September 20, 2010 6:06 AM

Isn't it about time you knew what your red herring actually represents?

Most Americans have no idea what [Sharia] 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…. 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…. In short, shariah includes the attempt to proffer God-conscious responses to an ever-changing reality.

One of the things about the anti-Islam rallies in lower Manhattan that have made an impression of me is the number of signs condemning Sharia. The signs, usually painted in blood red with symbolic blood dripping ominously from the letters, seem to clearly be presenting the idea that Sharia is evil. Sharia, which can be (very incompletely) incompletely described as “Islamic law”, seems to have become the focus of hatred for those who oppose the Park 51 community center and have convinced themselves that Islam is of the Devil. Hey, if you don’t understand something, why not demonize it, eh?

While these folks are certainly free to their opinion, I wonder what percentage of these conviction are actually the result of an informed opinion. I’d love to talk to some of the protesters, and I really just have one very simple question for them:

“What exactly IS Sharia??”

Call me cynical, but I have a sneaking suspicion that if you pressed some of the protesters, you’d get the deer-in-the-headlights blank stare. Sure, they know Sharia is bad, in the same way that sexually molesting your six-year-old daughter is bad…but what is it that makes it bad? What is it about Sharia that has so many of the haters convinced that it’s Evil and worthy only of scorn and destruction?

Indeed, what is Sharia? Well, I’ve studied a lit bit of the Koran, but being by no means an expert on the subject, I went to the source of All Wisdom and Knowledge: da Interwebs. Not surprisingly, you can learn an awful lot about Sharia by beginning with a simple Google search.

I’m not going to go into a dissertation about the history, evolution, and meaning of Sharia. I’d like to think that if you’re interested you can do the same thing I did. I will say, though, that whatever you may think, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re wrong. I’ve spent some time in the Middle East, I’ve read parts of the Koran…and I’ll have to confess that my understanding of Sharia didn’t really closely mesh with the reality of Islamic law. Sometimes learning can be a good thing, no??

This is a free country, of course, and you’re free to oppose Sharia…or anything else for that matter. But don’t you think that your argument would be more credible and carry more weight if you actually knew something factual about what you so vehemently oppose? Or is that just too damn much work for you?

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on September 20, 2010 6:06 AM.

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