Perspectives:
WHOSE SHARIA IS IT ANYWAY?
Link to web article here.
WHOSE SHARIA IS IT ANYWAY?: What interpretation of Sharia is mostly applied?
It has been a bad year for Islam in many ways. First, there was the kidnapping and reported sale of the Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram, who openly claimed ‘religious acceptability’ for their acts.
Then, the Sultan of Brunei's horrific new penal code came into effect, threatening to punish proven male-male sex with death.
To top it off, the world was reminded of the cruelty of Islamic Sharia law when 27-year-old Meriam Ibrahim, pregnant with her second child, was found guilty of apostasy in Sudan and sentenced to flogging and ultimately to death by hanging.
Dr Kecia Ali, Associate Professor of Religion at Boston University where she teaches a range of classes related to Islam, responded with horror to the claims that all the above events not only happened in the name of Islam but were actually instructed in the name of Islam. In an article in Huffington Post, Dr Ali boldly asks the question: “Whose Sharia is it?”
Click here to read the article
Between 1991 and 2007, about 750 Muslims who have decided to follow Christ filled out an extensive questionnaire on what attracts them to Jesus. The respondents — from 30 countries and 50 ethnic groups — represent every major region of the Muslim world. The participants ranked the relative importance of different influences and whether they occurred before, at the time of, or after their decision to follow Christ. While the survey, prepared at Fuller Theological Seminary's School of Intercultural Studies, does not claim scientific precision, it provides a glimpse into some of the key means the Spirit of God is using to open Muslim hearts to the gospel.
So what attracts Muslims to follow Jesus?
Click here to read the article
MERIAM’S RULING: Consistent with Islam or not?
On 17 May experts in Islamic law (all from Western Nations) widely condemned the Sudanese court death sentence given to a pregnant young Christian woman for apostasy, viewing the sentence as an attempt to give the regime legitimacy with the more conservative crowd. "The punishment has little to do with religion and serves as a political distraction," Mohamed Ghilan, an expert in Islamic jurisprudence, told Al Jazeera on Saturday, May 17. "This is a ploy by the Sudanese regime to appear as 'defenders of Islam' to mitigate their corruption."“Not true!” says Elizabeth Kendall of Religious Liberty Monitoring in a special report to ASSIST News Service. By sentencing Meriam to 100 lashes for adultery (after refusing to recognise her marriage to a Christian) and then condemning her to death for apostasy (after refusing to recognise her right to religious freedom), the Khartoum court not only exposed the barbarity of the regime; Khartoum's rulings have exposed the barbarity of Islam and Sharia. For Khartoum's rulings are totally consistent with Islam.