In part one I explained why jihad is at the very core of Muslim worship and jihad is of two types in Muslim theology. Lesser jihad is warfare to defend or advance Islam. Greater jihad is the nonviolent striving to gain close communion with God in a Muslim’s private and communal life.
In part two I discussed why jihad is the essential component of a Muslim to earn entry into paradise at judgment day. In fact, it is only through jihad that paradise can be earned, and gaining paradise is the whole meaning of human life.
In this final installment, the other side of jihad’s coin, sharia, or Islamic law and why they are irrevocably joined.
Jihad’s purpose is to earn the believer a place in paradise and is entirely dependent on deeds in this life. However, "loners" can't keep Islam’s commandments because Islam is "not a personal faith," according to Muslim jurist Sam Solomon. Earthly "close communion with God" can take place only within the Muslim community, the umma. Muslims require the support and encouragement of a broader Islamic community living together just to be Muslim at all. That is exactly the basis on which a Muslim friend at Fort Sill, Okla., an Egyptian lieutenant colonel, justified his nightclubbing, drinking and womanizing. "This is not a Muslim country," he told me, and only later I learned this was a serious answer, not a dodge.
It is sharia that orders the life of the umma. Sharia is not just religious law, not just social law (that is, domestic law), not just political law or criminal law. It is all of them and more. Islam holds that nothing of human affairs is outside Allah's dominion. So Allah gave Muslims sharia as the way to order life. Al-Islam explains the reason for sharia’s comprehensiveness,
Islam is a din-religion. Din means a complete system of life consisting of beliefs and laws. ... These two aspects of din are: a) the fundamental beliefs known as usu-lu'd-din - the roots of religion; b) the laws of the shari'ah known in general as furu'd-din - the branches of religion. ...Sharia is an inarguable edict. Prof. Mark Gould explains,
In Islamic beliefs, a Muslim is expected to believe only after reflection; and in Islamic laws, he is expected to follow them without any reservations [final emphasis added].
Certain customs in ritual and law were established as sacred; derivative from the Koran and from the Sunna, they constitute the shari’ah that regulates virtually all aspects of a Muslim’s life. In the words of Islamist Sayyid Qutb, “The basis of the Islamic message is that one should accept the shari’ah without any question and reject all other laws, whatever their shape or form. This is Islam. There is no other meaning of Islam.”This explains why Western Muslims push against the West’s institutions and democracies: Sharia alone provides the structure by which jihad can be accomplished and paradise earned. Whether this jihad is greater jihad (non-warring) or lesser jihad (violence against Islam's enemies) is irrelevant to the salvation of Muslim believers; either one will suffice. Earning paradise through jihad is the fundamental soteriology of Islam and sharia is its only means.
This point of view is also articulated by the moderate, Khaled Abou El Fadl: “I must confess that I adopt the intellectual presumption that Islamic jurisprudence (Shariah) is core to the Islamic experience throughout all ages and places. To me, Shariah and Islam are inseparable, and one cannot be without the other. I also confess that my primary loyalty, after God, is to the Shariah, and not to any particular organization.”
So most Muslims who live in the West either self-segregate into Muslim neighborhoods (in old Europe, we would call them Muslim ghettos; modern France has many) or attempt to expand the reach of sharia law into society at large. Keeping sharia is not possible except by a Muslim umma living together. More than that, sharia simply is Allah's inarguable command for the ordering of human society. A Muslim, truly to be Muslim, has no choice but to submit to its dictates. After all, "submission" is what "Islam" actually means. To activist jihadis, it matters not whether one has uttered the shahada and become Muslim or has remained infidel. One must either submit to Allah within Islam or submit to Islam itself if a non-Muslim.
And that is why so many Western Muslims work to make sharia normative in the West.
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