Comments on: Sharia Law

By: 101st post review at Terahertz

101st post review at Terahertz — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 03:57:18 +0000

[...] I’ve also written on a few political things (likely more will come) including the America: From Freedom to Fascism documentary, the homeless, democracy, and Sharia Law. [...]

By: Ian

Ian — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 04:20:35 +0000

James,

You called me absolutely right on this one.

I jumped the gun to get an argument up and didn’t think it through as long as I should have.

I disagree with law from revelation because it lacks a framework beyond the people who supposedly heard from God – the Quar’an from Mohamad, the Bible from x number of authors. Justification for those books is not something I feel like arguing here.

Quickly on the NT: homosexuality is “worth of death” Romans 1:31-32, kept out of heaven 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, etc.

I didn’t mean that our laws are based on religious doctrine – our system of democracy comes more from Greek origins (but doesn’t feature aspects of Greek mythology), and our laws have moved a long ways away from the laws that were in place during medieval times. I guess it’s personal bias that our current laws are more just than those of the past – but I do feel that secular humanistic laws (even if they weren’t meant to be).

The thing I’d have to agree with you is that a lot of the things Jesus (is accredited to have) said made sense – they had to or people would have immediately called him a loony and there’d be no Christianity. Loving your neighbour, peace, and friendship are things I hope all people want, I just don’t think the miracles happened (and it’d be a rather boring book without them ).

Anyways, I responded because I admit again that this was one of my weaker posts, but I hope I made up for it a bit here.

By: James Bell

James Bell — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 02:50:19 +0000

You have one point that’s _very_ weak. You say that the law is unjust simply because it is based on the Quar’an. Ye who pride yourself on the logic of your beliefs, where is the logic in that?
I’m not saying that I support Sharia law (from my (very limited) understanding of it I don’t support it) but your statement is not very strong. To say it Sharia law is wrong just because you don’t like the book it comes from is incredibly closed-minded. I think there are much better reasons to be against it than than to open your post by saying, “I don’t like it because ‘it is based solely off of the Quar’an’ “.

“Religious law is a 1000-year backwards step for a society.” Really? Yet you said that our law is based on religious doctrines. How can it be a step backwards if that’s where we already are? And how do you choose the direction to step forward? (I don’t expect that these are questions that will stump you; I’m simply curious to hear your answer.)

What New Testament passages are not applied to modern law? I can think of divorce, but what else? And would following those passages really be a step backward? There are sound logical reasons for everything I can think of in the New Testament. And even though you may agree with current laws on divorce, I don’t think you can say that to disallow it would be a 1000-year backward step.

And as I’ve mentioned before, the New Testament renders a lot of the Old Testament laws obsolete (the book of John is a good starting point if you’d like to read why the coming of Christ changed things). So I’d agree that to force people who commit a crime to sacrifice a couple of doves and smear the blood on themselves – that would be a big step backwards (in both a social and a religious sense).