This is a divisive topic around which there are considerable differences of opinion, heightened emotion, and deep confusion. One speaker I heard recently explained the difference between Shari’ah and Islamic law better than I had ever heard it explained, and he did it in one short sentence. He said that the U.S. Constitution is to Shari’ah as American law is to Islamic law.
What does this short sentence mean? The U. S. Constitution sets forth in a general way the values and principles upon which American law is to be formed and evaluated. The Congress, the legislative branch of government, passes law, whereas the judicial branch of the government checks whether that law is consistent with the values of the Constitution. The Constitution is thus not synonymous with American law, but American law is supposed to be grounded in the Constitution. Similarly, Shari’ah embodies the values upon which Islamic law is to be generated. For example, while there is one Qur’an comprising a major part of Shari’ah, there are multiple schools of jurisprudence in Islam that interpret the Qur’an as they generate Islamic law. So, Shari’ah is not synonymous with Islamic law, but Islamic law is supposed to be grounded in the Qur’an…
I had the privilege of co-authoring (with Ed Smither) the chapter on Timothy of Baghdad (727-823) in the recently released book The History of Apologetics. In the chapter, we discuss the context of the Eastern Church under Muslim rule and the missiological strategy of the Eastern Patriarch as a potential model for 21st Century Muslim-Christian dialogue. Given the fact that Muslims and Christians make up more than half the world’s population, it is imperative to have peaceful dialogue without compromising the essentials of the Christian faith. This is something that Timothy of Baghdad did quite well in a two-day dialogue with the then leader of the Muslim world. Below are a few excerpts from the chapter.
Many non-Muslims picture the qur’anic heaven as an eternal orgy in which the faithful freely engage in all kinds of sexual perversion with full immunity. This libertine version has a long history in the West,[i] and American Christians won’t easily be disabused of it. Not with writers like Sam Shamoun recasting the qur’anic heaven in the most despicable terms possible, as “Allah’s brothel.”[ii] British conservatives won’t likely let go of it either, not with Boris Johnson—then MP, now British prime minister—retelling the same tired orgy story in his 2004 novel Seventy-Two Virgins – A Comedy of Errors.
While the Qur’an does emphasize heaven’s sensual pleasures…