Interpretation of faith in Islam

Current issues, news and ethics
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

MHI made the following Farman on the application of intellect with respect to the interpretation of faith and not to anchor it to a given time in the past.

"The identification with a tradition of interpretation of Islam and its intellectual strength is a guiding principle. Part of the Muslim world is going precisely in the opposite direction of obscurantist, narrow-minded, blinkered attitudes which are anchored in past times, and which in my view would mean the ultimate disappearance of much of the Ummah, because they will face either a form of marginalization from the modern world, or they will adopt the modern world and forget their traditional values. This is not the interpretation of Islam that I will ever wish to see in our Jamat."

Aiglemont, July 8, 1999

The article below highlights whats happening in Saudi Arabia with their rigid interpretation anchored in the past.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magaz ... .html?_r=0

Excerpt:

"Thankfully, it worked out O.K. It was the first time for me, but I knew what to do. How? Every single young Saudi guy watches porn. I’m not joking. I mean all of them. Afterward, I told her that it was my first time. She said she didn’t believe me. I didn’t want to say I learned everything from porn, but she probably guessed.

This kind of thing goes on a lot in private in my country. There are young people who have sex before marriage, drink or use drugs and don’t care about religion. I grew up with religion all around me, and I’m still Muslim, but I don’t believe that Islam is like this. Sure, we broke the law, but I didn’t feel guilty. I was actually happy, as if I could do this every day. I was like: ‘‘Screw the police. I don’t give a damn.’’ She felt the same way. She hated the police, too."
nuseri
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Post by nuseri »

To kmaherali: Ya Ali Madad.
Your post are getting Spicer.Indeed a true article.
I read recently at latest hot destination of Saudis is Morroco.THEY just go there for one purpose. Many pious n horny Saudi use services of Mullah who act likeva pimp to conduct
Mutah Nikah,one visitor has mullah as escort to conduct the Nikah.
All these act happening with Mullah carrying holy book n beads.They are shame on the Ummah.
kmaherali
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Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2003 3:01 pm

Post by kmaherali »

Islam Through Its Scriptures

Learn about the Quran, the central sacred text of Islam, through an exploration of the rich diversity of roles and interpretations in Muslim societies.

What you'll learn

•An introduction to the place of the Quran in Muslim cultures
•Major themes of the Quran
•The historical and cultural contexts of the Quran
•Interpretive skills that enable a more nuanced reading of the Quran
•Diverse approaches Muslims have adopted to engaging with Quranic texts, including issues in contemporary interpretation

Meet the instructor

Ali Asani

Professor of Indo-Muslim Religion and Cultures Harvard University

https://www.edx.org/course/islam-throug ... ds-3221-4x#!
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

A year with the Quran

An interview with Carla Power

Carla Power is an American journalist, author and professed secular humanist. She recently wrote If the Oceans were Ink: An unlikely friendship and a journey to the heart of the Quran, a memoir of her year spent reading and debating the Quran with Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwi, who lives in England. The Islamic Monthly’s Souheila Al-Jadda recently spoke with her about her work and its impact on her life and worldview.

More....
http://theislamicmonthly.com/a-year-with-the-quran/
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

New Quran Interpretation Published in twenty volumes in Algeria

AhlulBayt News Agency - The first modern interpretation of Quran in Algeria titled “Al-Durr Al-Thamin fi Tafsir Al-Kitab Al-Mubin” by Allameh Al-Tawati was published in the North African country.

According to Al-Shorouk website, the Dar-ol-Hikmah Publication Institute has published the new interpretation of the Holy Quran in twenty volumes.

In this work, the scholar has referred to all different interpretations of the Quran published so far and presented a comprehensive and precise work which also includes modern issues.

He has tried to provide an unprejudiced interpretation of jurisprudential issues in his Quranic work.

Sheikh Al-Tawati was born in 1943 in Laghouat. He was a student of Sheikh Mabrouk Kuwaisi and Isaa Abubakr. He became a member of Muslim Scholars Society in Algeria in 1952.

He has written many books in jurisprudence and principles of jurisprudence, language and Nahw (Arabic grammar).

A jurisprudential encyclopedia titled "Al-Mubsit fi Al-Fiqh Al-Maliki bil-Adillah” in five volumes and a "Al-Fiqh Al-Muqarin” (comparative jurisprudence) are also among the scholar’s works.

The scholar was honored for this valuable work in a ceremony held on December 20, 2015 at Imam Malik Mosque of Laghouat city in Algeria.

Intellectuals and representatives of different schools of thought attended the ceremony in which the contributions of the scholar in the field of Quran interpretation were lauded.

http://en.abna24.com/service/africa/arc ... story.html
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

The Right Way to Observe Ramadan

ISTANBUL — THE Islamic holy month of Ramadan begins today and with it the long hours of fasting by hundreds of millions of Muslims. The daylong fast during the lunar month in which we Muslims believe that the Quran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad is one of the five pillars of Islam. It is a way for Muslims to show their devotion to God, and, some say, to understand the suffering of those who have no choice but to go without food.

The Ramadan fast is not easy. From sunrise to sunset, Muslims are not supposed to eat, drink or smoke, and abstain from sex. For hours, they dream about a sip of water or a bite of bread. Then comes the iftar, which means “breakfast,” but which is often a heavy dinner with family and friends. Then come a few hours of freedom from deprivation, until the sunrise, when the next day’s fast begins.

Muslims around the world observe this 1,400-year-old practice, from the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, where it originated, to Scandinavia, where the latitude has forced some scholars to issue fatwas to accommodate the Quran’s prescription to fast from dawn until dusk.

But no matter where they are, Muslims should be able to fast according to the dictates of their conscience. Unfortunately, some authoritarian governments violate this fundamental freedom. Some ban the Ramadan fast, while others impose it.

The former problem is acute in China, especially in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, which is heavily populated by Uighurs, a Muslim people of Turkic origin. In the past few years, the Communist government there has forbidden civil servants, students and teachers to fast. The government has said it institutes the ban for health reasons and says that it faces threats from Muslim extremists. But the ban only makes Uighurs feel persecuted and alienated from their government, helping, if anything, the small strain of extremists among them who call for armed resistance.

On the other side of the authoritarian coin, various Muslim governments, from Saudi Arabia and Persian Gulf states to Iran and Pakistan, impose the Ramadan fast by law. Under these rules, eating or drinking in public during the holy month may mean deportation, a fine or even jail. In many other countries, even if fasting is not enforced by law it is compelled by social pressure. So people — both religious minorities and Muslims who choose not to fast — must appear as if they are fasting, even if they are not.

This religious authoritarianism is senseless and self-defeating. Fasting during Ramadan is an act of worship intended for God. It is meaningful only when it is driven by a genuine will to obey God’s commandments — not the laws of the state or the vigilantism of society. The latter does not nurture true piety, it only nurtures fakeness and hypocrisy. That is why the Quran says there should be “no compulsion in religion” — and no compulsion in fasting, either.

Moreover, according to Islamic jurisprudence, not everybody is supposed to fast. Non-Muslims are not obliged at all. Even among Muslims, the Quran exempts those “who are ill, or on a journey.” It even exempts those “who can fast only with extreme difficulty,” and tells them to feed a needy person instead. “God wants ease for you, not hardship,” the scripture says.

Yet many Muslims choose hardship. During Ramadan last year, more than a thousand people died in Pakistan from dehydration under extreme heat, despite calls from some more flexible clerics to cease fasting. Even those who did decide to give up the fast because they were in danger still could drink water only in private because of the social pressure they faced — a big problem for people who lived on the street.

Even the most rigid Muslim clerics accept that not everybody is obliged to fast during Ramadan. Yet many still support laws that ban public eating and drinking in order to respect the holy month and people who observe it. They should reconsider, though, whether they are really bringing any respect to Islam by imposing its practices. Would we Muslims feel respected if others imposed their proscriptions on us? Should Muslims in India be required to stop eating beef because it offends the sensibilities of Hindus, as a senior member of the country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party argued last year? Should the Uighurs respect the Chinese Communist Party’s distaste for “superstition,” and stop practicing their faith?

Respect is an admirable trait, but it cannot be imposed by law. It also should not be the basis for dictating the norms of a majority on minorities or individuals.

What is the ideal Muslim approach to Ramadan? My city, Istanbul, offers a good model. Here, we have no laws governing Ramadan. Many people decide to fast, many people decide not to fast. The latter can enjoy restaurants and cafes during the day, and some perhaps even enjoy bars at night, even though Islamic law prohibits alcohol. The pious, meanwhile, fast for the right reason: They are not forced to stay thirsty and hungry by the government. They freely decide to do so out of their sincere faith in God.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/06/opini ... 87722&_r=0
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

Rice University, Boniuk Institute

Communities of the Qur’an Conference: Ismaili Engagements with the Qur’an


The Communities of the Qur’an conference brings together eminent scholars and practitioners of various Islamic traditions to discuss and deliberate each traditions' respective interpretations of Qur'anic verses. It comes in the wake of increased sectarian violence in the Middle East, renewed military intervention in the region and a rise in Islamophobia. This conference-–the first of its kind-– places rich, diverse and at times opposing interpretations of the Qur’an, in direct conversation with one another. Video recordings of the presentations are available below.

Ismaili Engagements with the Qur’an: the Ismaili Khojas of South Asia

Ali Asani, PhD


Director of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Islamic Studies Program
Professor of Indo-Muslim Religions and Cultures
Harvard University

http://boniuk.rice.edu/quran_conference/
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

Arctic Ramadan: fasting in land of midnight sun comes with a challenge

In Canada’s Arctic, summers are marked by a bright light that bathes the treeless tundra for more than 20 hours a day.

For some, it’s a welcome change from the unrelenting darkness of winter. But for the small but growing Muslim community of Iqaluit, Nunavut, life in the land of the midnight sun poses a singular challenge during the month of Ramadan, during which Muslims typically fast from sunrise to sunset.

“I haven’t fainted once,” said 29-year-old Abdul Karim, one of the few in the city who has fastidiously timed his Ramadan fast to the Arctic sun since moving from Ottawa in 2011. This year that means eating at about 1.30am before the sun rises and breaking his fast at about 11pm when the sun sets.

“The only reason to stop would be if it hurts my health,” Karim said. Pointing to his sizable frame, he laughed as he added: “But looking at my condition, I don’t think fasting will hurt me.”

As the end of Ramadan draws near for Muslims around the world, much of the holy month’s focus on community work, prayer and reflection has been a constant in communities around the world. But in Iqaluit and the other Muslim communities that dot the Arctic, the long days have forced a shift in how the element of fasting is approached.

Most in Iqaluit adhere to the timetable followed by Muslims in Ottawa, some 1,300 miles south of the city – a nod to the advice of Muslim scholars who have said Muslims in the far north should observe Ramadan using the timetable of Mecca or the nearest Muslim city.

It still means fasting for some 18 hours a day, said Atif Jilani, who moved to Iqaluit from Toronto a little over a year ago. “It’s long days, but more manageable.”

Many in the 100-strong community break their fast together, gathering in the city’s brand new mosque – completed in February amid temperatures that dropped as low as -50C with windchill – for nightly potluck suppers. As they tuck into traditional meals such as dates, and goat or lamb curries, the sun shines brightly through the windows.

It’s a scene that plays out across Canada’s northernmost mosques during Ramadan, as Muslim communities wrestle with the country’s unique geography.

The 300 or so Muslims in Yellowknife, in the Northwest Territories, have several options when it comes to fasting during Ramadan, said Nazim Awan, president of the Yellowknife Islamic Centre, with exceptions made for those who are pregnant or ill.

“There might be some superhumans who want to fast for 23 hours, but the other option is to follow the intent and spirit of fasting by following nearby cities, or they can follow the times of Mecca and Medina.”

In recent years, much of the community has opted to follow the Ramadan timetable of Edmonton, in Alberta. Some, such as Awan – a father of two young kids, including a 12-year-old who recently started fasting – follow the timings of Mecca. He hopes to encourage his son with the more manageable timetable of about 15 hours of fasting as compared with about 18 hours in Edmonton. “If I fast Yellowknife or Edmonton times, my son might say, Papa, you are really insane, what are you doing?” he said.

Faced with the impossibility of following the local movements of the sun, the 100 or so Muslims in Inuvik, a small town that sits 125 miles north of the Arctic circle, have also been following Edmonton’s timetable. “We currently have 24 hours a day of sun,” said Ahmad Alkhalaf. “There’s no sunrise or sunset.”

The adherence to Edmonton’s schedule was already in place in 2001 when he moved from Toronto to the small northern community of 3,500 people. “My first Ramadan here was in December. There’s no sun at that time; it’s dark all day and night. So we used Edmonton time.”

At times, it can be psychologically challenging to follow the clock rather than what is happening outside, Alkhalaf said. “You’re supposed to break your fast when it’s dusk, and we eat when the sun is out. It’s not usual to have iftar [the meal breaking the fast] when the sun is up,” he said.

In Inuvik, where much of the population is Inuit, the Muslim community has sought to strike a balance between Ramadan and the local culture and traditions. The iftar meal includes dates and rich curries – as well as local game such as reindeer, prepared in accordance with Islamic law. “We make a soup or curry it – we make a biryani, but instead of using beef, we use reindeer.”

In Iqaluit, as the Muslim community prepares to mark the end of Ramadan, some reflect that this year’s timing – stretching across some of the longest days of the year – has made this year one of the more challenging of recent years.

It’s particularly true for those like Karim who have determinedly followed the local sunrise and sunset. But his efforts will be rewarded years from now, said Karim, thanks to the lunar calendar. Ramadan will eventually fall during winter, which in Iqaluit sees the sun rise and set within a few hours each day. “I’ll follow those hours too,” he said with a laugh. “Oh yes, definitely.”

From Monday 4 July, Guardian Cities is devoting a week to exploring all things Canada. Get involved on Twitter and Facebook and share your thoughts with #GuardianCanada

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... s-sunlight
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

A Saudi Morals Enforcer Called for a More Liberal Islam. Then the Death Threats Began.

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — For most of his adult life, Ahmed Qassim al-Ghamdi worked among the bearded enforcers of Saudi Arabia. He was a dedicated employee of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice — known abroad as the religious police — serving with the front-line troops protecting the Islamic kingdom from Westernization, secularism and anything but the most conservative Islamic practices.

Some of that resembled ordinary police work: busting drug dealers and bootleggers in a country that bans alcohol. But the men of “the Commission,” as Saudis call it, spent most of their time maintaining the puritanical public norms that set Saudi Arabia apart not only from the West, but from most of the Muslim world.

A key offense was ikhtilat, or unauthorized mixing between men and women. The kingdom’s clerics warn that it could lead to fornication, adultery, broken homes, children born of unmarried couples and full-blown societal collapse.

For years, Mr. Ghamdi stuck with the program and was eventually put in charge of the Commission for the region of Mecca, Islam’s holiest city. Then he had a reckoning and began to question the rules. So he turned to the Quran and the stories of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions, considered the exemplars of Islamic conduct. What he found was striking and life altering: There had been plenty of mixing among the first generation of Muslims, and no one had seemed to mind.

So he spoke out. In articles and television appearances, he argued that much of what Saudis practiced as religion was in fact Arabian cultural practices that had been mixed up with their faith.

There was no need to close shops for prayer, he said, nor to bar women from driving, as Saudi Arabia does. At the time of the Prophet, women rode around on camels, which he said was far more provocative than veiled women piloting S.U.V.s.

He even said that while women should conceal their bodies, they needed to cover their faces only if they chose to do so. And to demonstrate the depth of his own conviction, Mr. Ghamdi went on television with his wife, Jawahir, who smiled to the camera, her face bare and adorned with a dusting of makeup.

It was like a bomb inside the kingdom’s religious establishment, threatening the social order that granted prominence to the sheikhs and made them the arbiters of right and wrong in all aspects of life. He threatened their control.

Mr. Ghamdi’s colleagues at work refused to speak to him. Angry calls poured into his cellphone and anonymous death threats hit him on Twitter. Prominent sheikhs took to the airwaves to denounce him as an ignorant upstart who should be punished, tried — and even tortured.

More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/11/world ... 05309&_r=0
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

A Lesson for Newt Gingrich: What Shariah Is (and Isn’t)

FORTUNATELY, no one is going to follow Newt Gingrich’s unconstitutional and un-American plan for an inquisition to “test every person here who is of a Muslim background” and deport the ones who “believe in Shariah.” Even Mr. Gingrich himself, a day after suggesting this policy in the wake of the terrorist attack in Nice, France, conceded that such a plan was impossible. But his proposal is a reminder of a persistent and inexcusable misunderstanding of what Shariah is, both in theory and in practice.

Put simply, for believing Muslims, Shariah is the ideal realization of divine justice — a higher law reflecting God’s will.

Muslims have a wide range of different beliefs about what Shariah requires in practice. And all agree that humans are imperfect interpreters of God’s will. But to ask a faithful Muslim if he or she “believes in” Shariah is essentially to ask if he or she accepts God’s word. In effect, Mr. Gingrich was proposing to deport all Muslims who consider themselves religious believers.

More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/17/opini ... 87722&_r=0
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

Extracts from MHI's interview on his role as the interpreter of faith

Q. As Imam of your sect, you are also an interpretor of the Quran for your followers, but on the other hand, you are a man with a modern education and background. How do you reconcile these two aspects on subject like women's rights, family planning and other related matters?

A. As Imam of the Ismaili sect, I am in a position to adapt the teachings of the Quran to the modern condition. On the question of modernity the issue is essentially whether one is affecting the fundamental moral fabric of society or whether one is affecting the fundamentals of religious practice. As long as these two aspects are safeguarded the rest can be subject to adjustment.

Q. Since your followers are dispersed all over the world, does it mean that on issues like family planning, your stand would vary from country to country?

A. We would have to accept the fact that this is not entirely under the control of the Imam. Since in many countries it is subject to legislation and if legislation is passed it has to be complied with.

Q. But in cases where you are free, where there is no legislation, would you offer any kind of guidance?

A. No, I would not issue a firman (order). But what I would hope, is that in all issues like that, it is the general understanding of the objectives which is of key importance. In India, you are faced with this problem and my interpretation is that it is an issue where you are more effective in directing yourself towards the minds of the people involved. After that individual will choose and he will choose within the laws of his land. Within the concept of morality and of practice. To issue a formal directive would be impossible internationally because that is one issue in which there have been contradictory views. My approach is to say basically, we are concerned about explaining to people the realities of society.

http://ismaili.net/intervue/890000.html
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

Beyond the Qur’an: Early Ismaili Ta’wil and the Secrets of the Prophets par David Hollenberg (Septembre 2016)

Hollenberg (David), Qur’an Early Ismaili Ta’wil and the Secrets of the Prophets, Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 2016, 192 p. ISBN 978-1-61117-678-0

David Hollenberg is an assistant professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Oregon. He has authored articles on Ismailism and is the coeditor of The Yemeni Manuscript Tradition. Hollenberg is the founder of the Yemen Manuscripts Digitization Initiative, a collective of scholars and librarians devoted to preserving the manuscripts of Yemen.

Présentation

Ismailism, one of the three major branches of Shiism, is best known for ta’wil, an esoteric, allegorizing scriptural exegesis. Beyond the Qur’an: Early Ismaili Ta’wil and the Secrets of the Prophets is the first book-length study of this interpretive genre. Analyzing sources composed by tenth-century Ismaili missionaries in light of social-science theories of cognition and sectarianism, David Hollenberg argues that the missionaries used ta’wil to instill in acolytes a set of symbolic patterns, forms, and "logics." This shared symbolic world bound the community together as it created a gulf between community members and those outside the movement. Hollenberg thus situates ta’wil socially, as an interpretive practice that sustained a community of believers.

An important aspect of ta’wil is its unconventional objects of interpretation. Ismaili missionaries mixed Qur’an exegesis with interpretation of Torah, Gospels, Greek philosophy, and symbols such as the Christian Cross and Eucharist, as well as Jewish festivals. Previously scholars have speculated that this extra-Qur’anic ta’wil was intended to convert Jews and Christians to Ismailism. Hollenberg, departing from this view, argues that such interpretations were, like Ismaili interpretations of the Qur’an, intended for an Ismaili audience, many of whom converted to the movement from other branches of Shiism.

Hollenberg argues that through exegesis of these unconventional sources, the missionaries demonstrated that their imam alone could strip the external husk from all manner of sources and show the initiates reality in its pure, unmediated form, an imaginal world to which they alone had access. They also fulfilled the promise that their imam would teach them the secrets behind all religions, a sign that the initial stage of the end of days had commenced.

Beyond the Qur’an contributes to our understanding of early Ismaili doctrine, Fatimid rhetoric, and, more broadly, the use of esoteric literatures in the history of religion.

(Cover illustration : Asma Hilali)

Voir en ligne : The University of South Carolina Press
http://www.mehdi-azaiez.org/Beyond-the- ... ar?lang=fr
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

The joke below highlights what it means to anchor the interpretation to 1400 years before and the consequences!

The great preacher Zakir Naik got into a cab in London. He curtly asked the cabbie :
_'' Brother, Please Turn Off the radio because as decreed by holy Q'uran, I must not listen to music because in the time of the prophet there was no music, especially Western Music, which is the Music Of The Infidel......''_

The cab driver Politely Switched Off the radio, stopped the cab and opened the door.
Zakir questioned him :
'' Brother, What are you doing.....???? ''

*The Cabbie Answered Politely :*
_" In the time of the prophet there were_ :

_No Taxis,_
_No Bombs,_
_No Plane Hijacks,_
_No West Invented Loud Speakers in Mosques that woke Up newly born, Elderly And The Sick At Unearthly Hours,_
_No Suicide Attacks,
_No RDX,_
_No AK 56,_
_ONLY '' PEACE '' Everywhere..._

*So Shut Up And Wait For A Camel......."*
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

How Islam Can Fight the Patriarchy

Extract:

It’s possible a new bill on child marriage could come before the Parliament and the battle could resume. Still, the activism against the bill provided a valuable lesson. One of the most effective ways to address the scourge of statutory rape and child marriage in Turkey — and perhaps the broader Muslim world — may be to use Islamic arguments to show why they are inhumane and ill suited for today’s day and age.

The misogynists often justify their positions by referring to archaic interpretations of Islam, which is why we must work to revoke their monopoly on interpreting religion. Islam must be a part of the solution. The way forward is to emphasize that while Islam has eternal values, Islamic laws also in part reflect the norms of medieval societies — and as times change, laws should, too.

More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/11/opini ... dline&te=1
kmaherali
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What Jesus Can Teach Today’s Muslims

What is the trouble with Islam? Why are there so many angry Muslims in the world who loathe the West? Why do self-declared Islamic states impose harsh laws that oppress minorities, women and “apostates”? Why are there terrorists who kill in the name of Allah?

Many in the West have been asking these kinds of questions for decades. Answers have varied from claiming that there is no problem within Islam today, which is too defensive, to asserting that Islam itself is a huge problem for the world, which is unfair and prejudiced. Luckily, more informed observers offered more objective answers: The Islamic civilization, once the world’s most enlightened, has lately been going through an acute crisis with severe consequences.

One of the prominent minds of the past century, the British historian Arnold Toynbee, also pondered the crisis of Islam, in a largely forgotten 1948 essay, “Islam, the West, and the Future.” The Islamic world has been in a crisis since the 19th century, Toynbee wrote, because it was outperformed, defeated and even besieged by Western powers. Islam, a religion that has always been proud of its earthly success, was now “facing the West with her back to the wall,” causing stress, anger and turmoil among Muslims.

More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/opin ... &te=1&_r=0
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

Is Free Speech Good for Muslims?

I recently watched a curious debate that took place in 2015 at the Free Press Society of Denmark. On one side was Geert Wilders, the far-right Dutch politician and anti-Islam campaigner whose ascendance to power was, I’m happy to say, checked by the elections in the Netherlands this month. On the other side was Flemming Rose, the journalist who angered many Muslims in 2005 by publishing cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

The crux of the debate was what to do with Muslims and Islam in Europe. Mr. Wilders argued that the Quran must be banned and mosques must be shut down. Mr. Rose, in contrast, explained that this view is unacceptably authoritarian, and Muslims deserve freedom like everyone else. “You cannot deny Muslims the right to build a mosque or to establish faith-based schools,” he said, simply because some Europeans find them offensive.

Most Muslims watching this debate would probably sympathize with Mr. Rose, thinking he was defending them. Mr. Rose, however, was merely defending a liberal principle: freedom for all. It was the very principle that led him to publish the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad — cartoons seen by many Muslims, including me, as offensive.

This is just one of many manifestations of a paradox Muslims, especially those of us living in the West, face in the modern world: They are threatened by Islamophobic forces against which they need the protections offered by liberalism — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, nondiscrimination. But the same liberalism also brings them realities that most of them find un-Islamic — irreverence toward religion, tolerance of L.G.B.T. people, permissive attitudes on sex. They can’t easily decide, therefore, whether liberalism is good or bad for Muslims.

The same paradox can also be seen in the debates over female dress. When illiberal secularists in the West interfere regarding the outfits of conservative Muslim women — with bans on the burqa, the “burkini” or even just the head scarf — the defense is found within liberalism: Women have the right to “dress as they please.” This, of course, is a perfectly legitimate argument in a free society.

But the idea that women can “dress as they please” doesn’t actually go over well with some Muslims — if that means, for example, tight jeans and miniskirts. In Saudi Arabia and Iran women are forced by law to cover their heads. In fact, in some ways Saudi Arabia is a mirror image of the culturally hegemonic dystopia that Mr. Wilders dreams of: a land where the scriptures and shrines of a foreign religion are banned — not the Quran and mosques, in this case, but the Bible and churches.

This is not to say that Muslims who ask for freedom in the West must be held accountable for the lack of freedom in “Islamic” states. But it does mean that Muslim opinion leaders — imams, scholars, intellectuals — should give serious thought to a key question: Is liberalism a good or bad thing for Muslims? Should they embrace freedom or not?

Often Muslims support liberalism when it serves them and reject it when it does not. They use the religious freedom in the West, for example, to seek converts to Islam, while condemning converts from Islam to another religion as “apostates” who deserve death. Or ask for the right to freely organize political rallies in Europe, while you are crushing opposition rallies at home — as the Turkish government recently did during its spat with the Netherlands.

Such double standards can be found in every society. Mr. Wilders himself, who cheers for “freedom” while aiming to ban the Quran, is a striking example. But some contemporary Muslims do it too easily, switching at will between “our rules” and “their rules.” The prominent Turkish theologian Ali Bardakoglu, the former head of the Religious Directorate, wrote about this “double morality” in a recent book and called on fellow Muslims to be more self-critical about it. Muslims should not be, he argued, “people who can surf between different value systems.”

The deeper problem is that Islam, as a legal and moral tradition, developed at a time when the world was a very different place. There was a very limited concept of individual freedom, as people lived in strictly defined communities. There were no notions of international law, universal human rights, the secular state or freedom of religion. Moreover, Muslims were often the dominant faith, making the rules to their advantage — such as tolerating non-Muslims as “protected” but inferior communities.

That premodern world is long gone. There is now an increasingly diverse world where boundaries fade, cultures meet and individuals roam. And the forces that try to reverse this trend — liberal globalization — are often the very forces that despise Islam and threaten Muslims.

Muslim opinion leaders have to decide where they stand. Do we Muslims want a free world with universal principles in which everyone, including us, lives according to their own values? Or do we prefer a segregated world where whoever grabs power imposes their values? And, if we choose the latter, what is going to protect us from all the Geert Wilderses of the world? In fact, what makes us any different?

Mustafa Akyol, a contributing opinion writer, is a visiting fellow at the Freedom Project at Wellesley College and the author, most recently, of “The Islamic Jesus: How the King of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/opin ... &te=1&_r=0
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Ask a Muslim: What of Neanderthals and Aliens?

Not too long ago I received the following text:

Assalamoalaikum brother, do you have some ideas about the paleolithic man or what they say Neanderthal man. They hypothesize according to fossils that they are the human ancestorswho lived 1- 2000000 years ago...

I’m gonna guess that your question isn’t about evolution, per se, but about what happens when religion appears to put us at odds with evolution. If modern humans had numerous ancestors, and relatives that lived alongside us, but reached evolutionary dead-ends, then what do we do with an actual Adam and literal Eve?

I’ve an answer that might help modern Muslims like us come to terms with what we know of our biological ancestry—and, incidentally, might open the door to dealing with the existence of intelligent life somewhere out there. Because if Allah created aliens, we should totally be ready.

At least theologically.

.........

Sacred texts don’t have to change. The meanings we find in them do. Because we do. We don’t have to believe religion and science are necessarily at odds; there was a time when Muslims were known for their enthusiasm for empirical research, curiosity and discovery. Which way would Mecca be on the dark side of the moon? How would Ramadan work on Venus, where each day is many months long? Would Plutonian colonists have to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca or die trying? We don’t have to answer these questions, of course, until we need to.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we got to a point where we had to?

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http://religiondispatches.org/ask-a-mus ... 1-84570085
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Indonesians Seek to Export a Modernized Vision of Islam

JAKARTA, Indonesia — The imposing, six-foot-tall painting is a potent symbol of modern Indonesian history: the country’s founding father, Sukarno, cradling a dead, barefoot rebel killed by Dutch colonial forces amid rice fields and smoldering volcanoes in late-1940s Java.

The fighter’s bloodied shirt draws immediate attention — but so does a necklace dangling from the body: a Christian cross, worn by the independence martyr for the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.

The 2006 painting has become the symbol of a global initiative by the Indonesian youth wing of Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest mass Islamic organization in the world, that seeks to reinterpret Islamic law dating from the Middle Ages in ways that conform to 21st-century norms.

Among other things, it calls for a re-examination of elements of Islamic law that dictate relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, the structure of government and the proper aims and conduct of warfare.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/worl ... 05309&_r=0
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This is one of the best Stats found on Islam:

http://shianumbers.com/shia-muslims-population.html

Over 320 Million Shia People Live in Over 100 Countries

Worth a look.
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Morocco’s High Religious Committee Says Apostates Should Not Be Killed

Casablanca – Morocco’s High Religious Committee has retracted its Islamic ruling stating that apostasy is punishable by death and has decided to permit Muslims to change their religion.

The High Religious Committee in charge of issuing Fatwas (Islamic rulings) released a book in 2012 where it articulated its position on apostasy and argued that a Muslim who changes his or her religion should be punished with death, drawing on a widespread jurisprudence tradition.

Recently, however, the same entity issued a document titled “The Way of the Scholars,” in which it backtracked on its position of killing apostates. Instead, it redefined apostasy not as a religious issue but as a political stand more closely aligned with “high treason.”

The view that the apostate should not be killed in Islam is not a new one and can be found in the teachings of Sufyan al-Thawri in the first century AH. The scholar reviewed historical situations where the prophet Mohammed acted on the ruling, as opposed to the times he did not order the killing of the apostates. He concluded that killings occurred for political purposes and were not decisions based on religion. The apostates could, theoretically, disclose the secrets of the then fragile Islamic nation.

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https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2017/0 ... ign=buffer
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Why India allows instant divorce

For Muslim Indian men, breaking up is easy to do

“CAN something found to be sinful by God be validated by men through law?” And, “if God considers it a sin, it can’t be legal, can it be?” These were among the weighty questions posed by India’s Supreme Court this week as it heard from women who have brought a case against the practice of “triple talaq”, whereby a Muslim man can divorce his wife simply by uttering the word talaq three times. There is substantial evidence to suggest that this practice, while age-old, is not actually prescribed in the Koran. Why does India allow it?
India has no uniform civil code. Instead it has several, treating matters such as marriage, divorce, alimony and inheritance differently for members of different religious communities. Triple talaq is part of India’s Muslim Personal Law. Yet it is not what was originally intended. The Koran recommends a process of dialogue over a 90-day period after talaq is verbally invoked. The marriage survives if both parties reconcile within that time-frame; failing that, a divorce becomes valid on the 91st day. A second divorce proceeding can be initiated at a later date, again with a cooling period of 90 days. Should talaq be called a third time, however, the divorce becomes irrevocable on the day the husband says the word. This staggered system was meant to give couples the opportunity to end their marriages only after careful deliberation. The three-count limit was set to prevent the husband from pronouncing talaq on a whim. The message appears to have got lost somewhere along the way, says Shadan Farasat, one of the lawyers arguing against the custom in its current form.

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http://www.economist.com/blogs/economis ... lydispatch
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Is Ramadan Different for American Muslims?

Ramadan Mubarak! Insha’Allah, the first fast day of Ramadan will begin on Saturday, May 27, 2017 in the United States, Canada and the Americas.

Mike Ghouse

Is Ramadan different for different Muslims? What does Ramadan for American Muslims mean? The title of the essay sounds very divisive, but it is not. Indeed, it is an acknowledgement of the reality that Islam as practiced in America is not the same as practiced elsewhere on the earth. If you see it otherwise, express it in your comments below.

The only way to learn is to question everything and understand it. Over the years, I have been blessed with immense confidence in the religion of Islam, and I say without batting an eye,
“If it is not common sense, then it is not Islam.”

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http://ramadannews.com/is-ramadan-diffe ... n-muslims/

*******
Saudi Arabia releases video on National TV teaching husbands how to beat their wives

The national television of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has aired a video, in which a self-styled Islamic family doctor is seen teaching men in the country how to ‘properly’ beat their wives.

The video is believed to have been aired in the country in early February, 2016. The Kingdom’s government is said to have approved the video, and that is why it was given airtime on national television.

After airing the video in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi government released the controversial video in the United States via the Washington DC-based Middle East Media Research Institute, in April 2016. Women activists group describe the video as nothing less than infuriating.

The content of the video features the doctor who is said to specialize in therapy; Khaled Al-Saqaby teaching men how to ‘properly’ beat their wives if their [wives] disobey them.

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http://en.abna24.com/service/middle-eas ... story.html
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Post by kmaherali »

BOOK

How to be a Muslim


A BOUNDARY-BUSTING MEMOIR OF LOVE, MENTAL ILLNESS, AND BEING MUSLIM IN AMERICA

Excerpts:

Unofficially, this book began with two short stories I was asked to contribute to two different collections. The first essay was a short story about how I became an atheist. The second story was about how I snuck out to prom, and kissed a girl in the process. More than once. At the time I was so terrified of the American Muslim echo chamber that I was sure I’d be excommunicated. Five or ten years ago, those topics might’ve been taboo. Instead my stories were embraced, and I realized I had a story to tell, Yale press or no press. Or, rather, another press. But I digress.

What’s the most important take-home message for readers?

That Muslims can be funny. And people. Because we are people. Amazingly. And it is really cool to sneak out to prom, unless you get dumped the next day. I’m still not quite over that.

Is there anything you had to leave out?

I ended the book in 2013, which means I didn’t get to tell the story of my work with the Shalom Hartman Institute, where I’m now the Fellow in Muslim-Jewish Relations. I wish I could have told the story of what it was like to be in New York during the so-called Ground Zero Mosque controversy.

At the end of How to be a Muslim, I’ve just gotten married, but I didn’t get to talk about that journey, about what it was like to fall in love again, or even just what it’s like to find your footing after a major failure, and how differently I look at the world today. If this book is about how I learned to find an Islam for myself, the next one would be what I think an Islam for the future could look like.

Because while some Muslims are interested in the past, I’m interested in crafting an Islam through which we make sense of our lives, anticipate the future, and bend it to a moral conscience.

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http://religiondispatches.org/a-genre-b ... 0-84570085
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Shariah’s Winding Path Into Modernity

In June, Americans in about two dozen cities joined a “March Against Sharia.” For these protesters, the Arabic term is a code word for the oppression of women and men in the name of God — horrors like stoning and beheading. Since such brutalities do indeed happen in the name of Shariah, they may have had a point. But there were also points that they missed.

In Arabic, “Shariah” literally means “the way.” More specifically, it refers to the body of Islamic rules that Muslims see as God’s will — based either on the Quran or on the Prophet Muhammad’s reported words and deeds. It is conceptually impossible, therefore, for a Muslim who is serious about his faith to condemn Shariah. But the implementation of Shariah, which is called “fiqh,” or jurisprudence, is open to interpretation and discussion.

Much of Shariah is about personal observance: A good Muslim should pray five times a day while turned toward Mecca, for example, or should fast daily throughout Ramadan. Of course, there is no problem with these acts of personal piety — unless they are coerced. They should be welcome in any society with religious liberty.

However, a part of Shariah is about public law, including the penal code. And there are clear conflicts here with modern standards of human rights. First, Shariah lays out corporal punishments, such as chopping off hands, stoning, flogging and beheading. The Islamic legal code also proscribes crimes like apostasy, blasphemy and extramarital sex — none of which can be a crime at all in any liberal society.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/opin ... dline&te=1
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American Muslims growing more liberal, survey shows

(CNN)American Muslims are growing more religiously and socially liberal, with the number who say society should accept homosexuality nearly doubling during the past decade, according to a major new survey.

American Muslims are also more likely to identify as political liberals and believe there are multiple ways to interpret the teachings of Islam, the survey found.

Conducted by the Pew Research Center, the survey of 1,001 American Muslims depicts a community in tumult, with the vast majority disapproving of President Donald Trump and worrying about the direction of the country. Even so, many remain hopeful about their future in the United States, the survey found, despite persistent anxiety about Islamic extremism and religious discrimination.

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http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/26/us/pew-mu ... index.html
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Saudis Wonder What’s Next After the King Allows Women to Drive

Excerpt:

Built on an alliance between a royal family and the descendants of an ultraconservative Muslim cleric, Saudi Arabia has struggled throughout its history with how to reconcile modernization with loyalty to religious heritage.

That debate heated up as oil wealth enriched the state, bringing in unfamiliar customs and technologies like television, public education and automobiles.

Over time, competing camps dug in around women and the right to drive.

For liberals, the driving ban was a blot on the national brand that was hampering modernization and weakening the economy.

Conservatives, including powerful clerics employed by the state, thought that allowing women to drive would be a crack in the dam that would allow secularism to flood in, washing away the kingdom’s unique Islamic identity.

The royal decree announced on Tuesday handed victory in that battle to the reformers, who had gained an advantage in recent years because of demographics, economics and the country’s young leadership, analysts said.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/worl ... d=45305309
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Turkey, Malaysia and Islam

A Turkish writer’s detention sends a sombre message about Islam

Mustafa Akyol’s arrest in Malaysia has been linked to his views on coercion


NOT long ago, Turkey and Malaysia were often bracketed together as countries that inspired optimism about the Muslim world. In both lands, Islam is the most popular religion. In both, democracy has been vigorously if imperfectly practised. And both have enjoyed bursts of rapid, extrovert economic growth.

In their early days in office, people in Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development (AK) party always found plenty of friends in Malaysia: allies who shared their belief that governance with a pious Muslim flavour was compatible with modernising, business-friendly policies and a broadly pro-Western orientation.

All that makes doubly depressing a recent incident in Malaysia involving a prominent writer from Turkey. Mustafa Akyol is an exponent, in snappy English as well as his mother-tongue, of a liberal interpretation of Islam. In his book “Islam Without Extremes” he argues that his faith should never use coercion either to win converts or to keep those who are already Muslim in order. In other words, he takes at face value the Koranic verse which says, “There is no compulsion in religion.”

Last month Mr Akyol was invited to Kuala Lumpur by a reform-minded Muslim group and asked to give three lectures. In his second talk, he warmed to the non-coercion theme. As he insisted, people who fall away from Islam or “apostasise” should not be threatened with death, as happens under the harshest Islamist regimes, or even sent for re-education, as can happen in Malaysia. (For its all terrible human-rights abuses, nothing of that kind happens in Turkey.)

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https://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus ... lydispatch
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Saudi Prince, Asserting Power, Brings Clerics to Heel

BURAIDA, Saudi Arabia — For decades, Saudi Arabia’s religious establishment wielded tremendous power, with bearded enforcers policing public behavior, prominent sheikhs defining right and wrong, and religious associations using the kingdom’s oil wealth to promote their intolerant interpretation of Islam around the world.

Now, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is curbing their power as part of his drive to impose his control on the kingdom and press for a more open brand of Islam.

Before the arrests on Saturday of his fellow royals and former ministers on corruption allegations, Prince Mohammed had stripped the religious police of their arrest powers and expanded the space for women in public life, including promising them the right to drive.

Dozens of hard-line clerics have been detained, while others were designated to speak publicly about respect for other religions, a topic once anathema to the kingdom’s religious apparatus.

If the changes take hold, they could mean a historic reordering of the Saudi state by diminishing the role of hard-line clerics in shaping policy. That shift could reverberate abroad by moderating the exportation of the kingdom’s uncompromising version of Islam, Wahhabism, which has been accused of fueling intolerance and terrorism.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/worl ... d=71987722
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Saudi Arabia’s Arab Spring, at Last
The crown prince has big plans to bring back a level of tolerance to his society.


Excerpt:

But guess what? This anticorruption drive is only the second-most unusual and important initiative launched by M.B.S. The first is to bring Saudi Islam back to its more open and modern orientation — whence it diverted in 1979. That is, back to what M.B.S. described to a recent global investment conference here as a “moderate, balanced Islam that is open to the world and to all religions and all traditions and peoples.”

I know that year well. I started my career as a reporter in the Middle East in Beirut in 1979, and so much of the region that I have covered since was shaped by the three big events of that year: the takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Saudi puritanical extremists — who denounced the Saudi ruling family as corrupt, impious sellouts to Western values; the Iranian Islamic revolution; and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

These three events together freaked out the Saudi ruling family at the time, and prompted it to try to shore up its legitimacy by allowing its Wahhabi clerics to impose a much more austere Islam on the society and by launching a worldwide competition with Iran’s ayatollahs over who could export more fundamentalist Islam. It didn’t help that the U.S. tried to leverage this trend by using Islamist fighters against Russia in Afghanistan. In all, it pushed Islam globally way to the right and helped nurture 9/11.

A lawyer by training, who rose up in his family’s education-social welfare foundation, M.B.S. is on a mission to bring Saudi Islam back to the center. He has not only curbed the authority of the once feared Saudi religious police to berate a woman for not covering every inch of her skin, he has also let women drive. And unlike any Saudi leader before him, he has taken the hard-liners on ideologically. As one U.S.-educated 28-year-old Saudi woman told me: M.B.S. “uses a different language. He says, ‘We are going to destroy extremism.’ He’s not sugar-coating. That is reassuring to me that the change is real.”

Indeed, M.B.S. instructed me: “Do not write that we are ‘reinterpreting’ Islam — we are ‘restoring’ Islam to its origins — and our biggest tools are the Prophet’s practices and [daily life in] Saudi Arabia before 1979.” At the time of the Prophet Muhammad, he argued, there were musical theaters, there was mixing between men and women, there was respect for Christians and Jews in Arabia. “The first commercial judge in Medina was a woman!” So if the Prophet embraced all of this, M.B.S. asked, “Do you mean the Prophet was not a Muslim?”

Then one of his ministers got out his cellphone and shared with me pictures and YouTube videos of Saudi Arabia in the 1950s — women without heads covered, wearing skirts and walking with men in public, as well as concerts and cinemas. It was still a traditional and modest place, but not one where fun had been outlawed, which is what happened after 1979.

If this virus of an antipluralistic, misogynistic Islam that came out of Saudi Arabia in 1979 can be reversed by Saudi Arabia, it would drive moderation across the Muslim world and surely be welcomed here where 65 percent of the population is under 30.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/opin ... pring.html
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Greece prepares to do away with compulsory sharia in Western Thrace

Nearly a century after the sultans left, Greek Muslims will no longer have to live by Ottoman rules


AS PART of a passionate campaign to solve an apparently non-existent problem, American state legislatures have been presented, over the past decade, with at least 120 bills that sought to outlaw the practice of sharia, the Islamic legal system, and 15 of them have been enacted. With or without these laws, America’s attachment to its own constitution and judicial and legal system seems pretty robust.

Things are not quite so clear-cut on the other side of the Atlantic. Thanks to a vagary of history, there is one little patch of the European Union where sharia has hitherto held sway, not as a self-imposed code of behaviour but as a system under which Muslim citizens have been pressured to regulate their business, especially involving inheritance. That region is Western Thrace, a part of Greece adjoining the land border with Turkey. Alexis Tsipras, Greece’s leftist prime minister, is about to introduce legislation that will change that odd state of affairs.

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https://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus ... lydispatch
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