated sometimes about the rules and what's going to happen to them, the punishments if they break those rules. Imagine if you have a child and you don't teach them how to obey you, or why they should obey you. You just give them a list of rules and then give them a list of punishments. Have you really educated your child? No. You've just told them these are the rules and these are the punishments. That's what modern states do. That's what modern law does. The Sharia is not like that.
The Sharia takes you like a child and says, "Here's why you should care about these things. It's good for you, it's in your best interest." And it teaches you how to be a good person. And it teaches you how to behave in an ethical way. Do you think the laws are the only thing that keeps you in check? No, the laws are never enough. I'll give you an example. When you're driving down the road, you have a speed limit. Sometimes you drive faster than the speed limit. We don't want to drive faster than allowed speed limits. Now, what's going to stop you from driving over the speed limit? What happens when you see a police car or a police camera on the street? You slow down.
So what's going to do that for us when nobody else is watching? That's taqwa, that is fearing Allah. That's who's going to do the right thing when no one is watching. That's taqwa. And that's the difference between when the Sharia takes an interest in your education as a moral person. It's trying to build you into a person who's going to be able to refuse a bribe, build you into a person who's going to do the right thing when nobody else is watching, not just when there's a rule or a punishment that's going to happen. Some people say that if a place is ruled by Sharia, women will be treated like second class citizens and won't be given any rights. What do you say to that?
How can women be second class citizens in a system where they're entitled to not work? When they're entitled... They have the right to be married, to be financially taken care of, to never have to take on a career if they don't want, all these sorts of things. They have a dowry that's paid to them that nobody can touch, right? All of these sorts of things. I don't see how they're second class citizens. Maybe they have a role that's a little bit different than the role of a father, the role of a husband. But that doesn't automatically mean that they're second class citizens. And people that come with that assumption need to reexamine their assumptions.
No system gives women more rights than Islam, because Islam is about putting people in the place where they're going to succeed, Not succeed when it comes to living in a high rise in a villa somewhere and having, driving a Bugatti or whatever you think is success. We're talking about being a good person in this world and achieving Paradise in the next. Does that mean that your rights are going to look exactly the same as somebody else's? No, they're not, because your privileges are also going to be different. Everybody has different rights and different privileges. I'm the tallest person in my household. I have a two year old son who is much shorter than me.
When it's time to change the light bulb, who gets to change the light bulb? It's me. It makes most sense for me to do that job. If I wanted my children to do it, could they? Maybe. But it wouldn't be right to expect that of them. in order to work as a household together, we have to have people focusing on different things. So when it comes to women's rights and Islam, Islam defines what are real rights and what aren't real rights. People, all people, women and men, have the right to be valued, to be safe, to be secure for fulfillment, these sorts of things. But when it comes to, okay, should women be able to be the President or the head of household or independent? This is losing the plot.
We don't exist just as individuals. Everybody is most fulfilled in a family setting. Everybody is most fulfilled in a community setting. And if you live in a family and if you live in a community, people have to have different roles. And so Islam encourages people having different roles in order... So that we can depend upon each other and work together the best. We know that in Sharia a man can marry four wives. What's the wisdom behind it and how can it be applicable nowadays? Marriage is always about family and children. Always. The modern world wants us to forget that. But marriage is always about family and children. What's best for families and what's best for children.
Are there situations in which women might want to enter into this arrangement, where they're the second wife, or the third wife, or the fourth wife? Yes, absolutely. Let's look at it like this. In the Sharia, women have the right to be taken care of financially. They have the privilege that if they don't want to, they shouldn't have to work. They shouldn't have to get a career. They shouldn't have to. If you want to, that's a different thing, but if you don't want to, then you have the right to not have to. So what are the mechanisms that are going to help us operationalize that? Polygamy is one of the mechanisms to operationalize that. You have somebody, they're in their 30's.
Their husband passes away young. They have young children. What are they going to do, go back with their parents? Maybe. What if they can't? Go to a brother? Again, maybe. But what if they can't? Instead of getting a career, having to work 40 hours a week, not seeing your children as much, think about the effect that that's going to have on the children, there's this option. If she wants, she can become someone's second wife and she'll be taken care of. She can focus on her kids and the kids are taken care of. And again, that's the main goal, is that whatever family arrangements we have, that the children are taken care of. There's other situations where actually it becomes really important.
In the situation or in the context of war, where you have situations historically where men have lost their lives in huge numbers. You know, you might go to a village and the balance between women and men might be very, very skewed towards women. You might have 70% women and 30% men, or even more than that. So what are all those women supposed to do? Right? Women have the rights in the Sharia to be married, to have children if they want to, and if you prevent them, or you don't give them a way to have that, or to fulfill that part of their lives and fulfill their rights, then it's going to be very difficult for them and very difficult for society.
It's important to mention that just because something can be misused doesn't mean that the whole thing is illegitimate. Allah (swt) tells us in the Quran that if you're going to do this thing, you're going to go into this arrangement that you have to be just between if you have multiple wives. And there is nobody more just to their wives than the Prophet Muhammad (saw). After Asr prayer every day, He would go and visit every single one of them until He made it around to the one who He was going to stay with that night. And so when it came to His time and His money as best as He possibly could, He would be fair. Somebody could ask, well, what if the husband mistreats one or the other?
Okay, what if a husband mistreats his only wife? What if a father mistreats his kids? We still have the institution of marriage. We still have fatherhood. Get rid of all of it just because it can be abused, right? We don't, as we say, cut the garment to fit the person. We help the person grow into the garment. Right? The person has to grow and to mature, to handle that responsibility and that power well. And so polygamy is the same. So why do men have the right to marry four wives? But women don't have the right to marry four husbands? Well, there's certain complications that arise if we were to extend that same right to women first of all. And that is lineage.
One of the things that the Sharia protects is lineage. So it's extremely important to know where you came from, to know who your father is, to know, you know, your sort of heritage. And if, just as a hypothetical, there was a situation where there was a woman who was married to more than one man, then that would be in doubt. that lineage would be in doubt. You wouldn't know who your real father was. And in fact, before the Prophet Muhammad (saw) came to Arabia, there were types of marriage in pre-Islamic Arabia that resembled that situation, where women would have children and they wouldn't be sure as to who was the father.
And if you need any sort of confirmation that this is damaging to the psychology of children and damaging to outcomes when it comes to behavior, when it comes to, you know, success, just look at the data. There's lots of data that shows that when people understand, they know who their biological parents are, they live with their biological parents, they're raised in a family setting that's supportive then that is the best for them psychologically, for their physical health, for their mental health, et cetera. That's what the family is for. So when we're looking about, these are just thought experiments. What if the woman has more than one husband? What if this, what if that?
What's the purpose of family? The purpose of family is to raise children and to raise children in a secure, safe environment where they're going to succeed. Okay, as Muslims, we believe that Sharia will bring us perfect justice. If there was such a good example of a state where Sharia is applied, do you think the non-Muslims would also prefer this system? Absolutely they would. And historically they have. If anybody doubts this, just look at the history of Palestine. What were the eras of history when Christianity thrived in Palestine? What were the eras of history ehen Judaism thrived in Palestine? That was actually when the Muslims were in charge.
In fact, every time the Christians took over Palestine, they kicked the Jews out, which is completely the opposite way that Muslims have dealt with them historically. And even Christianity, and there's many, many stories of this, that there was so much infighting. If you want to look into history, look at some of the Crusades, especially the Fourth Crusade. Some of the Crusades, they were fought first against other groups of Christians when they were passing through. So many of these groups of Christians in Palestine and in that area actually were happy about Sharia law.
And they were actually happy about the Muslims ruling over them, because they knew that within our law, within the Sharia, we have provisions to protect them and their independence and their religious freedom. Whereas in Christianity, in other sort of systems, there is no provisions. There's nothing on the books that would stop anybody from wiping them out or kicking them out or stopping them from practicing their religion. Okay, you say that the system is the most ideal one, but even in the Muslim countries that are ruled by Sharia, we see that the situation doesn't look that good. What do you think is the reason for this?
There is no country that is ruled by Sharia right now, because we have experienced that difference, where we're now understanding Sharia as just law in the modern sense of the word. Just rules and just punishment. There is no place where we have the Sharia society that existed before colonialism, where we had the institutions we had teaching people how to behave ethically, teaching people how to be their own policemen, right? To have that conscience that's going to stop them from doing the wrong thing. What we have today is we have some governments that have some rules that can be found in the Quran and can be found in the Sunnah, but that doesn't mean that we have an entire system.
And in fact, the Muslim world is really suffering from the fact that we don't have Sharia as an entire system. We only have modern law with Islamic packaging. What you say is good for the period when the Quran came out, but 1400 years have passed. Isn't it possible for mankind to have come up with a better system? - Do you have a car? - Yes. - What's the kind of car do you drive? - German car. In the glove compartment, do you have the owner's manual for that car? Why haven't you written a new owner's manual? -I don't need to. - Why? - They already did. - They already did. And what would happen if you tried to make a new owner's manual? I would mess the car up.
Because you didn't make the car. So how are we going to? We believe in a Creator. The Creator made us. The Creator knows us. He knows our internal motivations. He knows our capabilities. He knows our shortcomings. And He made a system that's supposed to govern us inside and out. From the time that we're babies, to the time that we die, that's supposed to guide us to the best possible way. So what are you or I going to add to that? If you and I try to come up with a new owner's manual, we'll end up breaking the car. You know that in Sharia, there's a concept called eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Why is that? Because when people seek revenge, they're very rarely just, okay?
So, you know, someone comes and they hit your car on accident. Maybe you go and you retaliate. You hit their car on purpose. Now they're upset at you. They throw something on your house, right? And it escalates. This is human nature, it escalates. Because we always, psychologically, we perceive the harms against us to be enormous, and we perceive the harms done against other people to be small and insignificant, okay? So now let's blow that up on a societal level. You have Tribe A and Tribe B, okay? Tribe A kill somebody from Tribe B. What's Tribe B going to do? They're going to kill two people from Tribe A. What's tribe A going to do?
They're going to go back they're going to wipe out a whole village. And it goes on and on and on. And this was the lived reality of people in the Hejaz and in Arabia before Islam came to them. Retaliation, right? Nobody would stop. It would just produce feuds that would last hundreds of years. How are you going to stop it? Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth stops it. Qisas stops it. It says, if this happens, this is exactly what you're entitled to, nothing more. And once you've gotten that, it's over. You have to let it go after that.
Anything beyond that is too much, and it's only going to cause more harm and more retaliation and more problems And that's why also the family is given the ability to forgive it if they want. They say, "Okay, we're going to take the punishment because that's what's going to feel best for us. We're going to get closure." Or, "We'll take blood money or some sort of payment." Or, "We'll forgive it." It's up to them. So if someone's husband is killed, right, so the family gets to decide, okay, what's going to happen to the person who committed that crime. Are they going to be killed? It's possible. Maybe they can't... You know, we have this happen in the United States.
Somebody kills someone close to you. Some people literally can't sleep at night knowing that that person is around. Maybe he's walking the streets. Maybe he lives in your neighborhood. Right? It's impossible. That person has no peace. It's within the family's right to expect that person have their life taken as well. That's fine. But maybe they would rather not do that. Maybe they feel sorry. Maybe they know that the person, you know... It was in a moment of haste or something like this. Passion crime, we call it. So maybe they say "Okay, you know, you can pay the blood money, a certain sum, and then we'll call it, that's enough." Maybe they're even further than that.
And they want to truly, actually, just forgive and let it go. But the important thing is that this is supposed to be the barrier. There's nothing after this. There's no retaliation after this. Because once you retaliate, you're not going to be able to be fair. So you have to trust Allah (swt) that Allah is going to be fair. Imam Tom Facchine, thank you for your answers. We will come up with harder questions next time. I'll be ready.
I think we're going to make you sweat. Are you ready for that? Yep. Let's go. What is Sharia? When we use this phrase, we usually think of a system full of punishment and restriction. Is it really like that? The Sharia is a unity between law and ethics, which is very, very strange for people who live in today's society because they only imagine law to be about punishment. So when you pick up any book of fiqh, what's the first chapter in a book of fiqh? It's about water, it's about water. And then the next chapter is about prayer, and then the following chapter is about fasting, et cetera, et cetera. If someone asks, where are the Islamic books of law? This is the book that I would hand them.
A book that starts with water. And so we have to realize that we're talking about two different things. People, they want to skip right to the punishments and they want to think, well, what's, you know... Like, Sharia is such a scary thing. The punishments are at the very, very, very end because the idea is that the Sharia is teaching you how to be an ethical person. You can't be an ethical person without learning how to pray, learning how to purify yourself, learning how to discipline yourself.
So if you want to come and tell me that the Sharia is somehow cruel or extreme because it has this punishment or that punishment, I think it's much more cruel and much more extreme to have a system that's going to punish me without teaching me how to be an ethical person first. If there was a state where all the rules of Islamic Sharia were applied, how would it differ from other states? States are not just about the rules that they apply. They're also about the institutions that they have and the people that they form, the people that they educate. So you can't have a Sharia society just by putting all the rules on the books. That is actually going with the modern idea of what law is.
It's just about rules and punishments. That's not what the Sharia is about. The Sharia is about having institutions, having education, taking people from the time they are a young child and making them understand why they're here, why do they exist, what's the purpose for their existence? And then teaching them how to discipline themselves, teaching them how to follow rules, teaching them how to be a contributing member of society, and then also teaching them that there are limits and that the limits have to be respected. So if you want a real Sharia society, and this is the mistake that a lot of people make, it's not just about passing laws.
It's about developing institutions and building people. I'm saying that people don't get educated into how to be a good person. People are only educated sometimes about the rules and what's going to happen to them, the punishments if they break those rules. Imagine if you have a child and you don't teach them how to obey you, or why they should obey you. You just give them a list of rules and then give them a list of punishments. Have you really educated your child? No. You've just told them these are the rules and these are the punishments. That's what modern states do. That's what modern law does. The Sharia is not like that.
The Sharia takes you like a child and says, "Here's why you should care about these things. It's good for you, it's in your best interest." And it teaches you how to be a good person. And it teaches you how to behave in an ethical way. Do you think the laws are the only thing that keeps you in check? No, the laws are never enough. I'll give you an example. When you're driving down the road, you have a speed limit. Sometimes you drive faster than the speed limit. We don't want to drive faster than allowed speed limits. Now, what's going to stop you from driving over the speed limit? What happens when you see a police car or a police camera on the street? You slow down.
So what's going to do that for us when nobody else is watching? That's taqwa, that is fearing Allah. That's who's going to do the right thing when no one is watching. That's taqwa. And that's the difference between when the Sharia takes an interest in your education as a moral person. It's trying to build you into a person who's going to be able to refuse a bribe, build you into a person who's going to do the right thing when nobody else is watching, not just when there's a rule or a punishment that's going to happen. Some people say that if a place is ruled by Sharia, women will be treated like second class citizens and won't be given any rights. What do you say to that?
How can women be second class citizens in a system where they're entitled to not work? When they're entitled... They have the right to be married, to be financially taken care of, to never have to take on a career if they don't want, all these sorts of things. They have a dowry that's paid to them that nobody can touch, right? All of these sorts of things. I don't see how they're second class citizens. Maybe they have a role that's a little bit different than the role of a father, the role of a husband. But that doesn't automatically mean that they're second class citizens. And people that come with that assumption need to reexamine their assumptions.
No system gives women more rights than Islam, because Islam is about putting people in the place where they're going to succeed, Not succeed when it comes to living in a high rise in a villa somewhere and having, driving a Bugatti or whatever you think is success. We're talking about being a good person in this world and achieving Paradise in the next. Does that mean that your rights are going to look exactly the same as somebody else's? No, they're not, because your privileges are also going to be different. Everybody has different rights and different privileges. I'm the tallest person in my household. I have a two year old son who is much shorter than me.
When it's time to change the light bulb, who gets to change the light bulb? It's me. It makes most sense for me to do that job. If I wanted my children to do it, could they? Maybe. But it wouldn't be right to expect that of them. in order to work as a household together, we have to have people focusing on different things. So when it comes to women's rights and Islam, Islam defines what are real rights and what aren't real rights. People, all people, women and men, have the right to be valued, to be safe, to be secure for fulfillment, these sorts of things. But when it comes to, okay, should women be able to be the President or the head of household or independent? This is losing the plot.
We don't exist just as individuals. Everybody is most fulfilled in a family setting. Everybody is most fulfilled in a community setting. And if you live in a family and if you live in a community, people have to have different roles. And so Islam encourages people having different roles in order... So that we can depend upon each other and work together the best. We know that in Sharia a man can marry four wives. What's the wisdom behind it and how can it be applicable nowadays? Marriage is always about family and children. Always. The modern world wants us to forget that. But marriage is always about family and children. What's best for families and what's best for children.
Are there situations in which women might want to enter into this arrangement, where they're the second wife, or the third wife, or the fourth wife? Yes, absolutely. Let's look at it like this. In the Sharia, women have the right to be taken care of financially. They have the privilege that if they don't want to, they shouldn't have to work. They shouldn't have to get a career. They shouldn't have to. If you want to, that's a different thing, but if you don't want to, then you have the right to not have to. So what are the mechanisms that are going to help us operationalize that? Polygamy is one of the mechanisms to operationalize that. You have somebody, they're in their 30's.
Their husband passes away young. They have young children. What are they going to do, go back with their parents? Maybe. What if they can't? Go to a brother? Again, maybe. But what if they can't? Instead of getting a career, having to work 40 hours a week, not seeing your children as much, think about the effect that that's going to have on the children, there's this option. If she wants, she can become someone's second wife and she'll be taken care of. She can focus on her kids and the kids are taken care of. And again, that's the main goal, is that whatever family arrangements we have, that the children are taken care of. There's other situations where actually it becomes really important.
In the situation or in the context of war, where you have situations historically where men have lost their lives in huge numbers. You know, you might go to a village and the balance between women and men might be very, very skewed towards women. You might have 70% women and 30% men, or even more than that. So what are all those women supposed to do? Right? Women have the rights in the Sharia to be married, to have children if they want to, and if you prevent them, or you don't give them a way to have that, or to fulfill that part of their lives and fulfill their rights, then it's going to be very difficult for them and very difficult for society.
It's important to mention that just because something can be misused doesn't mean that the whole thing is illegitimate. Allah (swt) tells us in the Quran that if you're going to do this thing, you're going to go into this arrangement that you have to be just between if you have multiple wives. And there is nobody more just to their wives than the Prophet Muhammad (saw). After Asr prayer every day, He would go and visit every single one of them until He made it around to the one who He was going to stay with that night. And so when it came to His time and His money as best as He possibly could, He would be fair. Somebody could ask, well, what if the husband mistreats one or the other?
Okay, what if a husband mistreats his only wife? What if a father mistreats his kids? We still have the institution of marriage. We still have fatherhood. Get rid of all of it just because it can be abused, right? We don't, as we say, cut the garment to fit the person. We help the person grow into the garment. Right? The person has to grow and to mature, to handle that responsibility and that power well. And so polygamy is the same. So why do men have the right to marry four wives? But women don't have the right to marry four husbands? Well, there's certain complications that arise if we were to extend that same right to women first of all. And that is lineage.
One of the things that the Sharia protects is lineage. So it's extremely important to know where you came from, to know who your father is, to know, you know, your sort of heritage. And if, just as a hypothetical, there was a situation where there was a woman who was married to more than one man, then that would be in doubt. that lineage would be in doubt. You wouldn't know who your real father was. And in fact, before the Prophet Muhammad (saw) came to Arabia, there were types of marriage in pre-Islamic Arabia that resembled that situation, where women would have children and they wouldn't be sure as to who was the father.
And if you need any sort of confirmation that this is damaging to the psychology of children and damaging to outcomes when it comes to behavior, when it comes to, you know, success, just look at the data. There's lots of data that shows that when people understand, they know who their biological parents are, they live with their biological parents, they're raised in a family setting that's supportive then that is the best for them psychologically, for their physical health, for their mental health, et cetera. That's what the family is for. So when we're looking about, these are just thought experiments. What if the woman has more than one husband? What if this, what if that?
What's the purpose of family? The purpose of family is to raise children and to raise children in a secure, safe environment where they're going to succeed. Okay, as Muslims, we believe that Sharia will bring us perfect justice. If there was such a good example of a state where Sharia is applied, do you think the non-Muslims would also prefer this system? Absolutely they would. And historically they have. If anybody doubts this, just look at the history of Palestine. What were the eras of history when Christianity thrived in Palestine? What were the eras of history ehen Judaism thrived in Palestine? That was actually when the Muslims were in charge.
In fact, every time the Christians took over Palestine, they kicked the Jews out, which is completely the opposite way that Muslims have dealt with them historically. And even Christianity, and there's many, many stories of this, that there was so much infighting. If you want to look into history, look at some of the Crusades, especially the Fourth Crusade. Some of the Crusades, they were fought first against other groups of Christians when they were passing through. So many of these groups of Christians in Palestine and in that area actually were happy about Sharia law.
And they were actually happy about the Muslims ruling over them, because they knew that within our law, within the Sharia, we have provisions to protect them and their independence and their religious freedom. Whereas in Christianity, in other sort of systems, there is no provisions. There's nothing on the books that would stop anybody from wiping them out or kicking them out or stopping them from practicing their religion. Okay, you say that the system is the most ideal one, but even in the Muslim countries that are ruled by Sharia, we see that the situation doesn't look that good. What do you think is the reason for this?
There is no country that is ruled by Sharia right now, because we have experienced that difference, where we're now understanding Sharia as just law in the modern sense of the word. Just rules and just punishment. There is no place where we have the Sharia society that existed before colonialism, where we had the institutions we had teaching people how to behave ethically, teaching people how to be their own policemen, right? To have that conscience that's going to stop them from doing the wrong thing. What we have today is we have some governments that have some rules that can be found in the Quran and can be found in the Sunnah, but that doesn't mean that we have an entire system.
And in fact, the Muslim world is really suffering from the fact that we don't have Sharia as an entire system. We only have modern law with Islamic packaging. What you say is good for the period when the Quran came out, but 1400 years have passed. Isn't it possible for mankind to have come up with a better system? - Do you have a car? - Yes. - What's the kind of car do you drive? - German car. In the glove compartment, do you have the owner's manual for that car? Why haven't you written a new owner's manual? -I don't need to. - Why? - They already did. - They already did. And what would happen if you tried to make a new owner's manual? I would mess the car up.
Because you didn't make the car. So how are we going to? We believe in a Creator. The Creator made us. The Creator knows us. He knows our internal motivations. He knows our capabilities. He knows our shortcomings. And He made a system that's supposed to govern us inside and out. From the time that we're babies, to the time that we die, that's supposed to guide us to the best possible way. So what are you or I going to add to that? If you and I try to come up with a new owner's manual, we'll end up breaking the car. You know that in Sharia, there's a concept called eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Why is that? Because when people seek revenge, they're very rarely just, okay?
So, you know, someone comes and they hit your car on accident. Maybe you go and you retaliate. You hit their car on purpose. Now they're upset at you. They throw something on your house, right? And it escalates. This is human nature, it escalates. Because we always, psychologically, we perceive the harms against us to be enormous, and we perceive the harms done against other people to be small and insignificant, okay? So now let's blow that up on a societal level. You have Tribe A and Tribe B, okay? Tribe A kill somebody from Tribe B. What's Tribe B going to do? They're going to kill two people from Tribe A. What's tribe A going to do?
They're going to go back they're going to wipe out a whole village. And it goes on and on and on. And this was the lived reality of people in the Hejaz and in Arabia before Islam came to them. Retaliation, right? Nobody would stop. It would just produce feuds that would last hundreds of years. How are you going to stop it? Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth stops it. Qisas stops it. It says, if this happens, this is exactly what you're entitled to, nothing more. And once you've gotten that, it's over. You have to let it go after that.
Anything beyond that is too much, and it's only going to cause more harm and more retaliation and more problems And that's why also the family is given the ability to forgive it if they want. They say, "Okay, we're going to take the punishment because that's what's going to feel best for us. We're going to get closure." Or, "We'll take blood money or some sort of payment." Or, "We'll forgive it." It's up to them. So if someone's husband is killed, right, so the family gets to decide, okay, what's going to happen to the person who committed that crime. Are they going to be killed? It's possible. Maybe they can't... You know, we have this happen in the United States.
Somebody kills someone close to you. Some people literally can't sleep at night knowing that that person is around. Maybe he's walking the streets. Maybe he lives in your neighborhood. Right? It's impossible. That person has no peace. It's within the family's right to expect that person have their life taken as well. That's fine. But maybe they would rather not do that. Maybe they feel sorry. Maybe they know that the person, you know... It was in a moment of haste or something like this. Passion crime, we call it. So maybe they say "Okay, you know, you can pay the blood money, a certain sum, and then we'll call it, that's enough." Maybe they're even further than that.
And they want to truly, actually, just forgive and let it go. But the important thing is that this is supposed to be the barrier. There's nothing after this. There's no retaliation after this. Because once you retaliate, you're not going to be able to be fair. So you have to trust Allah (swt) that Allah is going to be fair. Imam Tom Facchine, thank you for your answers. We will come up with harder questions next time. I'll be ready.