Author Archives: Editors

SHARI’AH LAW-Brief Thought By Mirza Ashraf

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ON SHARI’AH LAW: The term Shari’ah appears only once in the Qur’an, where God states, “We have set you on a Shari’ah of command, so follow it” (Q. 45:18). In Islam, the Qur’an and Sunnah (the precepts and traditions of the Prophet) are the basis of a uniform and codified version of Shari’ah, or “Islamic law.” The Shari’ah is a complex ethico-legal religious tradition, whose meanings and application, given today’s demand for liberal democracy and the separation of religion and state, have emerged as a hot subject of discussion. Though the word Shari’ah is generally defined as Islamic law, and it indeed contains law, it also embraces elements and aspects that are not, strictly speaking, limited to law. Shari’ah is a total discourse, one in which all kinds of institutions—religious, legal, moral, political, and economic—find simultaneous directives for all those who are the citizens of an Islamic state. It offers prescriptions on everything from prayers, diet, and dress to commerce, taxation, and warfare. Rather than definitive law, Shari’ah is best understood as God’s commanding guidance for an Islamic way of life. Muslim scholars from the early period concluded that the Shari’ah lies at the heart of God’s revelation and that it is, in some sense, all-encompassing. Gen Zia-ul-Haqq the with full dictatorial power in his hand failed to implement Shariah law. Major problem was how to impose Shariah law in modern times. As we can understand from Imam Malik’s famous interpretation which I quote here below:

Abu Jaffer Al Mansoor, a great Muslim ruler, who was in power for over twenty years in the beginning of the Abbasid regime, once requested Imam Malik to write a comprehensive book on Shariah Law outlining Islamic verdicts on matters that occurred to people in daily life. He wanted that book to be the standard by which all matters are resolved. Imam Malik, the founder of one of the four major schools of thought, counseled Al Mansoor not to do so. He argued: “The Prophet’s companions settled in different provinces with each of them having his share of knowledge about Islam. If you were now to enforce a single opinion on them all, this will inevitably lead to a great deal of chaos and trouble.” ~

 MIRZA ASHRAF

Has science made religion useless?

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  • Science and religion (fact versus faith) are often seen as two incongruous groups. When you consider the purpose of each and the questions that they seek to answer, the comparison becomes less black and white.
  • This video features religious scholars, a primatologist, a neuroendocrinologist, a comedian, and other brilliant minds considering, among other things, the evolutionary function that religion serves, the power of symbols, and the human need to learn, explore, and know the world around us so that it becomes a less scary place.
  • “I think most people are actually kind of comfortable with the idea that science is a reliable way to learn about nature, but it’s not the whole story and there’s a place also for religion, for faith, for theology, for philosophy,” says Francis Collins, American geneticist and director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “But that harmony perspective doesn’t get as much attention. Nobody is as interested in harmony as they are in conflict.”

FRANS DE WAAL: Well, religion is an interesting topic because religion is universal. All human societies believe in the supernatural. All human societies have a religion one way or another.

REZA ASLAN: Religion has been a part of the human experience from the beginning. In fact, we can trace the origin of religious experience to before homo sapiens. We can trace it with some measure of confidence to Neanderthals. We can measure it with a little less confidence all the way to homo erectus. So we’re talking hundreds of thousands of years before our species even existed.

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: Essentially there has been no culture on Earth that has not invented some form of what could be termed meta-magical thinking, attributing things that cannot be seen, faith-based belief systems, things of that sort. It’s universal.

ASLAN: Religious thinking is embedded in our cognitive processes. It is a mode of knowing. We’re born with it. It’s part of our DNA. The question then becomes why. There must be some evolutionary reason for it. There must be a reason, some adaptive advantage to having religious experience or faith experience. Otherwise it wouldn’t exist.

SAPOLSKY: It makes perfect sense why they’ve evolved because they’re wonderful mechanisms for reducing stress. It is an awful, terrifying world out there where bad things happen and we’re all going to die eventually. And believing that there is something, someone responsible for it at least gives some stress reducing attributes built around understanding causality.

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posted by f.sheikh

Is Economic Inequality Really a Problem?By Samuel Scheffler

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Professor Frankfurt argued that it does not matter whether some people have less than others. What matters is that some people do not have enough. They lack adequate income, have little or no wealth and do not enjoy decent housing, health care or education. If even the worst-off people had enough resources to lead good and fulfilling lives, then the fact that others had still greater resources would not be troubling.

When some people don’t have enough and others have vastly more than they need, it is easy to conclude that the problem is one of inequality. But this, according to Professor Frankfurt, is a mistake. The problem isn’t inequality as such. It’s the poverty and deprivation suffered by those who have least.

Professor Frankfurt’s essay didn’t persuade all his fellow philosophers, many of whom remained egalitarians. But his challenge continued to resonate and, in 2015,even as concerns about economic inequality were growing in many corners of society, he published a short book in which he reaffirmed his position.

And Professor Frankfurt, it seems, has a point. Those in the top 10 percent of America’s economic distribution are in a very comfortable position. Those in the top 1 percent are in an even more comfortable position than those in the other 9 percent. But few people find this kind of inequality troubling. Inequality bothers us most, it seems, only when some are very rich and others are very poor.

Even when the worst-off people are very poor, moreover, it wouldn’t be an improvement to reduce everyone else to their level. Equality would then prevail, but equal misery is hardly an ideal worth striving for.

So perhaps we shouldn’t object to economic inequality as such. Instead, we should just try to improve the position of those who have least. We should work to eliminate poverty, hunger, bad schools, substandard housing and inadequate medical care. But we shouldn’t make the elimination of inequality our aim.

Is this the correct conclusion? I think not. Economic inequality matters a great deal whether or not it matters “as such.”

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posted by f.sheikh