Meet John Lee. He's a third-year law student at Penn. He works at the Penn Law Journal. He's interned at the U.S. Attorney's Office and has a job at an intellectual property law firm in Washington, DC waiting for him when he graduates. Yet, at Penn Law School, he's had the chance to undertake the project that became the opportunity of a lifetime.
Meet professor Paul Robinson. He's the Colin S. Diver Distinguished Professor at the Law School. His areas of expertise are criminal law, criminal code reform, criminal law theory and criminal sentencing. Over the course of the past three decades, he's helped rewrite or offer critiques of criminal codes in Illinois, Kentucky, China, Ireland, Belarus and Ukraine. Now he's got a new challenge.
The president of the Maldives, Maumoon Gayoom, contacted the United Nations asking for help to reform his country's criminal code. The United Nations called on Robinson to take up the task. Normally, he would have a professional staff to assist him. But this semester, Robinson decided to open the task to 18 students at the Law School. John Lee was one such student.
This project is quite an enormous undertaking. First, all members involved must compile the current code and analyze the principles behind it. Since the Maldives is a Muslim country, this involved a tremendous amount of research on the Shari'a, Islamic legal code. I asked Lee to describe the preparation for such a project. He replied that those involved spoke with professors of Islamic law and read treatises dealing with the Shari'a written by experts.
The Shari'a is often misconstrued as an oppressive form of law characterized by harsh punishments (i.e., cutting off the hands of thieves or stoning adulterers) and the repression of women. Yet Lee learned through his research that nothing in the Shari'a is actually against human rights norms. The principles just need to be taken in a modern context.
When I asked Lee why he was interested in such a project, he gave me a host of reasons. The most compelling was that this project was a way to help mend the rift between Muslim nations and the West. No matter how much President Bush may say that Iraq was not a war against Islam, there is a perception, particularly in the Muslim world, that it was. As we learned in Marketing 101, perception is everything.
Daniel Pipes, head of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, noted on CNN that he believed the group's efforts were a waste of time. According to CNN, he remarked that the Shari'a is incompatible with many Western values, including freedom of religion, gender equality and the separation of church and state. It's exactly this type of attitude that this sort of project seeks to remove; it's a dangerous stereotype to perpetuate. Remember, it was the Maldivians who asked for our assistance, not the other way around.
When I spoke with Robinson, he explained the process in more detail. After the group researches the current code and prepares a draft, he presents that draft and commentary to the Maldivian government. Officials then comment on the code and offer their suggestions and criticisms. There is a constant discourse between the parties. Professor Robinson noted that, yes, sometimes they will try to inject Western ideals into their code, but sometimes they will adhere to the conditions the Maldivians ask of them. There's a fair amount of give and take.
This open dialogue ensures that no misunderstandings exist. Subsequently, this yields the greatest chance of the code being adopted by the Maldivian government. Robinson noted that his job was to put the principles of the Shari'a into a specific legal code.
The benefits of this project are many. From the American perspective, students like Lee, here at Penn, are afforded a tremendous opportunity to learn about an entirely different system of criminal laws. But also, we can help these Muslim nations modernize their interpretations of the Shari'a so that they are consistent with universal -- not necessarily Western -- standards for human rights.
Lee remarked that there has been much criticism of his project because of the beliefs of people like Pipes. There is a perception that Muslims are terrorists and that Muslim governments are repressive. These are dangerous stereotypes indeed, but despite all the criticism they face, Lee believes the effort is still worth undertaking.
This project is not going to reinvent the wheel, as Lee and Robinson noted. But here at Penn, an important first step is being taken. This project is a great way to help open up Muslims to Western ideals, and perhaps more importantly, the converse as well.
Craig Cohen is a Wharton junior from Woodbury, N.Y. He Hate Me appears on Fridays.
