Rasheed – Right-Minded

By Pamela Taylor

If our minds are all to the Right

Are we Right Minded?

Or perhaps we should lean to the Left?

Is a Muslim to be a Democrat, or a Republican?

A Whig or a Tory?

Socialist, Capitalist, Communist?

Follow the Shari’ah, you say.

I ask,

And just whose Shari’ah is that?

Yours or Mine?

His, you say.

But your understanding of His

And my understanding of His

And His understanding of His

Are not the same.

Not to mention the 1.5 billion other shari’ahs out there.

How can you make a government based on religion

Without compulsion of religion?

La ikraha fi deen.

Would you then compulse

Those who understand their religion differently?

Those who do not follow your religion?

Is neglecting prayers a punishable offense?

Or eating pork?

And drinking wine?

What of fornication?

Or murder?

Secular laws can be Divine, too.

Theft, by any reasoning, is a crime.

Do we proclaim the Divine Decree

Or the Humanist Logic

Behind our prosecution of the Thief?

Can one mandate morality?

Or do we only enforce its manifestations

And repress the manifestations of its absence?

Pamela Taylor is the Secretary of the Islamic Writers Alliance. More of her political poetry will be appearing in an anthology of women's political writing sponsored by Colorado State University.