Review of Heaven on Earth:
A Journey Through Sharia Law from the Deserts of Ancient Arabia to the
Streets of the Modern Muslim World,
Sadakat Kadri
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012
There are 50 Muslim-majority states in the world; 11 of them, including
Egypt, have constitutions that acknowledge Islam as a source of national
law. In Heaven on Earth, Sadakat Kadri, an English barrister and New
York attorney, provides a much-needed and highly readable overview of
Islamic legal history and an entertaining survey of the state of Islamic
law today, full of fascinating anecdotes.
For instance, have you heard the one about the eleventh-century Sufi
mystic whose prayers were interrupted by a familiar voice: "Oh, Abu
Al-Hasan!" it boomed. "Do you want me to tell people what I know about
your sins, so that they stone you to death?" "Oh, Lord," Al-Hasan whispered
back. "Do you want me to tell people what I know about your mercy, so
that none will ever feel obliged to bow down to you again?" "Keep your
secret," came God's conspiratorial reply. "And I will keep mine."
Such risqué offerings aside, Kadri looks at the development of
Islamic law from the time of the Prophet, focussing on attitudes to
war, criminal justice, religious tolerance, and movements of reform
through history. He provides valuable background for all those concerned
and/or excited about today's resurgence of Islam. As the fastest growing
religion, second only to Christianity in numbers (and surely first in
terms of sincere practitioners), Islam is an increasingly powerful force
not only in the world of religion, but in the realms of culture, politics
and even economics.
The conventional wisdom about Islamic law is that the Prophet set out
the legal basics in the Medinah surahs, the sharia, which was later
codified as fiqh (jurisprudence) under the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates
as the four schools -- Hanafi, Maliki, Shafii and Hanbali. The original
dynamism of Islamic jurisprudence, characterised especially in the Hanafi
school by ijtihad (legal interpretation) was lost and "the gates of
ijtihad closed" by the 14th century, as the Mongols devastated the Muslim
world.
Today's Islam is supposedly eight centuries out of date and, according
to the likes of religious scholar Hans Kung, needs both a Reformation
and an Enlightenment a la Western civilisation to bring it into the
21st century.
The truth is very different. Yes, there was a burst of creativity in
the 8th-11th centuries, which resulted in the Islamic world being far
more "civilised" than a Europe stumbling through the Dark Ages. The
transformation of sharia into fiqh began under the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mahdi
(ruled 775-785), when the rising class of religious scholars (ulama)
and the law itself gradually became independent of the ruler, and legal
decisions had to be "witnessed and validated by upstanding men of the
Muslim community, bound by oath: a jury, some four hundred years older
than its English equivalent".
Interpretation, reasoning by analogy, consensus, and consultation flourished,
creating a body of legal theory that did not so much "close" by the
14th century, but achieved a completeness that ensured that Islam would
spread and remain the most vibrant of the world's religions over time.
Kadri describes the development of Islamic fiqh as an "immense achievement.
Formulated over the course of a few centuries, it took root across three
continents and outshone Christendom for almost a millennium." It adapted
to local conditions and customs, and "helped bind civilisations that
were as diverse as any the world has seen."
The problem, as Kadri argues, is in the past century, especially the
past "four decades of legal revivalism", that "have promoted theories
that are eliminating space for fresh ideas and dissent wherever they
gain ground".
Kadri provides a dispassionate analysis of the rise of violence within
Islam which occurred since the 1970s, pointing to the Wahhabi movement,
which in turn was inspired by a late arrival to fiqh -- the 13th century
Ahmed Ibn Taymiyya, and his pupil Ibn Qayyim, whose stern warnings against
apostasy and devotion to the salafi (the first few generations of Muslims)
provide the stereotype of the austere and rigid approach to Islam so
prominent in Western discourse today, one which indeed refuses innovation,
calling on followers to imitate those who lived in the heroic period
of Islamic history (taqlid).
The author traces how in the past few decades the call to violence and
to the overthrow of kafir (unbeliever) leaders led to justifying killing
of Muslims and anyone else who got in the way. Such innovations were
formulated by the Egyptian Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Saudi Osama Bin Laden,
inspired by their own reading of Ibn Taymiyya and the writings of Egyptian
Sayyid Qutb in the 1960s.
But a higher proportion of US Muslims condemn military attacks on civilians
than do Christian or Jewish Americans, and most victims of so-called
Islamic terrorism are Muslims. Though he downplays the overwhelming
violence of the US in its many wars over the past half-century, beside
which Islam-inspired violence pales, Kadri does point out that violence
is promoted just as much by such Islamophobes as Oslo-based American
Bruce Bawer, author of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying
the West from Within (2010). Bawer argues -- hysterically -- that Europeans
are yielding up their freedoms to the Muslim invaders, and that Muslims
are reproducing "beyond the point of no return", which will soon mean
"subservience or civil war" in Europe. Fellow Osloite Anders Breivik
made 22 references to Bawer's writing in his online justification of
the murder of more than 70 Norwegians in July 2011.
How Muslim emigres fit in to their new societies these days is an important
theme in Heaven on Earth. The US is built on a culture of mass immigration
and rapid assimilation, and despite the Islamophobia of especially the
post 9/11 era, Muslims have adapted well to life in America and have
prospered. In contrast, "Britain has historically received newcomers
with a combination of curiosity, hostility, and indifference" fostering
a "self-absorption in immigrant communities". The great militancy of
British Muslims is the result.
In both countries -- infuriating local Islamophobes -- sharia has slipped
in and now forms an essential element in those supposedly superior legal
systems. The US federal arbitration law, passed by Congress in 1925,
allows religious tribunals, and their judgments are given force of law
by state and federal courts. Recent attempts to outlaw sharia (notably
a referendum in Oklahoma) will fail with First Amendment appeals, predicts
Kadri. After all, US Jews have had had their beth din religious courts
for more than a century, and there are now Christian conciliators for
those Christians who prefer canon law to the secular law of the land.
US courts "have been positively encouraging [its] use since the 1980s"
for inheritance, business, and matrimonial disputes, "sorted out by
Islamic scholars according to the sharia. "The precepts of Islamic law,
like those of other religious codes, therefore have judicial force in
the US already." Muftis near Birmingham UK set up the "Muslim Arbitration
Tribunal to offer consenting parties the right to have their commercial
and family disputes resolved according to Islamic law, for a small fee."
Kadri’s measured take on touchy subjects is well illustrated by his
consideration of the infamous Danish cartoons defaming Mohammad. Though
not condoning the violent response to the cartoons, he puts the blame
on the Western promoters of "free speech": "Arguments about free speech
and fair comment are beside the point when it comes to acknowledging
sensitivities."
Kadri emphasises inner jihad -- the need to recognise that sharia governs
one’s ego as well as society, and is a "path to salvation" rather than
just a "set of orders". The new ferment in the Arab world gives rise
to optimism for Kadri. Building on the 19th century Islamic reform movement,
the Iranian revolution (which Kadri provides startling material on,
based on his travels and interviews there), and recent events in the
Arab world, the process of adapting democracy to Islam is well underway
in our era of mass literacy. "The idea has spread that people should
work out problems for themselves -- simply by reading the Quran, perhaps,
or by thinking hard about what the Prophet, his companions, and the
salafs of seventh century Arabia would have done."
"Sins are ultimately for God to judge." Mohammad and the early jurists
preferred repentance to compulsion, and Muslim scholars mostly avoid
the temptations of worldly power. Countering Western media hype, Kadri
documents the "perennial reluctance of Muslim states to enforce the
emblematic hadd (Quran-based) penalities".
All in all, the author concludes, this is "an excellent basis for social
harmony today. The belief in a route toward salvation has always sought
to transcend sins more than suppress them ... and humanity has no business
anticipating the terrors of the hereafter." Warns Kadri, "mortals can
only fail when they play God in the here and now."
Reviewed by Eric Walberg
Eric writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/ You can
order his Postmodern Imperialism: Geopolitics and the Great Games or
reach him at
http://ericwalberg.com/
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