Sharia in Arabic means a “way” or a “path.” Muslims agree that sharia is God’s law, but there is little consensus on the particulars. To some, sharia is a set of rules that are codified and unchanging. To others, it’s a collection of religious principles that shift over time.
Imam Yahya Hendi, Muslim chaplain leader at Georgetown University and spokesman of the Islamic Jurisprudence Council of North America, describes Muslims as being divided into two camps: “those who see sharia mandating that we live as Muslims did 1,300 years ago, and those who say sharia doesn’t have a specific format as to how you live your life, that Islam gives you paradigms.”
This question of how to define sharia has become a more urgent issue for Muslims around the world in recent decades as, according to some estimates, one-third live outside Muslim-majority countries for the first time in history. Scholars debate at conferences what it means for a government or a person to be “sharia-compliant.”
Simply look at those countries and places where Muslims are in the majority and run the government. More closer at home:
[blockquote](CNSNews.com) – The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has joined the growing condemnation of plans by a Florida church to burn copies of the Quran on the 9th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.
A spokesman for the Jeddah-based bloc of Islamic states expressed concern Tuesday that the planned action by the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville would stir up “anger across the Muslim world and provoke unrest.â€
The OIC said it hoped the U.S. government would “take appropriate steps to protect the sacred religious sentiments of Muslims of America and of the Muslims across the world.†[/blockquote]
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/71581
It’s only another example of Islamic one way tolerance. Everyone must be tolerant of them and respect their sensibilities while they are tolerant of no one and do as they wish as they proceed with the ground zero mosque (its their right don’t you know) . And of course liberal/progressives are their bedfellows.
This article from the Washington Post is actually pretty balanced, and it’s worth reading in full. “Moderate Islam” is indeed the effort to make Islam about principles and paradigms rather than a set of unchangeable rules. “Sharia” has meant that set of unchangeable rules for 1100-1200 years, assuming we allow 200-300 years for its development (and this idea itself is heresy in strict Islamist circles). If Western Muslims are talking about a modified, modernized Islam, they should use a term other than “sharia.” It is true that some majority-Muslim countries do not use sharia in its fullest form. Egypt, for instance, does not stone people, and it will prosecute forcible rape, something that doesn’t happen in places like rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. But the application of Egyptian-modified sharia is still onerous for women, even if not as horrible as the situation of their sisters in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.
The persons quoted in this hardly-balanced article seem not to be aware that within Shari’a there are four schools of interpretation, each interpreting Shari’a in different ways. Americans are woefully ignornant of Islam, including the contents of the Qur’an, the Hadith, and Shari’a. Shari’a is hardly “unchangeable law.”
How Sharl’a is implemented in any Muslim society depends on the country. Indonesia is officially a secular constitutional nation which recognizes Catholicism and Protestantism among its official religions Shari’a is not imposed on any non-Muslim; also in Bosnia, Shari’a is recognized in family law but cannot override secular law.
I should hope that Christian would treat a Qur’an burning with the same horror as a burning of Bibles. Any peoples’ sacred books should be respected. The Catholic Bishops Conference in Indonesia has publically condemned the proposed burning. They have shown their respect by giving the Muslim leadership there enough copies of the Qur’an to supply every Indonesian Muslim who is presently imprisoned in Australia; the copies were gratefully received.
It’s time we Americans stopped listening to the fearmongers and enter into dialogue with Muslims instead. We might also meditate on the fifty-odd places in the Bible where someone says, “FEAR NOT!”