Sadakat Kadri's book on the origins of the Shariah Law

by Salman Hameed

The new book by Sadakat Kadri, Heaven on Earth: A Journey Through Shari’a Law From the Deserts of Ancient Arabia to the Streets of the Modern Muslim World, is on my reading list. It has been getting fantastic reviews and is relevant to many of the debates taking place in the Muslim world today. The latest review appeared in last week's Book Review of the New York Times - and it reminded the readers about the importance of learning about historical contexts. For example, here are the relevant bits about Ibn-Tamiiya's unusually harsh interpretations of the Islamic law and his continuing influence in certain parts of Muslim societies:

 In the 13th century, as the Mongols swept across Asia and sacked Baghdad, the Mongol warrior Hulegu (a grandson of Genghis Khan) rephrased al-Ghazali’s query and posed it to Muslim jurists: Would they prefer to live under an unjust Muslim ruler or a just nonbeliever? Wanting to keep their heads, most preferred Hulegu’s rule. But one forcefully rejected the Mongol invasion, and his decision reverberates to this day. Ibn Taymiyya, a scholar from Damascus, issued several fatwas against the Mongols, who were threatening to overrun the Levant. (After Hulegu, some Mongol leaders nominally converted to Islam, but Ibn Taymiyya still considered them infidels.) He also argued that it was permissible for believers to kill other Muslims during battle, if those Muslims were fighting alongside the Mongols. Ibn Taymiyya is the intellectual forefather to many modern-day Islamic militants who use his anti-Mongol fatwas to justify violence against fellow Muslims, or even to declare them infidels. 

Kadri argues that Ibn Taymiyya’s writings were the product of a particular time and place, and that militants have twisted them to fit their own purposes. “His fatwas against the Mongols were intended to warn people that lip service to Islam is no proof of religious sincerity and peaceful intentions,” Kadri writes. “They are mouthed today to validate murder after murder in Islam’s name.” 

Ibn Taymiyya inspired the father of the Wahhabi strain of Islam that is dominant in Saudi Arabia today, the 18th-century cleric Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab, who decreed that many Muslims had abandoned the practices of their ancestors. Al-Wahhab’s followers led a failed uprising against Ottoman rule in the Hijaz, the region of Saudi Arabia where Islam was founded. The Wahhabi appropriation of Ibn Taymiyya’s teachings would have a profound impact on the future of Islamic militancy, and their brief reign over Islam’s holy sites, Kadri writes, “introduced pilgrims from across the world to the concept that violent revolution might be a pious jihad.” 

The Egyptian radical Sayyid Qutb took that idea a step further. His 1964 manifesto “Milestones” argued that holy war should be waged not only defensively to protect Muslim lands but also offensively against the enemies of Islam. Qutb also claimed that a Muslim ruler who does not apply Shariah should be declared an infidel and removed from power. 

Read the full review here. Unfortunately, the New York Times further reinforced the caricature of Islam and the Shariah Law by using a picture of an Indonesian woman being publicly caned by the Sharia police for having premarital sex. Gee - that's a gift for Islamophobes like Michelle Bachmann, who will read neither the book nor the review, but will get all the information from one picture.