Format: Not to exceed 1,000 words. Times New Roman or Calibri fonts (or equivalent), size 10-12pt. One-inch margins. Citation style should consist of footnotes following the Chicago Manual of Style (link (Links to an external site.)).
For your assistance, I’ve compiled a working bibliography
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Points: 40 (grade will display as letter grade)
Prompt:
At the beginning of the semester, we considered a selection from Rumee Ahmed’s Sharia Compliant: A User’s Guide to Hacking Islamic Law in which he listed what he considered the “five myths” of the Shariʿa. They were:
- There is only one, official Shariʿa
- The Shariʿa never changes
- Only learned scholars may discuss the Shariʿa
- Islamic law is found in the Qurʾan and the Sayings of Muhammad
- All Muslims live according to Islamic law
Alongside these myths, we considered the legal question of enslavement across Muslim-majority contexts in history. In consideration of discussions of enslavement, theories of race (e.g. the ‘climate thesis’ and the ‘Hamitic myth’), and the changes made to Islamic legal theory and practice from the initial moments of Islamic legal theory through the colonial period and into the 20th century, choose two of these five myths listed by Ahmed and locate examples either proving or disproving these myths.
As you discuss your myths, reflect and explain whether your engagement with these myths confirms or refutes Ahmed’s observation:
“The reality is that all of us—Muslim or not—have nuanced and, at times, hypocritical relationships with law. We are somehow able to tout the law’s importance and flout it at the same time; we can follow the law in some ways and disobey it in others and still consider ourselves good citizens.” (32)
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