Re: Understanding Sharia
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Marshall: I’ve spent a good chunk of the last three years in many parts of the Muslim world interviewing people about Sharia. One thing I quickly learned was that Muslims mean very different things when they use the term. Sharia's root meaning is "the way" or "path to the water" and to most Muslims it implies doing God's will, not necessarily imitating the Taliban. In Indonesia, polls show 67 percent support for "Sharia" but only 7 percent objecting to a woman head of state. There it seems to means something like the American polling term "moral values." Polling in Iraq shows a similar pattern: 80% support for Sharia combined with 80% support for equality of men and women.
To many Muslims, criticism of Sharia as such sounds strange because, much as they might disagree with stoning adulterous women or cutting off the hands of thieves, the word implies “justice” or “goodness.” So I use the phrase ‘extreme Sharia’ to describe the laws implemented by the Saudis, Iran and others throughout the world.
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I don't know why he has to make such a bone of this. Sharia is simply a moral code/behavioural guidelines extrapolated from Islam's holy texts. As there are many interpretations of these texts, there are many differing conceptions Sharia.
"Extreme Sharia is central for all Islamists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood or Hizbut al-Tahrir, whether or not they are terrorists. Some groups, like Hamas, will campaign in elections if they think they can win."
This is silly. Extreme Sharia is central to all extreme Islamists. There are Islamists who are sincere about elections, have no interest in stoning people and so on eg in Turkey, Morocco etc.
"political opposition can be treated as apostasy or blasphemy and are potentially punishable by death, either by the state or by private bodies. In Iran, where all political office and activity is conditioned on “compatibility with standards of Shari’a,” Mehrangis Kar, who wrote the chapter on Iran in Radical Islam’s Rules, was sentenced in 2000 for “spreading propaganda against the regime of the Islamic Republic” under articles 498 and 500 of the Law of Islamic Punishment. In July 2004, Hashem Aghajari, a history professor, had his death sentence for blasphemy overturned but was sentenced to five years in prison, two of them suspended, for “insulting Islamic values.”"
This is a good point, but to clarify it/reiterate a bit, these things don't really have anything to do with religion or Sharia. These people were being persecuted on purely political grounds under the cover of religion.
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