Christians, Muslims share ideas on loyalties

We applaud Pastor Steve Odam of Murfreesboro’s central Christian Church for speaking up. Indeed the evil purists in a society when no one speaks up against unjust men and women. 

However, let me add that Muslims do not take their pledge to Sharia Law, Sharia in its simplicity is guidance manual to create just societies, and it is human to err, except three Muslim majority nation, no other nation is bent on stoning the adulterer to death or hanging the apostate… because it is not in the Quraan. What those three out of 56 Muslims majority nations practice is a cultural and not religious. Just as most of the western states do not have capital punishment, we in the United States do, still carry that primitive practices, it is our culture and not a western value. You can learn more about Sharia at www.Sharialaws.com or directly at http://sharialaws.blogspot.com/2011/07/sharia-in-one-gulp.html

The Quraan says one must be loyal to God, the prophet’s wisdom and the elected leaders with a caveat that the rulers must be just, if not you must speak out against injustice.  Islam is pure common sense.

Mike Ghouse for a cohesive America
GUEST COLUMN: Christians, Muslims share ideas on loyalties

http://www.dnj.com/article/20111211/OPINION02/112110309

Lately I've read many times and in many places that a Muslim's first loyalty is to Shariah law, as for example in Marshall Boates' letter to the editor (The DNJ, Dec. 7): "The Muslims' first pledge is to Shariah law. All other authority is subordinate to Shariah law. Therefore Muslims cannot be allowed to defend our country because it is not their highest authority."

I would guess that many if not most of those who make statements like this are church-going Christians. Which puzzles me because they seem not to have thought of equally absolute statements like the apostle Peter's "We must obey God rather than men," when sanctioned by the "council" (local government in Jerusalem) for evangelizing. Christians have ever since referenced this and other similar statements and the history of subsequent encounters with imperial government in the Roman Empire. Repeatedly, in various sporadic persecutions by Roman government, Christians were given the opportunity to acknowledge the government's role as "highest authority." Repeatedly, Christians gave up their lives rather than do so. Religious allegiance has always been a part of the history of the West and Christians have sometimes been pressed to violate their ethics or beliefs by an inordinately dominant government.

These two religions' claim to have a higher authority than government should be seen as a salutary thing, not a problem. They are, while not identical, at least analogous to one another. Christians who understand their faith know implicitly that we hold allegiance to our country and its government only at arm's length, so to speak. It is a secondary allegiance at best. God is our first allegiance, and we may not sacrifice that loyalty on the altar of convenience. Fortunately, in a well run representative republic, there are seldom occasions when a Christian is absolutely pressed to the wall of sacrificing allegiance to God in favor of government or facing the consequences.

Different Christians see the religious/governmental conflicts differently, and it is out of the pacifist heritage against all forms of violence and war that the traditions of affording citizens the opportunity to register as Conscientious Objectors originates.

Certainly Muslims have a higher allegiance than government. The problem lately has come from the misreading by certain Muslims of what that requires them to do when different allegiances clash. There is this aspect to the Islamic tradition, but it is by no means monolithic.

There are thousands of American Muslims who serve in the Armed Forces well and honorably. Rather than the rather simpleminded tactic of excluding service based on one's religion, it may well behoove the Department of Defense to be more attentive to statements like those made by Maj. Nidal Hasan prior to his murderous attacks on service members at Ft. Hood. This is simply common sense, such as the current administration has occasionally demonstrated when attacking terrorists and their leaders in recent events in Pakistan and Yemen for example.

The Christian and Islamic tradition re: Church/State relations are not identical, of course. But, we hold in common, with Jews also, the notion that God is Almighty, and to him alone belongs ultimate authority over the affairs of all. How this is sometimes put into practice reflects our different theologies and traditions. But it is not, in this country anyway, a basis for blanket exclusion from military service based on religion.

Steven Odom is the pastor of Central Christian Church in Murfreesboro and a former community member of The DNJ's Editorial Board.

Fear of sharia in Tennessee

Fear of sharia in Tennessee

Senator Bill Ketron's bill goes further than other irrational US reactions to Islam by attempting to outlaw sharia entirely

• John Esposito and Sheila Lalwani
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 March 2011 

The United Kingdom has officially sanctioned the use of Islamic tribunals to settle some disputes, and in Germany, Islamic legal scholars such as Mathias Rohe have noted the compatibility of Islamic law to German law. The application of Islamic Law in Europe may remain controversial, but in the court of American public opinion, the idea of the Islamic legal system having any application in the US provokes massive social angst and sleazy political opportunism.

The southern state of Tennessee is the latest example of an irrational fear of Islam, which threatens American values and Muslim civil liberties. Bill Ketron Jr, a Republican State Senator in Tennessee who was first elected in 2002, introduced Senate bill 1028 to outlaw sharia. The fiery language of the bill is not unfamiliar in the American public square: In the lead-up to the 2010 elections we saw Newt Gingrich and other candidates for election, Islamophobic commentators and websites warn of the threat of sharia.

Senate bill 1028 goes further than other states have gone, attempting to outlaw sharia entirely. It provides the Tennessee state attorney general with the authority to designate "sharia organisations", defined as "two or more persons conspiring to support, or acting in concert in support of, sharia or in furtherance of the imposition of sharia within any state or territory of the United States." According to the bill, anyone who provides material support or resources to a designated sharia organisation could be charged with a felony and face up to 15 years of jail.

The bill simplistically equates sharia with terrorism without any proof and declares that it is "treasonous" and incompatible with the US constitution. It incorrectly identifies sharia as a political doctrine that "requires all its adherents to actively support the establishment of a political society based upon sharia as foundational or supreme law and the replacement of any political entity not governed by sharia with a sharia political order." The bill goes on to state: "Sharia requires all its adherents to actively and passively support the replacement of American constitutional republic, including the representative government of this state with a political system based upon sharia."

The very start of the language of the bill is profoundly disturbing. Sharia is falsely equated with Islamic law. Sharia refers to God's will, laws, principles and values, found in the Qur'an and the traditions of the prophet Muhammad. Islamic law is the product of early jurists who interpreted and developed during it in the early Islamic centuries.

The hysteria continues with unsubstantiated accusations: "The knowing adherence to sharia and to foreign sharia authorities is prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the United States government and the government of this state through the abrogation, destruction, or violation of the United States and Tennessee Constitutions by the likely use of imminent criminal violence and terrorism with the aim of imposing sharia on the people of this state."

The bill states that its goal is not to outlaw freedom of religion or the practice of Islam. However, though breathtakingly devoid of evidence of any call to impose sharia in Tennessee or anywhere else in the US, it uncritically condemns sharia and asserts that it represents a major threat to Tennessee, brush-stroking the vast majority of mainstream Muslims and Islam in America.

For its understanding of the nature and role of Islamic law, it relies on the rhetoric of terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden and the harsh application and punishments meted out in some parts of the world.

The bill is a cheap and transparent attempt by Ketron to pander to the misplaced fears of some citizens. In his district, there has been a heated debate over the building of a new mosque in Murfreesboro.

The fear that Islamic law could supplant American law is simply misplaced. While devout Jews can follow Jewish law and Christians follow their doctrines and laws and be at the same time fully American citizens, can Muslims? Of course. Like followers of other faiths, Muslims can and do fulfil the personal religious obligations of their faith without supplanting the laws of their country. The United Kingdom offers a good example: the rulings of a network of sharia courts are enforceable, when both parties to a dispute have agreed to abide by them, and where they do not conflict with English law, with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or high court.

Not only do anti-sharia in America fearmongers show an appalling ignorance of the meaning and nature of sharia as a moral compass but they also do not provide offer any evidence that their concerns have a solid foundation in reality. Moreover, their concerns fly in the face of hard evidence to the contrary. In America, Muslims, like members of other faiths, can draw on their religious law to govern internal matters and as a guide in family and social behaviour as long as they do not violate civil law.

Mr Ketron, are you listening?