Heaven on Earth (eBook)

Almost 1400 years after the Prophet Muhammad first articulated God's law -- the sharia -- its earthly interpreters are still arguing over what it means. Hardliners reduce it to amputations, veiling, holy war and stonings. Others say that it is humanity's only guarantee of a just society. In Heaven on Earth, Sadakat Kadri, a London-based criminal barrister and prize-winning writer, sets out to see who is right.Travelling the Islamic world, he encounters a cacophony of legal claims. At the ancient Indian grave of his Sufi ancestor, unruly jinns are exorcised in the name of the sharia. In Pakistan's madrasas, stern scholars ridicule his talk of human rights and demand explanations for NATO drone attacks in Afghanistan. In Iran, he hears that God is forgiving enough to subsidise sex-change operations -- but requires the execution of Muslims who change religion. All Muslims are guided by the sharia -- whatever their interpretation of it -- and the stories of compulsion and violence are just part of a much bigger picture. Many of Islam's first judges refused even to decide cases for fear that a mistake would damn them, and scholars from Delhi to Cairo maintain that governments have no business enforcing faith. In this illuminating and important book, Sadakat Kadri draws on Islam's past and present to show us why. The promise of a perfect social order can be compelling. But reality will always intrude. And when human beings attempt to apply divine justice, they risk creating not a heaven on earth -- but something much closer to hell.

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This book is important because it is:Unique. Heaven on Earth offers a critique of extremism that is human rights-based and entertaining combining the comparative approach of Karen Armstrong and the immediacy of Ed Husain (The Islamist) with storytelling. Timely. At a time of veil bans, Qur an burnings and English Defence League protests, Kadri voices a liberal view of Islamic history and shows Muslims working against repression. This book explains up-to-the-minute brutalities.Epic. Interviews, anecdotes, personal reflection and analysis are set against a narrative that sweeps from seventh-century Mecca to the war in Afghanistan. Civilisations are evoked via the vivid lives of caliphs, mystics, and travellers. Legal changes are described through the feuds, courtroom dramas, conquests and cataclysms that have left their mark on modern Islamic law. First-hand. On the road for five months, Kadri travelled through Iran just before the June 2009 election protests, and took part in a human rights conference there with ayatollahs and academics. Eye-opening. This book goes beyond the explosive headline issues (criminal justice, women, jihad, religious freedom) to reveal the stranger ones: genie exorcisms; the legal consequences of premature ejaculation; online fatwa advice; the sharia approach to Facebook and Qur anic mobile phone ringtones, etc.Bold. Heaven on Earth primarily targets religious extremism, but also cuts anti-Muslim panic down to size.