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Apologia Report 13:13
April 4, 2008
Subject: The misunderstood attraction of Shariah law
In this issue:
ISLAM - Shariah law: its influence yesterday, today, and tomorrow + "Negotiating the Future" of Shariah law
MORMONISM - leading LDS historian acknowledges identity of "the fourth Abrahamic religion"
ORIGINS - "Expelled," coming to theaters April 18, playfully pits Intelligent Design underdog against science bully, Higher Education
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ISLAM
"Why Shariah?" by Noah Feldman, "a law professor at Harvard University and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. This essay is adapted from his [new] book The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State [1]." Feldman presents the most convincing non-adversarial treatment of Shariah law that we have seen. He explains that "Westerners typically imagine that Shariah advocates simply want to use the Koran as their legal code. But the reality is much more complicated. ...
"For many Muslims today, living in corrupt autocracies, the call for Shariah is not a call for sexism, obscurantism or savage punishment but for an Islamic version of what the West considers its most prized principle of political justice: the rule of law."
Feldman develops the history supporting this. In early Islam, "the system of Islamic law as it came to exist allowed a great deal of leeway. That is why today's advocates of Shariah as the source of law are not actually recommending the adoption of a comprehensive legal code derived from or dictated by Shariah - because nothing so comprehensive has ever existed in Islamic history. To the Islamist politicians who advocate it or for the public that supports it, Shariah generally means something else. It means establishing a legal system in which God's law sets the ground rules, authorizing and validating everyday laws passed by an elected legislature. In other words, for them, Shariah is expected to function as something like a modern constitution."
Feldman anticipates the question: "[W]hat is the particular appeal of placing Shariah above ordinary law?
"The answer lies in a little-remarked feature of traditional Islamic government: that a state under Shariah was, for more than a thousand years, subject to a version of the rule of law. And as a rule-of-law government, the traditional Islamic state had an advantage that has been lost in the dictatorships and autocratic monarchies that have governed so much of the Muslim world for the last century." Feldman explains this and adds that "today's Muslims are not being completely fanciful when they act and speak as though Shariah can structure a constitutional state subject to the rule of law. One big reason that Islamist political parties do so well running on a Shariah platform is that their constituents recognize that Shariah once augured a balanced state in which legal rights were respected. ...
"The governments of most contemporary majority-Muslim states, however, have lost [a balance of powers between a ruler subject to law and a class of scholars who interpreted and administered that law]. Rulers govern as if they were above the law, not subject to it, and the scholars who once wielded so much influence are much reduced in status."
Feldman notes that "Islamists today, partly out of realism, partly because they are rarely scholars themselves, seem to have little interest in restoring the scholars to their old role as the constitutional balance to the executive. ...
"The modern incarnation of Shariah is nostalgic in its invocation of the rule of law but forward-looking in how it seeks to bring this result about. What the Islamists generally do not acknowledge, though, is that such institutions on their own cannot deliver the rule of law. The executive authority also has to develop a commitment to obeying legal and constitutional judgments. That will take real-world incentives, not just a warm feeling for the values associated with Shariah.
"How that happens - how an executive administration accustomed to overweening power can be given incentives to subordinate itself to the rule of law - is one of the great mysteries of constitutional development worldwide." (And a fragile prospect for hope. - RP)
"Gradual change therefore increasingly looks like the best of some bad options. ... It is possible to imagine the electoral success of Islamist parties putting pressure on executives to satisfy the demand for law-based government embodied in Koranic law. This might bring about a transformation of the judiciary, in which judges would come to think of themselves as agents of the law rather than as agents of the state.
"Something of the sort may slowly be happening in Turkey. The Islamists there are much more liberal than anywhere else in the Muslim world; they do not even advocate the adoption of Shariah (a position that would get their government closed down by the staunchly secular military). Yet their central focus is the rule of law and the expansion of basic rights against the Turkish tradition of state-centered secularism. The courts are under increasing pressure to go along with that vision. ...
"The odds of success in the endeavor to deliver the rule of law are never high. ... In Iran, the Islamists have discredited their faith among many ordinary people, and a similar process may be under way in Iraq. Still, with all its risks and dangers, the Islamists' aspiration to renew old ideas of the rule of law while coming to terms with contemporary circumstances is bold and noble - and may represent a path to just and legitimate government in much of the Muslim world." New York Times Magazine, Mar 16 '08, pp46-51. <http://tinyurl.com/2sohg8>
With regard to the interpretation of Shariah, curiously, nothing is said by Feldman regarding the Hadith, a collection of thousands of sayings reputed to come from the Prophet Muhammad, and the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran. However, Feldman did refer to the work of secularists in Turkey. The BBC News story, "Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts" by Robert Piggott (Feb 26 '08), reports that "The country's powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith...." See <http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7264903.stm>
"Muslim reformer's 'heresy': The Islamic state is a dead end" by Jane Lampman -- profiles Emory University law professor Abdullahi Ahmed an-Naim, who proclaims that there is no such thing as an Islamic state.
Naim is the author of Islam and the Secular State [2] and the organizer of a Muslim Heretics Conference on March 28-30 in Atlanta [hereticmuslims.com], at which Some 75 Muslims, engaged in various reform projects, gathered to discuss issues related to sharia (Islamic law), democracy, and women's rights - and how to cope with dissent and its consequences.
"Naim's personal project involves what he calls 'negotiating the future of sharia.' As Islamic societies struggle to define themselves in a globalized world and some talk of creating Islamic states to codify sharia, he says the state and religion must be kept separate. But religion should still have its place in political life, allowing Muslims to express principles of sharia as they see fit. He believes this is truly Islamic, and that articulating the reasons why will help ordinary Muslims not be taken in by political slogans."
The article notes that Radwan Masmoudi, director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy in Washington, "believes Naim's goal of separating political and religious institutions is what a majority of Muslims want. Gallup's recent global poll showed 'that 80 to 90 percent of Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia want democracy,' he says, but similar majorities also want sharia to be a source, or the only source, of law in their countries." Christian Science Monitor, Apr 2 '08, p1 <http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0402/p01s01-usgn.html>
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MORMONISM
"'Perfect storm' sobering for LDS, historian says" (no byline) --
"There are things that Mormons can do to better the world's view of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Richard Bushman told an audience of close to 400 people gathered at Weber State University.
"The Mormon scholar ... spoke March 5 in Ogden. Bushman is the author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling [3] ...
"Bushman said in the last 10 years, there has been huge exposure of Mormonism to the world. The 'perfect storm' of Mormonism, Bushman called it, began with the Olympics in Salt Lake City, moved past Joseph Smith's 200th birthday and onto Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.
"It's exciting, Bushman said, but it has been sobering for many Mormons to see so much negative discussion about their religion in the wake of the storm. When Romney lost, in a certain way, Bushman said, Mormonism lost. There was the realization that 'we are not quite first-class citizens,' Bushman said. 'There are huge segments of the population that don't believe a Mormon is qualified to be president.' ...
"[W]hen the world tells them they are not Christian, 'they get all upset and start complaining.'
"'That's a mistake,' Bushman said. 'We have not provided a useful label for people to use.'
"We should let people come up with their own answers and find their own explanation, Bushman said.
"One of the best answers, Bushman said, was given by Richard Land, former head of the Southern Baptist Association [sic, read "Convention"]. Land said Mormons are the fourth Abrahamic religion.
"'Judaism, Islam, Christianity and Mormonism,' Bushman said, 'That's good company.' ...
"An incredible amount of energy and money in the LDS Church is spent on history and apologetics, Bushman said. Mormon historians are world renowned, and the apologists do well.
"But Bushman believes the governing question for the future of Mormon scholars is defining the humanistic meaning of Mormonism. ...
"'[R]ather than apologists or historians,' Bushman said, 'we need people who can make literature in comparative religion and philosophy who will situate Mormonism in this larger scheme.'" Deseret Morning News, Mar 13 '08
<http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695261037,00.html>
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ORIGINS
The new feature film, Expelled, is a docu-comedy poking fun of the academy in its efforts to "deny scientists who disagree with the core claim of evolutionary theory the right to pursue the scientific evidence for intelligent design theory." For more on this see:
<http://expelledthemovie.com/chronicle.php>
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Sources, Monographs:
1 - The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, by Noah Feldman (Princeton Univ Prs, 2008, hardcover, 200 pages)
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691120455/apologiareport>
2 - Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari'a, by Abdullahi Ahmed an-Naim (Knopf, 2005, hardcover, 768 pages)
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674027760/apologiareport>
3 - Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, by Richard Bushman (Knopf, 2005, hardcover, 768 pages)
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400042704/apologiareport>
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