What is Sharia and Why Does It Matter?

Back in February of this year (2008), Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, stirred great controversy through an interview on BBC. He stated that in view of England’s growing Muslim population it would become necessary to accept some principles of Islamic sharia* law into the British system of jurisprudence. The statement provoked strong criticism throughout Britain.

But criticism was by no means universal. Harvard Law Professor and Islamic scholar Noah Feldman wrote a lengthy defense of sharia’s place in the modern world which was published in The New York Times Magazine (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/magazine/16Shariah-t.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin ). He asks, “How is it that what so many Westerners see as the most unappealing and pre-modern aspect of Islam is, to many Muslims, the vibrant, attractive core of a global movement of Islamic revival?“

Professor Wael B. Hallaq of McGill University in Montreal states in The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law (Cambridge University Press, 2005), “One of the fundamental features of the so-called modern Islamic resurgence is the call to restore the sharia, the religious law of Islam. During the past two and a half decades, this call has grown ever more forceful, generating religious movements, a vast amount of literature, and affecting world politics.”

To complicate the discussion it was revealed by The Sunday Times of London (http://143.252.148.161/tol/comment/faith/article4749183.ece ) that as of September alternative sharia courts have been established in five locations in England with more on the way. The courts are run by the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal under the Arbitration Act of 1996. They are considered a form of alternative dispute resolution. The courts issue rulings on matters ranging from domestic violence to divorce, inheritance rights, and nuisance suits against neighbors. According to The Times these courts have the full backing of British civil courts and are enforced by the British legal system. This, only six months after Archbishop Williams first broached the subject to great public opposition.

Muslim-born Anglican priest Patrick Sookdheo’s response to Williams’s original proposal is instructive, “The process of setting up a system of sharia courts recognized by the state and its civil law will help those Muslims in Britain who appear to be working to develop a network of loosely-knit Islamic autonomous regions, a de facto non-territorial Islamic state.”

So the question is: What is sharia and why does it matter? I think this is the single greatest cultural question confronting western democracies as we enter the first half of the 21st century.

Sharia, or the sacred law, is the legal tradition of Islamic culture and societies. It embodies the guiding principles for the legal systems embraced by Islamic republics. It has a long history of development and carefully established traditions. The keeping of sharia is a central feature of the Islamic faith, which is a system with both religious and political traditions at its core. The sources of sharia are the Quran, the sunnah and hadith (traditions and sayings of Mohammed and his companions), ijma (established consensus of Islamic legal scholars), and qiyas (argument through analogy in matters not already addressed by the established legal tradition). In short, sharia is the guiding principle of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). And fiqh is to Islamic societies what the common law and case law are to the British and American systems of jurisprudence.

This provokes another question: Are the two traditions compatible? Can one system be assimilated into the other, or are they two mutually exclusive competing systems which cannot occupy the same space at the same time? This is a question western societies must examine and answer sooner rather than later. Here’s why.

In his book Who Speaks for Islam? John L. Esposito, director of the Georgetown University Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding asserts that a majority of Muslims worldwide desire to see sharia as a source of law, and in some cases as the source of law for Muslims. This is one of the clearest implications of his research in which he used data from the Gallup World Poll of Muslims along with co-author Dalia Mogahed.

As Harvard Law Professor Feldman stated above, for Muslims, sharia is clearly “the vibrant, attractive core of a global movement of Islamic revival.” Both Esposito and Feldman indicate that popular impressions of sharia are a caricatures of a noble tradition.

It is on precisely this point that the water becomes muddied. Non-Muslims tend to portray the call to establish sharia as an extremist or radical position. But it appears that mainstream Muslims in places like Britain want to establish sharia as a source of law. If this is in fact so, is this really a moderate position? I don’t think so. Yet it appears to be a majority position within the community of practicing Muslims worldwide.

Excluding caricatures, no matter how noble some aspects of the tradition of sharia may have been in Islamic societies in antiquity, is this a tradition whose influence should be fostered and accepted uncritically in the name of tolerance? Or do we insist that the establishment of a parallel system of jurisprudence endorsed by the state is at odds with the principles of our constitution? It appears that Great Britain is unwilling to say so. This question is quickly becoming critically important.

*The word sharia, like many words transliterated into Latin letters from another alphabet (in this case Arabic) does not have a precise spelling in English. It is sometimes spelled shari’a, shari’ah, or shariah. I have standardized the spelling as sharia even in quoted passages.

Under the Radar

In the midst of the election excitement here in the U.S, two events of great import are passing under the radar for most Americans. On the cultural level I think they carry as much significance as the election outcomes themselves.

The first is the exchange of open letters between 138 Muslim clerics and mostly western Christian leaders. The international group associated with the Royal Aal-Bayt Institue for Islamic Thought in Jordan published the document “A Common Word Between Us and You” in October 2007. In the document, they state that “The future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians. The basis for this peace already exists. It is part of the foundational principles of both faiths: love of the One God, and love of the neighbor.”

In November a response was spearheaded by the Yale Center for Faith and Culture entitled “Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to ‘A Common Word Between Us and You.”

Among the authors of the document are Harold Attridge, dean of the Yale Divinity School, and Miroslav Volf, founder and director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Miroslav is a native of Croatia. I first met him in 1992. He has served for years as a visiting professor on the faculty of the Evandjeoski Teoloshki Fakultet (Evangelical Theological Seminary) in Croatia where I served as dean for several years in the mid-90’s, and continue as a lecturer annually. His books Exclusion and Embrace and The End of Memory have gained international acclaim.

The Yale document has garnered the support of many well-known evangelical and traditional church leaders, including some of my colleagues from the seminary in Croatia. The hope is that the effort will produce the fruit of peaceful dialogue and increased understanding between the Christian and Muslim worlds. To be frank, I am more than guarded in my optimism.

The Yale document has generated not only support, but strong criticism as well. One of the more insightful responses comes from the Barnabas Fund which is led by Anglican priest, Canon Patrick Sookhdeo, a converted Muslim who understands the issues at hand better than most. A very brief summary of the objections are as follows:

1) The Yale document fails to recognize that “A Common Word” appears to be in the da-wa tradition of Islam. That is, a call to conversion to Islam. 2) The eagerness to respond has blinded the authors to the negative implications of the Muslim letter. 3) The apologetic tone of the response plays into the historic Muslim insistence on a dominate-subordinate relation between Islam and other religions. In essence, the response is an appeasement. 4) The many signatories in support of the Yale statement signed it without an adequate understanding of Islam’s approach to other religions. 5) The Yale statement surrenders theological ground regarding the deity of Christ in light of the Muslim insistence that God is one and that we shall ascribe no partner unto Him, which is quoted in the Muslim letter. 6) While the role of Muhammad and the Muslim understanding of the unity of God are recognized there is no reciprocal statement confirming the Christian view of Christ and the Gospel. 7) The Yale authors take responsibility and apologize for both the Crusades and the “excesses of the war on terror,” thus reinforcing Muslim belief in collective guilt (and thus the justice of collective retribution), and that the war on terror is an extension of the Crusades pitting Christendom against Islam. 8) Muslims have welcomed the apology and published the admission of guilt by Christians without conceding any historical wrongdoing on the part of Muslims, moderate, radical or otherwise, including the persecution of believers and suppression of religious freedom within Muslim dominant countries.

The Barnabas Fund analysis recognizes the value of dialogue, but they see the Yale Statement as “giving everything away without receiving anything in return,” i.e. it is an act of appeasement. There can be no dialogue where the human rights of Christians in predominately Muslim countries are not given equal hearing with Muslim concerns

I think these criticisms are valid, and reveal a serious flaw in the approach of the Yale Center. The question is, is this a kind of cultural Munich Declaration (“Peace in our time”) or the opening of a genuine dialogue? Only time will tell. Meanwhile Miroslav Volf has posted a letter on the Yale site acknowledging similar criticisms and committing to deal with them honestly. My concern in all of this is that the project’s detractors will be written off as intolerant and reactionary. As stated in the Barnabas Fund analysis, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical or even alarmed.

You can view both original documents, the Barnabas Fund analysis, and Miroslav Volf’s letter on the following links:

http://www.acommonword.com/
http://www.yale.edu/faith/
http://www.barnabasfund.org/news/archives/

The second event is Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ statement of February 7 on BBC that some accommodation to Muslim shari’a law is inevitable in Britain. While little noticed in the States, the statement generated headlines throughout Britain. The public outcry and some high level calls for his resignation reportedly shocked the Archbishop. So why the strong reaction? Simply put, many Brits feel vulnerable, not only to terrorist threats, but to cultural threats, as well --- a more genteel version of the clash of civilizations.

Again, Canon Sookhdeo’s response to this controversy: “The process of setting up a system of shari’a courts recognized by the state and its civil law will help those Muslims in Britain who appear to be working to develop a network of loosely-knit Islamic autonomous regions, a de facto non-territorial Islamic state.” (More, http://www.barnabasfund.org/ , Barnabas Fund’s Response to the Archbishop of Canterbury).

It is too easy for the intellectually smug to write off such criticisms as alarmist hysteria or Islamophobia. I’m not so sure. I’ve never considered name-calling to be a very impressive argument. Such concerns need to be taken seriously.

Canada also faces conflict over shari’a. In 2005 Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty abruptly announced his intention to end all faith-based arbitration in his province. This was in order to fend off efforts to establish shari’a courts in addition to the existing Catholic and Jewish arbitration relating to family law which had been recognized since 1991. But now there are efforts afoot to introduce shari’a compliant no-interest mortgage instruments such as are currently popular in Britain for Muslim banking clients.

In a book entitled The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law, published in 2005 by Cambridge University Press, Professor of Islamic Law, Wael B. Hallaq of McGill University in Montreal writes the following:

“One of the fundamental features of the so-called modern Islamic resurgence is the call to restore the Shari’a, the religious law of Islam. During the past two and a half decades, this call has grown ever more forceful, generating religious movements, a vast amount of literature, and affecting world politics.” He also writes that Muhammad established Islam as “a new religion with a political order at its center” (emphasis mine).

For students of Islam, there is nothing controversial about either of these statements. What amazes me is how few Americans are familiar with these facts, and have never spent an iota of energy considering their implications. I say Americans, not westerners. Europeans are well aware of them by now and as the Rowan Williams controversy shows, are busy wrestling with the implications.

The concerns many are raising about the implications of Islamic law in western society are sincere. These questions are arrived at honestly. They deserve honest answers. They should not be summarily dismissed. Perhaps that is the kind of dialogue some signatories of the Yale statement are hoping for.

As time goes on, the implications of the role of shari’a law will only increase in importance both in Europe and in North America. While most Americans are wasting their time with the American Idol, a seismic shift is taking place directly under their feet. The Yale Center’s call for dialogue is certainly in order, but I’m not sure how many in the west are capable of asking a single intelligent question about the issues. The average American has no idea what the political tenets of Islam are, or how they might be expressed in the public square. Maybe we should start thinking about it.