Salon's useful article on Sharia law

Salon, a left wing publication, has produced a useful article explaining Sharia law and its application here in the U.S.  In order to develop a narrative on the bigotry of a Republican lawmaker in Tennessee who introduced a bill to prohibit the use or application of Sharia law in that state, the reporter interviewed a New Jersey-based attorney and an expert on sharia who regularly handles cases that involve Islamic law.  Here is a quote by the attorney describing the primary source for Sharia Law:

"Sharia is more than simply "law" in the prescriptive sense. It is also a methodology through which a jurist engages the religious texts to ascertain divine will. As a jurist-made law, the outcome of this process of ascertaining divine will is called fiqh (positive law), which is the moral and legal anchor of a Muslim's total existence. Sharia governs every aspect of an observant Muslim's life. The sharia juristic inquiry begins with the Quran and the Sunna. The Quran is the Muslim Holy Scripture -- like the New Testament for Christians or the Old Testament for the Jews. The Sunna is essentially the prophetic example embodied in the sayings and conduct of the Prophet Mohammed."


This sounds like Sharia law is pretty much whatever any given Muslim jurist decides it is primarily based upon the Quran and the sayings of Mohammed as recorded in the Sunna.  


The attorney goes on to say:


"After the two primary sources of Islamic law, the Quran and the Sunna, the two main secondary sources of Islamic law are: (1) ijma (consensus of the scholars and jurists, and sometimes the entire community), and (2) qiyas (reasoning by analogy to one of the higher sources).  Other secondary sources of Islamic law are juristic preference, public interest and custom. Sharia is extremely flexible and subject to various interpretations."

From this quote it is also apparent that Sharia law is not a legal ruling determined by any duly elected legislature and therefore has no basis in the will of people, democratically expressed.  Therein perhaps is the most significant difference between our system of jurisprudence and that of countries in which Sharia is the rule.  In Iran, for example, justice would be meted out by a jurist -- undoubtedly an Islamist -- who alone determines the outcome without any consideration to any law passed by the "people", or, put another way, a law passed in a democratic, open forum after some debate as to its pros and cons.  

From this explication by the N.J. attorney it is obvious why Sharia law could not and would not ever make it in any country with well-established democratic traditions.  This explication also makes it obvious why Muslim countries, at least those in which Sharia law prevails, are unlikely to ever take to any democratic form of governing.  There is a reason why Ataturk rejected Sharia law in Turkey in 1925 when he instituted the reforms designed to bring his country into the democratic modern and western world from the theocratic despotism of the Ottoman Empire and the rest of the east.  In lawmaking the will of the people must be paramount.