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“What is sharia?”

“What is sharia?”

Last updated on: August 31, 2026 at 11:31 pm by Dan Peterson

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“What is sharia?” 2026-08-31T23:31:06-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Cove Fort, Utah, near Kanosh (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Newly up this morning on the Meridian Magazine website, more of my habitual lies, dripping with my perpetually incandescent rage: “Religious Kindred, but Savage Enemies? – Becoming Brigham, Episode 32″

I enjoyed this new article in Meridian Magazine, and perhaps you will, too: “They Know Where Their Records Are: Family History Miracles from Meridian Readers”

Plato and his disciple Aristotle in a detail from Raphael’s “Academy of Athens” (1508); Wikimedia Commons public domain image

One of the angles of attack chosen by some critics of Christianity is to argue that the sources for the life of Jesus are relatively late, that they’re rather sparse, that allusions to him outside of the New Testament are limited, at best, and so forth — suggesting that notions such as his divinity and his resurrection developed only many years after his death, perhaps in the manner of the “telephone game.” And defenders of Christianity typically respond by pointing out that, by the standards of ancient history more generally, the sources for earliest Christianity are reasonably good, if not, in fact, really quite good.

It’s helpful, sometimes, to be reminded of just how tenuous, in a way, our materials for reconstructing the ancient past actually are. Here’s one such reminder: “How Certain Are We That Plato Was Plato?”

I’ve been browsing in a book entitled Body of Proof: The 7 Best Reasons to Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus — and Why It Matters Today, (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2023) by Jeremiah J. Johnston, and I concur with his statement on page 27 that

Jesus’ death by Roman crucifixion is the best established fact of the ancient world. If we can’t believe Jesus of Nazareth died by Roman crucifixion, we can’t believe anything about the ancient world.

And I agree with his passing dismissal of what is sometimes called “mythicism”: “One . . . way to deny the resurrection,” he says,

is to claim that Jesus was not in fact a person of history. This approach has been called mythicism. Mythicists claim that the historical evidence for Jesus is weak, well below the threshold we should expect of someone so notable if the New Testament Gospels really do speak of a person who lived and had contemporary followers.

Mythicism is regarded as eccentric, and this view is held by almost no historian or credible scholar. The evidence for the existence of a historical person known as Jesus, from the Galilean village of Nazareth, who was a public figure for a year or two and then after a confrontation with authorities in Jerusalem died on a Roman cross, is substantial. (38)

Appearances notwithstanding, this actually ISN’T a new combination mosque, city center, and courthouse in Fairview, Texas, or Dearborn, Michigan. It’s the King Faisal Mosque, in Islamabad, Pakistan — the largest mosque in that country. I quite like the look of it.

This article arrived on my computer just a few minutes ago, and it affords me an opportunity that I really need to use: “What is sharia? Muslims and Texas Republicans have very different answers: Islamic scholars and Muslim Texans say fear and political opportunism distort the meaning of sharia.”

In case anybody out there might be wondering, I’m entirely on the side of the Islamic scholars and Muslim Texans in this matter: Shari‘a is grievously misunderstood by many and grossly misrepresented (whether knowingly or cynically) by some.

Incidentally, I was pleased to see Dr. Khaled M. Abou El-Fadl, the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Professor of Law at UCLA Law School, cited in the article. He is a world class authority on Islam and shari‘a, and I’ve been worried about his health. (We once had him out to speak at BYU.) He is, by the way, about as far from being a murderous Islamic terrorist as anyone could possibly be: Here is a selection of his book titles, which will give you something of the flavor of the humane Islamic vision for which he argues:

Reasoning with God: Reclaiming Shari’ah in the Modern Age
The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists
Speaking in God’s Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women
Islam and the Challenge of Democracy
The Place of Tolerance in Islam
The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

The Idaho Falls Temple,, as seen from across the Snake River
(LDS.org)

Quite a few years ago now, I participated in a dialogue between Muslims and Latter-day Saints up in Idaho Falls, a hotel that was located just across the Snake River from the Idaho Falls Idaho Temple. One of those in attendance was a justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, who confided in me during a conversation after the program that a bill was being considered in the state legislature that would prohibit judges from basing their decisions upon shari‘a. He thought the idea hilarious, because it had never entered the mind of any Idaho judge, so far as he was aware, to ever do any such thing. (Some politicians prosper by manufacturing purported threats to which, mirabile dictu, they happen to be the solution.) And, by the way, there aren’t really any monsters under your bed, either. Just so you know.

The headquarters of the Islamic Society of North America, in Plainfield, Indiana (outside Indianapolis). A Wikimedia Commons public domain image

In 2012, just prior to that year’s presidential election, I visited the headquarters of the Islamic Society of North America, which are located just outside of Indianapolis, Indiana. While there, accompanied by some Latter-day Saint friends, I attended the Friday prayer service in their mosque. The imam was kind enough to announce our presence at the back of the hall. Following the prayer, he devoted his khutba or Friday sermon to the importance of being good citizens and of voting. He didn’t endorse a candidate but, afterwards, he came back to speak with us. At one point, looking down to make sure that he wasn’t standing on the carpet of the prayer hall but, rather, on the marble floor of the entryway — and laughingly mentioning the “separation of mosque and state” — he confided in me that he, personally, intended to cast his vote the following Tuesday for Mitt Romney.

I mention this latter incident in order to note that the weird assertions that I’ve been recently seeing that Islam, the Democratic Socialists of America, socialism, and the Communists are colluding together to overthrow the Constitution of the United States aren’t even close to accurate. (Perhaps Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed aren’t enough to constitute a scientifically representative sample of American Muslim political opinions? At the very least, my conservative Republican friend Zuhdi Jasser, who is running for Congress in Arizona, should also be factored in!)

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