MAS Convention 2011
Archive for category Islam
Heroes
Apr 27
Jihad on Terrorism
Apr 20
Tarbiyah & ‘Ilm Camp 2010
Nov 30
14th Annual MAS Convention 2010 (Los Angeles) – “I Hasten Towards You My Lord, So You May Be Pleased”
The Life of This World
Nov 6
In the Name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
Muslim Student Association
University of California, San Diego
MSA UCSD Denounces UCI for the Suspension of the Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(La Jolla, CA 9/15/2010) The Muslim Student Association (MSA) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) condemns the University of California Irvine (UCI) administration’s suspension of the Muslim Student Union (MSU) following a July recommendation to penalize the organization for its alleged involvement in the disruption of Israeli ambassador Michael Oren’s speech on February 8, 2010.
Who’s Afraid of Shariah?
Sep 8
Hasn’t the whole notion of shariah in America gotten a bit out of control? No, it hasn’t — it’s gotten hugely, obscenely, ignorantly out of control. How many of those anti-Islam protesters holding “NO SHARIA LAW” signs (as if anyone were advocating shariah law in the U.S.) actually know what the word means? I’d say, oh, none. Roughly.
Shariah (also spelled shari’ah or sharia or shari’a) is the Arabic word for “the road to the watering place.” In a religious context, it means “the righteous path.” Loosely, it can mean simply, “Islam.”
There are six principles of shariah. They are derived from the Qur’an, which Muslims believe is the word of God. All Islamic religious rules must be in line with these six principles of shariah.
Aha! The six principles must be about killing infidels, veiling women, stoning people for adultery, honor killings and female genital cutting, right? Nope.
Here they are, the six principles of shariah:
1. The right to the protection of life.
2. The right to the protection of family.
3. The right to the protection of education.
4. The right to the protection of religion.
5. The right to the protection of property (access to resources).
6. The right to the protection of human dignity.
Well, bless me, as a pledge-of-allegiance-reciting, California-raised Muslim girl, these six principles sound a lot like those espoused in my very own Constitution of the United States. Except that these were developed over a thousand years ago.
This is the core of shariah — these six principles. The term “shariah law” is a misnomer, because shariah is not law, but a set of principles. To Muslims, it’s the general term for “the way of God.”
But how do we know what the way of God is? Early Muslims looked to the Qur’an and the words of the Prophet Muhammad to figure this out. They filled books of interpretive writings (called fiqh) about how to act in accordance with the way of God. They rarely agreed — the fiqh is not just one rule, but many differing opinions and contradictory rules and scholarly debates.