Ett par stycken om sharia -- vem är författaren?

Nedan citerade stycken är från en bok utgiven 2002. Författaren anger att han tar upp det här för att det ofta förbises, trots en "enormous importance in the psychology and the politics of Islam".

Two momentous consequences follow from the adoption of the shari'a. First, because because it is a law governing only Muslims, the shari'a leaves the status of other communities undefined. These other communities remain strictly "outside the law," and must either convert or accept the status of dhimma -- which means protected by the treaty or covenant. Only "people of the book" -- i.e., Jews, Christians, and (in Persia) Zoroastrians -- have traditionally been accorded to this status. Dhimma is offered in return for the payment of taxes, and grants no clear and justiciable rights apart from a general right of protection. Although free communities of Christians and Jews often thrived under Islamic law, there was no formal or legal acceptance of their right to worship in their own manner, and their property was subject to confiscation on more or less arbitrary grounds. The Turkish millet system rectified this , but depended for its authority on the secular rule of the Sultan, and had no authority in the shari'a.

Second, the way of life that grows under the aegis of the shari'a is profoundly domestic, without any public or ceremonial character except in the matter of communal worship. The mosque and its school, or madrasah, together with the souq or bazaar, are the only genuine public spaces in traditional Muslim towns. The street is a lane among private houses, which lie along it and across it in a disorderly jumble of inward-turning courtyards. The Muslim city is a creation of the shari'a -- a hive of private spaces built cell on cell. Above its rooftops the minarets point to God like outstretched fingers, resounding with the voice of the muezzin as he calls for the faithful to prayer.

Om ingen gissar rätt tills dess anges bok och författare imorgon kväll.

Roger Scruton och The West and The Rest: Globalization and The Terrorist Threat.

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