LMM Book Club -June
Details
New location:
5th floor Waterstones, 203 Picadilly W1J 9HD. When you get out of the lift on 5th floor the restaurant is on the right and bar seating is on the left. We will sit on the area on the left.
Salaam all,
Thank you everyone for attending the May meetup. Sharia law are words that are heard, in western media especially, with fear and apprehension. Even Muslims fear what imposition of Sharia in their country might mean in terms of their freedom to express their opinion and live their lives. But what is Sharia? Where has it come from and how has it evolved over centuries? Those are the questions we will try to understand in the June book club meetup. I could have chosen a book by an Islamic scholar written in an academic style but I felt it would be better if it was written by someone who doesn't come from a seminary environment, is a modern writer and can express those fears and apprehensions. So buy the book and enjoy the read and we shall meet next month to discuss it, Inshallah.
Heaven on Earth by Sadakat Kadri (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Heaven-Earth-Journey-Through-Shari%C2%91/dp/product-description/1847920160/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=266239&s=books)
Some 1400 years after the Prophet Muhammad first articulated God's law - the shari'a - its earthly interpreters are still arguing over what it means. Hardliners reduce it to amputations, veiling, holy war and stonings. Others say that it is humanity's only guarantee of a just society. In Heaven on Earth, criminal barrister and prizewinning writer, Sadakat Kadri, sets out to see who is right.
Travelling the Islamic world, he encounters a cacophony of legal claims. At the ancient Indian grave of his Sufi ancestor, unruly jinns are exorcised in the name of the shari'a. In Pakistan's madrasas, stern scholars ridicule his talk of human rights and demand explanations for NATO drone attacks in Afghanistan. In Iran, he hears that God is forgiving enough to subsidise sex-change operations - but requires the execution of Muslims who change religion.
All Muslims are guided by the shari'a - whatever their interpretation of it - and the stories of compulsion and violence are just part of a much bigger picture. Many of Islam's first judges refused even to decide cases for fear that a mistake would damn them, and scholars from Delhi to Cairo maintain that governments have no business enforcing faith.
In this illuminating and important book, Sadakat Kadri takes us on a journey through Islam's past and present. The promise of a perfect social order can be compelling. But reality will always intrude. And when human beings attempt to apply divine justice, they risk creating not a heaven on earth - but something much closer to hell.
About the Author
Half-Finnish and half-Pakistani, Sadakat Kadri was born in London in 1964. He graduated with a first in history and law from Trinity College, Cambridge, and after taking a master's degree at Harvard Law School qualified as a barrister and New York attorney. He has been attached to London's Doughty Street Chambers since the mid-1990s, and has worked on human rights issues in several overseas jurisdictions, including Turkey and parts of the Middle East. His last book was The Trial: A History from Socrates to O.J. Simpson, he is a past winner of the Spectator/Shiva Naipaul travel writing prize, and before setting off to research the sharia, he wrote a regular column on legal questions for the New Statesman.