Sadakat Kadri is an English barrister, a Muslim by birth and a historian. His first book, The Trial, was an extensive survey of the Western criminal judicial system, detailing more than 4,000 years of courtroom antics.<\/p>\n
In his new book, Heaven on Earth, Kadri turns his sights east, to centuries of Shariah law. The first parts of his book describe how early Islamic scholars codified \u201d\u201d and then modified \u201d\u201d the code that would govern how people lead their daily lives. Kadri then turns to the modern day, reflecting on the lawmakers who are trying to prohibit Shariah law in a dozen states, as well as his encounters with scholars and imams in India, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, Turkey and Iran \u201d\u201d the very people who strictly interpret the religious and moral code of Islam today. And some of those modern interpretations, he says, are much more rigid \u201d\u201d and much more draconian \u201d\u201d than the code set forth during the early years of Islamic law.<\/p>\n