Sherman A. Jackson2013-05-23T06:53:44-04:00Sherman A. Jacksonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=sherman-a-jacksonCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Sherman A. JacksonGood old fashioned elbow grease.Trayvon Martin: Between 'Whitening' and Bad Lawtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13983092012-04-02T19:04:59-04:002012-06-02T05:12:01-04:00Sherman A. Jacksonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sherman-a-jackson/
But this may be another instance of Americans imposing our dominant racial categories on others. For it is possible that Zimmerman both saw and positioned himself as white and Hispanic and that this self-understanding predisposed him to an attitude of contempt toward Trayvon and entitlement vis-a-vis the law. Europeans intermixed with blacks and natives in South and Central America for centuries, ultimately producing racial identities that stressed whiteness at the expense of all else. In fact, as late as the early 20th century, many in South and Central America were still in the throes of a national mission known as blanqueamiento, or "whitening." The basic idea here was that the African element in Latin populations had to be diluted if not eliminated if these societies were to make their way to full modernity and "civilization." Given that more than 10 times the number of Africans brought to the U.S. were taken to South and Central America, one can imagine how the idea of blackness being an impediment to progress might inform the Latin sense of self and Other.
I do not know Mr. Zimmerman, nor if he was influenced by or a proponent of blanqueamiento. Nor do I have reason to believe that the majority of Hispanics in the U.S. are influenced by or proponents of such. But given the confusion generated by Trayvon's killing, it is high time, I think, to recognize that the historical narrative and sensibilities that undergird U.S. black-white relations are not the only dynamic affecting race-relations in America, especially when it comes to attitudes toward blacks. While black and white Americans have confronted and largely repudiated racism -- at least as an ideal -- this is not necessarily the case, certainly not to the same extent, with racial attitudes coming into the U.S. from other parts of the world. And not just South and Central America! This is not to say that homegrown, American anti-black bigotry is a thing of the past. But as the demographics of America continue to shift from white to non-white, we will have to become more proficient at recognizing forms of anti-black racism that do not have "made in the U.S.A." stamped all over them. Otherwise, these are likely to cross breed and morph into more virulent and inscrutable forms that fly beneath our radar screen and leave us utterly powerless to address them.
In the meantime, we are left dumbfounded, dejected and scarred by the tragic death of an unarmed, innocent child. And whether we identify racism or blanqueamiento as the motive behind this killing, it was ultimately Florida law that allowed the killer to walk away free. This is simply an ill-conceived, dangerous and irresponsible law that threatens all Americans far more than it protects them. Indeed, given the fear the mere presence of blacks is known to evoke among some non-blacks, the cultural bigotry this law provides cover for is nothing short of bewildering! Recently, Newt Gingrich and others have argued for a ban on sharia in the interest of protecting Americans from bad and dangerous laws. But if protecting Americans from bad law is the real aim behind these efforts, Gingrich and his ilk should be falling all over each other to change this Florida law. As a nation, we should be clear that the whole world is watching us on this. And we should be mindful of how foolish we will look if we follow the example of the blind man who answers the call of nature facing a crowd of people and thinks that they cannot see what he exposes simply because he cannot.
Sherman A. Jackson is the King Faisal Chair of Islamic Thought and Culture, Professor of Religion and Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California.]]>9/11 A Decade Later: The Ironic Impact Of Islamophobiatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9521542011-09-08T18:53:36-04:002011-11-08T05:12:02-05:00Sherman A. Jacksonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sherman-a-jackson/
And yet, ironically, all of this has begun a slow but steady and long overdue process of shifting the Muslim understanding of America and thus of themselves as Muslim-Americans. Prior to 9/11, America was for far too many Muslims essentially an ideological playground. From the pulpit of the Friday prayer, e.g., one could hear some of the most mindless and irresponsible rhetoric reflecting fanciful pipe-dreams of post-colonial payback or civilizational redemption. This was possible, of course, because America itself was the land of unalloyed freedom that allowed for the expression of views that could never be uttered as such in the Muslim world. At the same time, America was the land of absolute opportunity. There was no unearned privilege, and there were no victims; there were only winners and losers, those who worked hard and played by the rules and those who didn't. America's newest "model minority" could readily avail itself of all the opportunities born of America's successful pursuit of her ideals (freedom, equality, etc.). But they took almost no interest in America's historical failures (with the lone exception, of course, of foreign policy). What had happened to African Americans, Native Americans, Jewish Americans, Chinese Americans and others said more about these groups than it said about America as a democratic project. Race, in this context, that quintessentially American understanding of difference, was simply the odd obsession of a few bigoted whites and a majority of hypersensitive blacks. As for the challenge of American socio-cultural reality, this could be easily met by reproducing the conventions and cultural practices that had worked so wonderfully "back home."
All of this is now slowly but surely changing. Muslims are now painfully aware of the consequences of their words and gestures, and this has imposed a healthy and welcomed degree of discipline on Muslim American discourses. Nor are Muslim Americans any longer blind to the reality of victimhood; they now know that bigotry and prejudice are real and operative; and they know that both must be confronted! This has made it increasingly difficult to ignore the role and centrality of race in American identity formation and the production of "problem peoples." At the same time, as the cultural conventions and practices brought from "back home" reveal their impotence in the face of American forms of delinquency, Muslims are assiduously engaged in the pursuit of specifically Muslim American expressions of socio-cultural values and institutions.
This is the future of Islam in America, pregnant with opportunity, fraught with danger. Whether Muslim efforts will result in crass assimilation, principled indigenization or a combination of the two remains to be seen. What seems certain, however, is that 9/11 has opened a new era. And it will be impossible for Muslim-Americans to return to the pre-9/11 age.
Muslim 9/11 Reflections: Islam In America 10 Years Later]]>Sharia and Day to Day Existencetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8033032011-01-03T08:44:44-05:002011-05-25T18:20:30-04:00Sherman A. Jacksonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sherman-a-jackson/
Beyond the false fear that Western Muslims are trying to take over, I pointed out that, even viewed through the prism of sharia, much, if not most, of American or Canadian law could be easily accommodated if not supported by religiously committed Muslims. Muslims might seek to modify, e.g., banking regulations to reflect Islam's ban on usury, or certain family and criminal law provisions (most of this applying only to Muslims) various terms of the Patriot Act or the sentencing guidelines for petty drug convictions, or aspects of America's war-making policies, including placing greater restrictions on weapons that routinely kill innocent civilians, based, ironically, on sharia doctrines of jihad. Beyond such exceptions, however, the bulk of laws affecting us in our daily lives would remain quite unobjectionable. And, to the extent that Muslims did seek change, this would be based not on Quranic verses, Prophetic hadith or ancient authorities but on the same basic logic and considerations that put the original laws in place to begin with.
This was part of a broader point about the nature of sharia and how it relates to non-Muslim orders and the fact that "non-Muslim" does not necessarily mean "un-Islamic." I gave a few quick examples of how the Prophet modeled this principle in his interaction with the pre-existing order of his adopted home at Medina; and I alluded to how the early Muslims followed suit in the conquered territories. What I did not get around to doing was providing concrete examples of this principle at work in modern America or Canada.
Simply stated, many, if not most, of the rules that most consistently touch our lives are secular in both origin and substance. By secular, I do not mean anti-religious but simply that rather than being based on Biblical (or other religious authority) they are grounded in what practical reason suggests will serve concrete human interests in the here and now. Not scripture, in other words, but order, practicality, efficiency and the like are the basic authority. And (politics aside) it is on this authority that these laws are promulgated, change or remain the same. One wakes up in the morning, takes a shower, eats breakfast, gets in one's car and goes to work. Secular laws and regulations govern every step of this process. Landlords are legally bound to provide heat and hot water; all of the ingredients in one's breakfast are regulated by food-safety standards, and all are delivered via means subject to interstate commerce regulations; one cannot operate one's car without a driver's license; and as soon as one turns on the car-radio, FCC regulations kick in; upon entering the highway, one falls under the mercy of speed limits and traffic laws, broken lines permitting one to change lanes, unbroken lines not; finally one arrives at work, where building codes and zoning regulations all press their claims.
My point in all of this is that the fact that these laws and regulations happen to be of non-Muslim origin does not automatically render them antithetical or unacceptable to Islam. As such, Muslims with perfectly good-faith commitments to sharia could wholly support and sanction the vast majority of them. Moreover, even where sharia-minded Muslims did seek to change, say, the speed limit from 55 mph to 50 or 60 mph, this would be governed not by any explicit text from the Quran or Sunna but on the basis of what was deemed to be a better balance between the secular interests of community safety and practical efficiency.
Of course, we should not be overly irenic about the relationship between sharia and Western law. But we also need not be overly confrontational or alarmist. While there remain areas of substantive difference and even conflict between sharia and the laws of the United States or Canada (as exist between these systems and Halakhah, various articulations of Protestantism or Catholic social teaching), taken as a whole, the area of agreement, or at least compatibility, is potentially far larger. Though most observers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, tend to limit their understanding of sharia to its criminal sanctions, in point of fact, sharia is a far more serious endeavor than that. And while Muslims should continue to struggle to ensure their ability to practice those aspects of their religion that cannot be surrendered in good conscience to secular logic or authority (and most of these probably relate to family law) this should not be mistaken for a denial of their recognition of those numerous aspects that can.
This brings me to two closing points. First, while liberal democracy is grounded in the theory of religious neutrality, controversies such as those surrounding stem-cell research, bigamy or abortion make it increasingly difficult to sustain the argument that all of American law (and perhaps especially family law) is, or perhaps even can be, un-storied and thus religiously neutral, either in origin or effect. Yet, just because all of the law is not based on religiously neutral considerations -- order, efficiency and the like -- this does not mean that none of it is or can be. To my mind, this recognition opens new possibilities in the way we think about the relationship between Islam and liberal democracy.
Second, in his recent, thought-provoking critique of liberalism, The Trouble With Principle, Stanley Fish argues that,
"a person of religious conviction should not want to enter the marketplace of ideas but to shut it down, at least insofar as it presumes to determine matters that he believes have been determined by God and faith. A religious person should not seek accommodation with liberalism; he should seek to rout it from the field."(p. 250)
In the case of Islam, however, this would presume that sharia ("God and faith") and the marketplace of ideas are co-extensive and that everything in the religious law is of the same level of authoritativeness and reliance upon scripture. But, clearly, Quranic injunctions requiring fathers to pay child support, e.g., are not the same as the jurists' conclusions on the actual dollar-amounts, even if both might be deemed "sharia" at any given time or place. On this distinction, the relationship between religiously committed Muslims and the marketplace of ideas clearly admits of good-faith alternatives to attempts to shut it down.
Religious peoples', including Muslims', unwillingness to negotiate some issues should not be confused with an unwillingness on their part to negotiate all issues. Muslims may not be willing to debate the moral status of wine-drinking, usury or the shares of inheritance; but traffic lights, FCC regulations, speed limits, building codes and their myriad likenesses? Clearly there is much to talk about, much to cooperate on and far less to fear, even assuming Muslims' good-faith commitment to sharia.
]]>Sharia in America: How Religious Laws Changetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7635922010-10-18T07:53:43-04:002011-05-25T18:00:30-04:00Sherman A. Jacksonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sherman-a-jackson/
We may overlook for the moment that "marital rape" is a very recent concept in our American system, the first state to criminalize non-consensual sex between spouses being South Dakota in 1975 and the last being North Carolina in 1993. We may also overlook the unfounded assumption that the Moroccan man's understanding of sharia necessarily equals sharia. We may ignore as well Gingrich's appeal to "big government" as opposed to relying on the otherwise trusted market of ideas. We will even overlook the fact that a number of Christian conservatives have expressed reservations about the concept of "marital rape," arguing that marriage by definition implies consent to sex, even if it does not imply any right for either spouse to resort to violence. Instead, I would like to focus on what strikes me to be a much deeper and more problematic assumption underlying not only Mr. Gingrich's position but that of many others who see it as their duty to warn us about the dangers of sharia, often through painfully misinformed and misleading depictions.
A common approach to convincing people that sharia is at irreconcilable odds with America and that Muslims who argue otherwise are just not telling the truth is to refer to sharia manuals themselves, books written by Muslim jurists with the presumptive purpose of laying out the law of Islam. As the anti-sharia critics usually do not know Arabic themselves and are untrained in sharia, the books they rely on are invariably translations of books that are themselves invariably centuries old. Now, no one would claim to be able to give an accurate picture of contemporary Chinese, Indian or American law by citing manuals several centuries old. But when it comes to sharia, the assumption is that, as a religious law grounded in an unchanging divine revelation, the law itself must be fixed and unchanging. Thus, it makes no difference when or where a manual on sharia is written; these books all reflect the permanent, unchanging -- and unchangeable -- law of Islam.
This kind of thinking takes me back to graduate school and an old friend of mine, a 13th century Egyptian jurist, Shihâb al-Dîn al-Qarâfî (on whom I wrote my dissertation). Al-Qarâfî noted that the problem of taking sharia to be the equivalent of the contents of books was a problem even for trained jurists. He pointed out, however, that sharia is not the mere contents of the Qur'ân, the teachings of the Prophet and the schools of law but an attempt to process lived reality in light of these. As a result, law books always include the jurists' responses to facts on the ground in addition to their relevant interpretations of scripture and of tradition. As such, just as the socio-political, cultural, economic and other aspects of the facts on the ground are likely to change, so too must the law. In this light, al-Qarâfî insisted, it was patently wrong to hold contemporary societies to conclusions reached by the jurists of the past contemplating the realities of the past. To clarify his point, he poses the following question and gives the following response:
Q: What is the correct view concerning those rulings found in the school of al-Shâfi'î, Mâlik and the rest, which have been deduced on the basis of habits and customs prevailing at the time these scholars reached these conclusions? When these customs change and the practice comes to indicate the opposite of what it used to, are the fatwas recorded in the books of the jurisconsults rendered thereby defunct, it becoming necessary to issue new fatwas on the basis of the new customs? Or do we say, "We are mere followers. It is thus not our place to innovate new rulings, as we lack the qualifications to engage in independent interpretation. We issue, therefore, fatwas according to what we find in the books handed down from the master jurists."?
R: Holding to rulings that have been deduced on the basis of customs after these customs have changed is a violation of unanimous consensus and an open display of ignorance of the religion.
Al-Qarâfî was himself a follower of the school of Mâlik. But in a demonstration of his point, he argued that there were numerous rulings recorded in the books handed down from Mâlik on which it was not permissible to follower the leader. For example, Mâlik, who lived several centuries before al-Qarâfî, had indicated that certain phrases when uttered constituted a declaration of divorce. Against his fellow Mâlikîs, whom he casts as sloppy in their juristic thinking, al-Qarâfî insisted that these phrases had absolutely no legal effect whatsoever today.
You know that you do not find anyone using these phrases today for this purpose. On the contrary, whole lifetimes pass and no one hears anyone say [these things] to his wife when he wants to divorce her. No one hears anyone use these phrases today, neither to sever the marital bond, nor to designate the desired number of divorces.
Returning to Mr. Gingrich and those who follow his lead, it is true that books on sharia, especially the ones they quote, may not recognize marital rape as a legal concept. But this does not mean that sharia can never do so. Rightly or wrongly, the issue itself has simply not attracted enough juristic attention among American Muslims to produce a debate that is serious enough to produce new juristic perspectives on the matter. But just as the early community following the Prophet's death encountered new, non-Muslim realities and processed these into new sharia rules, there is nothing in sharia that would prevent a similar process from taking place in America today.
Of course, this is no guarantee that "marital rape" will gain acceptance as a sharia concept. (I personally see some of the same problems with it that I see with the concept of marital theft or libel.) But whether or not it does will depend on the deliberations of contemporary, especially American, Muslim jurists, not solely on whether or not this or that ancient manual recognizes it.
If the aim of Mr. Gingrich and his supporters is to protect and promote the welfare of all Americans, they might consider an approach that allows for mutual benefit in place of one that reduces us all to the blind pursuit of raw competitive advantage. On this approach, warnings about sharia might at least take seriously what American Muslim jurists have to say about the matter. It might also recognize that the fears, concerns and legitimate aspirations of American Muslims are no less worthy of consideration than those of their non-Muslim compatriots.
]]>The Problem of Suffering: Muslim Theological Reflectionstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7139942010-09-18T19:51:09-04:002011-05-25T17:35:19-04:00Sherman A. Jacksonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sherman-a-jackson/
A: "No, glorified be God in whose dominion nothing occurs without God's permission."
M: "Does God will that God be disobeyed?"
A: "Could God be disobeyed against God's will?"
M: "If God denies me guidance and decrees my perdition, does God commit a good or an
evil act?"
A: "If God denies you something that belongs to you, then God commits an evil act. But if God denies you something that belongs to God, then God simply singles out for God's mercy whomever God pleases."
The problem of evil, especially human suffering, exercised classical Muslim theologians as much it does Western philosophers, theologians and scientists today. The issue then was basically the same as it is now: If God is All-Good and All-Powerful, how do we explain the existence of evil? The theological school known as Mu'tazilism emphasized God's all-goodness and argued that since God is All-Good, God cannot be the source of evil. Rather, it is humans who inflict suffering on other humans, entirely on their own. In fact, the Mu'tazilites argued, beyond the original act of creation, humans are not at all dependent on God to do what they do but actually create their own acts! By contrast, the Ash'arite school emphasized God's All-Powerfulness and argued that if God did not control all the affairs of the universe, something other than God could bring about things that went against God's will. For them, whatever occurs had to occur because God willed it. Otherwise, God would be neither All-Powerful, in complete control, nor, ultimately, God.
Both schools sought to absolve God of responsibility for evil. The Mu'tazilites did this by placing evil human acts entirely outside God's power and wholly in the hands of humans (which left them to explain things like earthquakes, floods and cancer). The Ash'arites, meanwhile, argued that if God is truly the All-Powerful Owner of the universe, God must be able to do with creation as God pleases, and no one can sit in judgment over what God does with God's own "property." In fact, the Ash'arites accused the Mu'tazilites of fudging the issue by falsely privileging the human perspective on what actually constitutes good and evil. They denied that humans were the center of some objective moral universe and pointed out that every moral judgment that humans might make could be matched by an opposite judgment by other humans. In this context, human suffering might be evil from the perspective of humans. But this would be no more an objective basis for indicting God than would be the argument of plants and animals against humans for eating them!
Of course, such arguments did not satisfy everyone. The founder of the Traditionalist school once asked rhetorically: If God is wholly unconnected to evil, what role can God play in lifting it? The Maturidite school, meanwhile, went even further. Not only did its founder accept that God could create evil, he actually turned evil's existence into a proof of God's existence! According to him, had the universe come into being on its own, it would have produced nothing that jeopardized its integrity or well-being. Thus, the very existence of evil implies autonomous choice on the part of something that stands outside the system -- God. Yet, while God can, according to the Maturidites, create evil and human suffering, God cannot and does not create evil that does not ultimately serve a wise purpose.
In all of this, Muslim theologians never isolated a single attribute of God (All-Powerful, All-Good, All-Wise, All-Merciful) as the sole basis of God's actions. While Mu'tazilites privileged God's all-goodness, this was tempered by their recognition of God's wisdom, power, autonomy, patience and other attributes. Ash'arites appear stoic in privileging God's all-powerfulness, but only if they are seen as negating God's goodness, mercy, justice and other attributes. In fact, when Ash'arites speak of God's ability to do whatever God pleases, they are only speaking of what God can do. What God actually does will be based not solely on God's brute power but on the total composite of God's attributes. The same applies to Traditionalists and Maturidites.
This strikes me to be perhaps among the most important differences between classical Muslim and many modern, non-Muslim Western discussions on evil and suffering. While the latter seem to isolate a single attribute -- all-goodness, all-lovingness, all-powerfulness -- and decide the issue on that basis alone, the former simply emphasize a single attribute but cling to a more complex composite of divine "character." In this light, the mere existence of evil and suffering could not dispose of the God question. For even if every instance of human suffering could tell us something about the existence and nature of God, every instance of human happiness and well-being must tell us something of equal proof-value about the nature and existence of a complex, multifaceted Creator.
Muslim theologians summed up this dual reality in the notion of living life between the two poles of hope and fear -- hope that the irresistible choices of an all-powerful God would be ultimately tempered by mercy, compassion and love, and fear that they might not. Of course, the very notion of fear is a major problem for religious discourse today, as "organized religion" has so notoriously used it to exploit and subjugate believers. But just because one is paranoid does not mean that one is not being followed. In the end, we are all afraid, if not of God, death, and eternal damnation then of the earthly Hell of loveless objectification, disrespect and nobodyness, a fear that can subject us to régimes of fantasy and exploitation no less debilitating, and no less blasphemous, than religious tyranny and treachery.
But is theology in the end really a match for the brutalities and disappointments of life -- an earthquake, the death of a child, 9/11, the betrayal of a friend, spouse or sibling, the seemingly schizophrenic turning of one's entire society against one? In these moments, it seems to matter little whether one is a Mu'tazilite, Ash'arite, Maturidite or Traditionalist. For, while good theological answers may empower one to understand catastrophe, understanding alone is rarely enough to neutralize the pain of loss or regret. What I need here is solace and reconciliation with the fact of my creatureliness; the courage, honesty and dignity to acknowledge that I am not in control; yet the insight and fullness of soul to see in the enormity of what has happened that I am just as eligible for enormous good as I am for enormous tragedy. Here my reach is ultimately for something "outside the system," something capable of breaking all the rules, of defying the laws of probability and chance -- for me! This is the beginning of the theological impulse.
Yet, while, the theological impulse, however crude, may be the beginning of my relationship with God, it is only the beginning. And I must be careful not to mistake the menu for the meal. Whether I emphasize God's goodness or justice, God's power or wisdom, these mental abstractions will only take on concrete meaning for me in the context of my actual relationship with God. Ultimately, if the real goal of theology is to promote a living relationship with God and not simply to paint a pretty picture of God, perhaps the real value of what it has to say about evil and suffering resides not so much in how it mars or enhances idealized images of God but in how it enriches or impoverishes the human relationship with God.
For a more detailed look at Muslim theology, see myOn the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam(Oxford, 2002) or, especially on suffering, myIslam and the Problem of Black Suffering(Oxford, 2009).
]]>What Is Shariah and Why Does It Matter?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7109762010-09-11T20:16:57-04:002011-05-25T17:35:19-04:00Sherman A. Jacksonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sherman-a-jackson/
The same applies to shariah. Most Americans have no idea what it really means or stands for. But the deeds and rhetoric of some have produced a similar effect: shariah has come to constitute a red flag, even without the misrepresentations of so-called Islamophobes. Many Muslims dislike this logic and are actually as offended by it as some Americans will be by the insinuation that our flag can double as a symbol of racism. Both groups would do well, however, to note that people are not going to ignore their actual experiences just to make others comfortable in their ideologically constructed world of ideals.
And yet only the naïveté of the most crass and cynical utopianism would deny the validity of an ideal based solely on the reality of an experience. We don't conclude that the ideal of eradicating hunger is bogus simply because so many hungry people continue to exist. Rather, if those who have the resources and opportunity to eradicate hunger consistently fail to do so, we conclude that they are either not fully committed to this ideal or that they are woefully blind and inept in their attempts to realize it.
At the most basic level, shariah is the Muslim universe of ideals. It is the result of their collective effort to understand and apply the Quran and supplementary teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (called Sunna) in order to earn God's pleasure and secure human welfare in this life and attain human salvation in the life to come. While the Quran and Sunna are transcendent and unchangeable, shariah itself is the negotiated result of competing interpretations. In fact, most Muslims tend to speak not of shariah but of fiqh, which literally means "understanding" and underscores the distinction between God's prescriptions on the one hand and the human attempt to understand these on the other. This in turn explains two other unavoidable characteristics of shariah: diversity of opinion, and inevitable change. In Sunni Islam (and to do Shiism justice would require a separate treatment) there are four "schools" of fiqh, all equally orthodox, all equally authoritative. This is because Sunnism never established a single ecclesiastical authority or "church" to decide doctrine. Instead, the only doctrines deemed binding on the community as a whole were those on which the community's scholars reached a unanimous -- not majority! -- consensus. In the absence of this, competing parties would simply have to agree to disagree, as no school or individual -- not even the Caliph or temporal ruler -- could claim the infallible right to impose a doctrine as unassailable truth.
As for change, the rules of shariah are divided into two categories: religious observances (prayer, fasting, etc.) and civil-criminal matters (marriage, sales, adultery, jihad, etc.). While religious observances are relatively static and fixed, the rules on civil-criminal matters are subject to change in accordance with circumstances. Here, in fact, we come to a fourth important feature of shariah: in addition to interpreting scripture in order to apply it to reality, shariah also includes the attempt to process reality to determine how scripture, Prophetic teaching and the cumulative tradition of deliberation would have one respond to it. In this capacity, shariah may end up sanctioning, or even including, all kinds of ideas and institutions that were not dictated by scripture. For example, there were no domes, schools of fiqh or minarets in the Prophet's Arabia. Likewise, the fact that there was no democracy or "human rights" does not automatically render these "un-Islamic." In short, shariah includes the attempt to proffer God-conscious responses to an ever-changing reality. And in this capacity, many of its rules are subject to change with changes in the circumstances to which it seeks to respond.
Having said all of this, shariah is not just "rules." While the common translation, "Islamic law," is not entirely wrong, it is under-inclusive, for shariah includes scores of moral and ethical principles, from honoring one's parents to helping the poor to being good to one's neighbor. Moreover, most of the "rules" of shariah carry no prescribed earthly sanctions at all. The prescriptions covering ablution or eating pork or how to dress are just as much a part of shariah as are those governing sale, divorce or jihad. Yet there are no earthly punishments prescribed for those who violate these dictates. Like the bulk of shariah's "rules," reward and punishment in these areas are the preserve of God in the Afterlife.
Unfortunately, many Americans have been led to believe that shariah equals not only rules but criminal punishments -- floggings, for example. Three quick points: First, criminal sanctions constitute a tiny sliver of shariah. Of the 1,081 pages of the two-volume Arabic text from which I studied shariah, only 60 pages were devoted directly to criminal sanctions! (Jihad, incidentally, took up only 19.) Second, the criminal sanctions of shariah did not emerge as the property or instrument of the Muslim state but functioned in fact to impose limits on the use of state power. Third, the punishments for criminal behavior cannot be separated from the evidentiary rules -- equally shariah! -- that provide for their application (e.g., multiple eye-witnesses). In practical terms, in other words, short of confession, rules on such things as adultery or fornication function almost entirely as moral exhortations. God-consciousness spawned by shariah, not fear of being punished, sustains these ideals. Of course, many Americans will object that such issues should not be subject to any rules or religious exhortations at all. But given some of our increasingly worrisome realities (out-of-wedlock births, etc.), perhaps this would make for fruitful conversation.
Why does shariah matter? It matters for Muslims because it represents the ideals that define a properly constituted Islamic existence. Islam without shariah would be Islam without Islamic ideals. While most non-Muslim Americans may think of Islam without shariah as simply Islam without rules or criminal sanctions, for Muslims Islam without shariah would also mean Islam without prescriptions on ablution, prayer, alms, sales, diet, filial piety, civics, etc. While the discourse in America around shariah will probably continue to succumb to the self-serving tendency to "compare my ideals with your realities," shariah itself will continue to inspire Muslims, especially in their personal lives, to strive, with hope and humility, to narrow the gap between the unacceptable "is" and the ever-elusive "ought."
]]>Sharî'ah: Between Two Popestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.6982062010-08-29T20:42:22-04:002011-05-25T17:30:22-04:00Sherman A. Jacksonhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sherman-a-jackson/sharî'ah has now morphed into the mantra by which many justify their opposition to the so-called "Ground Zero mosque." If we allow this mosque to go forth, so the logic goes, the next thing you know, all the bars in the country will be shut down (and those infidel lushes flogged!), all the women will be draped in sheets, and Muhammad will replace Jacob as the most popular name in America. Allahu akbar!
While some of this hysteria is clearly being peddled by people who know better, most Americans are probably just engaged in a good-faith attempt to understand and respond to sharî'ah through the only prism they have: their own historical experience. I was recently reminded of this on a visit to Cairo, during which time two popes, one Catholic, the other Coptic, expressed almost mutually contradictory sentiments about sharî'ah. The chasm separating their perspectives related not to their different levels of knowledge about sharî'ah but almost entirely to their differences in historical experience.
I arrived in Cairo on the first of June. On 29 May, the High Administrative Court of Egypt had ordered the Coptic Church to issue marriage licenses to divorced Copts who wanted to remarry. The Church demurred, arguing that this went against official Church doctrine, according to which adultery, death or apostasy were the only legitimate reasons for divorce and thus the only basis upon which the Church could issue licenses to remarry. Because the couples in question did not fit any of these criteria, the Church insisted that it could not issue such licenses and that, in the name of religious freedom, the High Court should not try to force it to do so.
For the next three weeks (I left on June 19) Egyptian papers teemed with coverage of what was developing into a constitutional crisis -- demonstrations, letter-writing, rallies, the whole nine. Those who supported the secular character of the Egyptian state -- Muslim or Christian -- argued that in the name of equality (Muslims are free to divorce and remarry) and human rights (marriage is a fundamental right) the Coptic Church should either issue the licenses or be forced to do so by the state. The most interesting position, however, was that of the Church itself. In addition to religious freedom it invoked sharî'ah in its defense! Time and again, Church officials publicly invoked such sharî'ah maxims as, "When confronted with People of the Book (Jews and Christians), adjudicate among them on the basis of their own religion." The Coptic patriarch, Pope Shanoudah III, even went so far as to quote the Qur'ân directly in his weekly sermon: "Let the People of the Bible adjudicate according to what God revealed therein. And whoever does not adjudicate in accordance to what God reveals, they are among the corrupt" (5: 47). As if these statements were not explicit enough, in an interview published on 10 June in the official Ahram newspaper, Pope Shanoudah stated plainly and without equivocation, "We simply ask the judges, if they want to reconcile with the Church, to apply the Islamic sharî'ah."
It would be disingenuous, of course, to read more than tactical sophistication into the Pope's and the Church's position. After all, Pope Shanoudah did not rush out to sign up with the Muslim Brotherhood. Still, their statements and protestations make it clear that he and the Church understood that under sharî'ah they would enjoy the right to preserve their way of life as Christians and that the rules governing Muslims do not automatically extend to non-Muslims. One can thus imagine my surprise to read, also in the Ahram newspaper, statements by Pope Benedict XVI in which he expressed, during a visit to Cypress, fears about how Christians in the Middle East would fair under the rising tide of sharî'ah-minded Islamic resurgence. Rather than seeing in sharî'ah any protection for the rights of Christians or other minorities, Pope Benedict could only imagine it to be a threat to his co-religionists. What accounts for this difference between these two popes?
For Pope Shanoudah, sharî'ah took its definitive political character under the pre-modern order, when non-Muslim communities existed before the Muslim state, and and rather than obliterate these, the state merely required them to recognize its sovereignty. For Pope Benedict, sharî'ah was seen through the prism of modern Western history, where it was presumed to be the uniform law of a homogenizing nation-state that decides if, how and according to what rules communities are to exist. For Pope Shanoudah, sharî'ah included a palpable element of "live and let live." For Pope Benedict, sharî'ah was simply "the law of the land" -- for everyone.
Most Americans share the perspective of Pope Benedict XVI. While some of this is based on simple prejudice and the massive amount of disinformation being spread about sharî'ah, I suspect that most of it is based on the simple fact that people simply view sharî'ah through the prism of their own experience as citizens of a modern state. Just as the modern state applies a single régime of rules equally across the board to all citizens, so too, they assume, must sharî'ah. This, by the way, is not only the assumption of Pope Benedict and most non-Muslim Americans; many Muslims have also imbibed this understanding. But as Pope Shanoudah's and the Coptic Church's tactic demonstrates, this is more indebted to Western success at universalizing its narrative than it is to the intrinsic nature of sharî'ah itself. Bottom line? Sharî'ah accommodated the existence and lifestyles of Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroastrians and countless others. It can live with a few bars and miniskirts and lots of Jacobs in modern America -- multiracial, multicultural, multireligious modern America.]]>