Egypt Elects Islamist President

[Ultonius]

Southern Baptists who are directly descended from 17th century Puritans

I believe that the Puritans' modern descendants are the Congregationalist churches. The Puritans regarded Baptists as heretics, and the founders of the first Baptist congregations in America, in what is now Rhode Island, had been exiled from Massachusetts by the Puritan authorities.

[Simon_Jester]

Comprehensive - since I'm not a native english speaker I did check it out in MW before posting my response to you so I'm quite suprised that you'd think I misunderstood that word. *goes to recheck*

No, I did not mean you do not understand the dictionary definition of the word.

I may have fumbled my explanation. I was using "comprehensive" to mean something like "includes every possible thing" or "has a detailed policy for every possible outcome:" what that dictionary would call "covering completely or broadly." In the context of a law code, this means "has laws for every possible thing, or most possible things." I talked about the specific idea I was trying to identify by using 'comprehensive' in context, not a general purpose dictionary definition of the word.

Gah. Sorry. I'd say this stuff was giving me a headache, but I think I had it before I started typing.

Inheritance in medieval Canon Law is quite complex compared to Sharia. If we are talking history then yes and no but for a reason, Canon law incorporated the first instance of Ius Testandi, or a Will if you will. Something which didn't have a similtude in Sharia. So if we are talking comprehensive then yes it had distribution of inheritance to the relatives, BUT, it was more than that. It provided a way for the person to write a will of where his/her inheritance would end up. Usually with a big note about thinking about your eternal soul etc, so using the will to give to the poor and to the church could alleviate your time in pergory.

Which means that, no, if the person willed it he/she could leave his relatives pretty much inheritless. Some parts mentioned 3/4 as by will and 1/4 by nature, the nature part excluded the wife though so widows were not covered. However the code of 12th cen is explicit about you "providing" for relatives etc, so the smaller your estate was the less power over it you had and only the really rich could really cut their relatives from their will. See 19cen britain made fameous by Austen and Brontë for good examples on how Canon Law was interpreted (in that case by the anglican church, but still), with allowances per annum to siblings etc while still being able to will the manor/castle to the oldest male heir.

So yes the concept exist and more.

The reason my attention was drawn to this issue is that it's an example of sharia specifying what you are allowed to do, and what you are supposed to do. There are actually fixed ratios and limits set in early Islamic law- the functional equivalent of the Bible or the early church, not something worked out a thousand years later. So and so much money to the widow, so and so much to the sons, so and so much to the daughters. Just for starters:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_in ... e_Qur.27an

My impression, and forgive me if I'm wrong about this but I really am saying it in good faith if nothing else, is something like this:

Christian law (be in Catholic canon law, or the law codes enforced by various Protestant sects over the years when they acquired theocratic power as in Calvin's Geneva) is mostly about telling people what they should not do. Do not do this, because it is a sin. Do not do that, because it is disrespectful to God. The existence of all this law is justified in spiritual terms. But there are quite a few important parts of life where Christian law is (usually) silent, because it's not really a matter of sin or redemption or anything else what you decide to do.

Power relationships within a family, inheritance, business practices... in these areas, Christian religious law leaves a lot of the details up to whoever is doing it at the time. There are some restrictions, just not a lot.

Islamic religious law is a little different. Right from the very beginning, Muhammed seriously intended to create a whole new community of believers out of whole cloth, in a way that Jesus never showed any sign of doing- he never took his followers off to a town in the desert and tried to govern them. Muhammed did. He was not merely trying to convert them, he was trying to coordinate and lead them in secular affairs.

Moreover, the early caliphs who came after Muhammed in the first few decades led Islam through a huge expansion of power, wealth, and influence. And to a large extent, their only guidelines for how to govern this burgeoning empire, one which soon grew to include a great portion of the known civilized world of the time, was that they were trying to carry out the laws laid down by Muhammed on a vastly larger scale.

Thus, there are a lot of detailed, specific provisions in this early, 'canonized' Islamic law. About things like taxation, inheritance, business practices, areas where Christianity in its early centuries did not bother to provide answers, because early Christians didn't rule half the known world the way early Muslims did. To some extent, later generations of Christian law came to fill in some of the gaps, but a lot of things were left up to secular rulers or individuals that were not left up to such people in the Muslim world.

Anyway, I may write more later, but I'm approaching the limit of what I can do without a break at the moment. Sorry.

[Ziggy Stardust]

because early Christians didn't rule half the known world the way early Muslims did.

Well, to be fair, it took almost a century for Christianity to even be recognized as a distinct religion from Judaism. It wasn't until around the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132 CE that the gap between early Christians and Rabbinic Judaism became irrevocably wide (there is a lot of debate as to when this split happened among modern scholars, I am just going with the historical interpretation I am familiar with). By around 325 CE with the First Council of Nicaea Christianity really became a widespread, singular force throughout the Roman Empire, such that it was at the time.

Early Islam began around 610 CE, but after Mohammad's death a series of power struggles and civil wars disrupted the spread of the religion. It wasn't until around 750 CE that a unified Islamic caliphate really arose ... and even then, at the time it was considered an Arab religion, and opposed to the multi-ethnic force it became during the late Abbasid era, with the spread into sub-Saharan Africa and Asia (around 1000 CE, IIRC).

My only point is, while you are right that the early histories of the religion are radically different, and shaped the way the religious hierarchies developed, it is a mistake to paint Islam as having immediately been a strong, monolithic force. Certainly, it's spread was remarkably fast compared to that of Christianity, but it took a very long time for it to develop into anything resembling the modern religion. Furthermore, especially after 1000 CE, local culture and developments had a much larger impact on Islam then in its early centuries, when it was still a largely Arab religion. Just as Christianity in Rome was different than the Pagan flavored Christianity of northern Europe, Islam in Mecca and Islam in the Malay archipelago were shaped by local imams and qadis.

To some extent, later generations of Christian law came to fill in some of the gaps, but a lot of things were left up to secular rulers or individuals that were not left up to such people in the Muslim world.

I think you are underestimating the impact of secular, or non-religious cultural, forces on the development of Islam. After all, it went from being a definitively Arab tribal movement to being a larger zeitgeist. Its proselytization had a lot to do with the fall of a centralized caliphate, with power being largely in the hands of local emirs. The Mameluks, for example, were driven by Turkish cultural developments, as opposed to being strictly Islamic. Same was true in Persia and other parts of central Asia.

[Spoonist]

In the context of a law code, this means "has laws for every possible thing, or most possible things."

Canon Law before 1927 was much much much much much much etc more comprehensive than sharia. It was volumes upon volumes upon volumes of the stuff. So if you wanted to find something very specific you could, however stuff would show up in duplicatesk, triplicates etc contradicting itself over and over. Hence the reform.
So in any interpretation, yes Canon Law had laws that covered everything. (Hence why it wasn't really useful.)

The reason my attention was drawn to this issue is that it's an example of sharia specifying what you are allowed to do, and what you are supposed to do. There are actually fixed ratios and limits set in early Islamic law- the functional equivalent of the Bible or the early church, not something worked out a thousand years later. So and so much money to the widow, so and so much to the sons, so and so much to the daughters. Just for starters:."

see the example of merovingians and charlemagne. Canon Law at that time had such specific stuff but more influenced by roman law, ie shafting the females and not in a good way. The 12th cen interpretaion is much more female friendly.

My impression, and forgive me if I'm wrong about this but I really am saying it in good faith if nothing else, is something like this:

My impression is that you should read up on the history of Canon Law, at least the wiki page, before going further.
My impression is also that you put more credence to Sharia being static when it isn't and never was. Sharia has developed over the centuries just like Canon Law. Its only muslim propaganda that it is pure from the source etc when its a lot of local customs whacked like square pegs into the round holes of the Quaran or Sunnah interpretations.
See the example of saudi arabian law that women are not allowed to drive cars, its based on something muhammed said but is totally misrepresenting what he said to fit their own culture.

Christian law (be in Catholic canon law, or the law codes enforced by various Protestant sects over the years when they acquired theocratic power as in Calvin's Geneva) is mostly about telling people what they should not do. Do not do this, because it is a sin. Do not do that, because it is disrespectful to God. The existence of all this law is justified in spiritual terms. But there are quite a few important parts of life where Christian law is (usually) silent, because it's not really a matter of sin or redemption or anything else what you decide to do.

In order: nope it also tells how to do stuff like contracts, nope not just sin, yes on disrespecitng god hence all the excommunications as a political tool, no most laws was not spiritual instead rather pragmatic, nope not silent, nope not based on sin.

Power relationships within a family, inheritance, business practices... in these areas, Christian religious law leaves a lot of the details up to whoever is doing it at the time. There are some restrictions, just not a lot.

Yes and no, you could find both within the old Canon Law if you searched long enough.

Islamic religious law is a little different. Right from the very beginning, Muhammed seriously intended to create a whole new community of believers out of whole cloth, in a way that Jesus never showed any sign of doing- he never took his followers off to a town in the desert and tried to govern them. Muhammed did. He was not merely trying to convert them, he was trying to coordinate and lead them in secular affairs.

Agreed on muhammed, disagreed on the implication on sharia laws since all of the thinkings of muhammed if they were relevant to christianity was copy and pasted into Canon Law.
Lots of things that people think are christian is really muslim.

Thus, there are a lot of detailed, specific provisions in this early, 'canonized' Islamic law. About things like taxation, inheritance, business practices, areas where Christianity in its early centuries did not bother to provide answers, because early Christians didn't rule half the known world the way early Muslims did. To some extent, later generations of Christian law came to fill in some of the gaps, but a lot of things were left up to secular rulers or individuals that were not left up to such people in the Muslim world.

Agreed on muslims, disagreed on christianitys early centuries which was codified on roman law. They mixed, hence my earlier resonse to Blayne that they had nothing to do with eachother. Canon Law was very pragmatic, just like Sharia Law is.

[Simon_Jester]

If we're on "debate or concede!" terms here, and I can't tell whether we are or not, fine, consider the 'comprehensive-ness' question conceded. I don't even know how to measure such a thing, I accept that the question is very complicated when you take Islam and Catholicism, form piles of each religion's accumulated holy writ, sayings of early religious authorities, laws based on those things, commentaries on the above, commentaries on the commentaries, commentaries on those and so on out to several iterations...

Again, I don't know if it would even be possible to quantify it.

So, fine. I'm not about to get into a bickering match over whether I've been understood correctly about X, Y, and Z, because I don't care and it's a moot point. When it comes to the scale and pervasiveness and importance of written law governing secular actions in various religions, I'm close enough to wrong that if there's any difference, it doesn't matter.

I'm wrong.




But I have to ask: how relevant is the existence of this massive body of canon law to modern Christianity? The modern Catholic church has updated and pruned until much of the old law is irrelevant, and has basically reconciled itself to the separation of church and state as far as I can tell. My impression is that following the early church's tradition of following Roman laws since it existed largely within the (non-Christian at the time) Roman empire, the modern Catholic church defers to local secular law on most issues that don't involve something they think is of spiritual importance. Like birth control and abortions.

What they think the law ought to be thus becomes largely irrelevant, except when it comes to 'culture war' issues, since those are the ones the modern Church views as having spiritual importance and concentrates its energies on fighting over.

The Protestant denominations (which expressly do not adhere to huge bodies of centuries-old Catholic canon law) do the same thing to a large extent. Even the evangelist sects are mostly busy fighting the culture war too. They might like to set up a legal regime based on current evangelical Protestant doctrine, but they'd never get the bulk of people in a Western nation to support them in doing so because there are too many interests (business comes to mind) working at cross-purposes to that.

Christian fundamentalist regimes that use a comprehensive, Christianity-based law code to actually govern a large society are the province of speculative fiction more than reality; even where Christian fundamentalists have a lot of political clout most of the offices and legal code are structured the same way they would be in a secular society (as in some American states where things like blue laws are still on the books).

I'm sure you can find Christians who, given enough power, would be to the US what the Muslim Brotherhood is to Egypt or even what the Taliban is to Afghanistan. But I still think there's a really big difference between the religions when it comes to how likely or even plausible the idea of those people getting that power is. Christianity circa 2012 just doesn't seem to be as politically active as Islam circa 2012, for some reason. And if the reasons I've laid out are wrong, I'd dearly like to know what the real reasons are.

[madd0ct0r]

My impression is also that you put more credence to Sharia being static when it isn't and never was. Sharia has developed over the centuries just like Canon Law. Its only muslim propaganda that it is pure from the source etc when its a lot of local customs whacked like square pegs into the round holes of the Quaran or Sunnah interpretations.
See the example of saudi arabian law that women are not allowed to drive cars, its based on something muhammed said but is totally misrepresenting what he said to fit their own culture.

Just as a side note to back Spoonist up - there was quite a good documentary on divorce in Islam in Austrailia on recently.

1) all of the participants also had to get divorced under the Australian legal system, but wanted the 'islamic divorce' too to feel like it was real, that they could really move on.

2) the divorces initial stages were handled by a single elder, but the actual divorce proceedings required the full council (about 5 guys) to listen and judge.

3) The show was interested in female initiated divorce, the ruling for which is based on one koranic story where the wife returns her dowry (a palm garden) and is given a divorce. One of the cases was a man who'd been arrested for credit card fraud, who'd been divorced (legally and sharia) by his wife when in prison. When he got out, he went to the council and argued that due procedure had not been followed (he had not spoken before the council) and thus, he was not actually divorced, and if his wife wanted to get rid of him she had to give him back the $50,000 dowry he claims.

The council annulled his divorce.

The (youngish) elder who'd issued the divorce argued using a separate koranic rule that muslims are supposed to follow the law of the country they live in. (with a side helping of - look, this guy is a total schmuck who's abusing marriage for material wealth). He reissues the divorce.
After some tea and buiscuits, the council accept his positon, and are now working with Austriala gov to design a 'sharia compliant' path for legal divorce (and, importantly, the mediation before it) to prevent this sort of thing happening again.

[Spoonist]

If we're on "debate or concede!" terms here, and I can't tell whether we are or not

I'm more of a besserwisser seeking consensus myself. As in if I see someone make a statement to which I disagree I'll say so and why, like the muslim brotherhood being islamists, but the point would be to reach a consensus on what the facts are and then see if the opinions can be agreed or disagreed with.
It is very hard to discuss opinions when the underlying facts have not been cleared up.
If someone thinks that Sharia is static and will always be stuck in a medieval mindset then of course their opinion of Sharia would be that it is something which is always a detriment to society.
Thus if one wants to discuss the opinions on whether or not Sharia is a detriment to egypt one needs to clear up what Sharia means in an egyptian context, which usually leads to lots of tangents like history.
Same thing if someone claims that a certain religion is terrorist friendly while their own religion isn't. Then you have to sort out facts first before going to the core of the matter.

I accept that the question is very complicated when you take Islam and Catholicism, form piles of each religion's accumulated holy writ, sayings of early religious authorities, laws based on those things, commentaries on the above, commentaries on the commentaries, commentaries on those and so on out to several iterations...

Excactly. And I hope that we now agree on Ziggy's point that "From a practical stand-point, Sharia law is little different than Catholic writ." and "Catholic writ is actually a good analogue for Sharia law."

But I have to ask: how relevant is the existence of this massive body of canon law to modern Christianity?

Outside of culture and tradition? None.
But don't tell catholics that. And don't tell people like Palin and Santorum that biblical law has no relevance either. They wouldn't agree.
But here is the thing, Sharia law has a lot of irrelevance as well due to all local cultures interpreting it differently. (Square peg round hole).
Where I do agree with yours and Blayne's sentiment is where modern muslims put more emphasis on religious law than their christian counterparts and that this is due to how it was implemented.
To go back to something I mentioned earlier, most muslim mullahs (sp?) still think that compounded interest is bad muju, but to circumvent that they create convoluted excuses so that they can get Sharia approved interest which no longer is called interest.
So both christians and muslims largely ignore this religious law, but in the case of christians they just deleted it and pretend it never existed, while muslims pay lipservice to the law while in reality circumvent it.
So both are using a pragmatic self-serving secular implementation, but one side is still claiming they are following religious law.
Here is where my opinion would be that in such examples neither follow a religious law and that both follow a secular law. Which is why I'm not scared by sharia law in egypt, instead I'm scared by egyptian culture and attitude implemented as law, with regards to things like female rights and circumcision et al.

Even the evangelist sects are mostly busy fighting the culture war too. They might like to set up a legal regime based on current evangelical Protestant doctrine, but they'd never get the bulk of people in a Western nation to support them in doing so because there are too many interests (business comes to mind) working at cross-purposes to that.

Agreed, it would be a lovely thing if Islam split up as much as christianity has, we need a Lutheran counterpart an Ahmutheran. As is the mullahs wield too much power preventing division.

(as in some American states where things like blue laws are still on the books).

I think all countries have similar cultural quirks based on mostly forgotten religious traditions.

But I still think there's a really big difference between the religions when it comes to how likely or even plausible the idea of those people getting that power is.

Agreed. Hence my comment about improvement and detriment.
If you are feeling oppressed and that the law&order don't function due to corruption, nepotism or ineptitude, it is very easy to turn to some other entitiy which proclaims to know an easy answer. See the greek neonazi party votes as something showing a similar mindset.
But in egypt and the middle east they don't have that many entities that claim an easy answer to replace the one they got in power. So they turn to the one they have. Please note the contrast to the places where the power is claiming religious superiority like saudi arabia or iran, the opposition has a much harder time gathering followers under a single banner due to the blinfolds of cultural norms.
I'd say that most voters for the muslim brotherhood is really voting for change and not for explicit sharia because they wouldn't know what that would entail. Give them 20 years under strict sharia and they will complain for something different.

Christianity circa 2012 just doesn't seem to be as politically active as Islam circa 2012, for some reason.

Here I agree completely but with the caveat that christians seem to be very politically active but totally ineffective. Its like they lost their zeitgeist.
Take the example of Christian Democracy, they have parties almost everywhere and is a huge influence in the EU, yet very few of its policies are driven by a christian agenda.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ch ... ic_parties
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_democracy
So christianity certainly is politically active, but they are not as verbal about their religion.

[Ryan Thunder]

Probably because they either figured out (like I did) that outlawing everything we aren't supposed to do is pointless, or because they're just a convenient vehicle for a certain set of special interests.

[Ziggy Stardust]

If we're on "debate or concede!" terms here, and I can't tell whether we are or not, fine,

Meh, I didn't really consider this a debate, more like an extended clarification. I mean, I actually agree with your earlier broad statements about the general differences between the religions, I am mostly positing that the differences are more historical and cultural than they are innate, and that there isn't that much difference between Sharia and Catholic writ.

The Protestant denominations (which expressly do not adhere to huge bodies of centuries-old Catholic canon law)

Interestingly, with Islam we also see denominations that don't adhere to Sharia. Look at this map:



Each color coded region is a distinct madh'hab, which very loosely is a "school of jurisprudence." Each madh'hab follows Sharia differently, emphasizing different fiqh, and have been heavily influenced by local cultural factors. It shouldn't be too much surprise that you see the divisions of the schools loosely follow broader ethnic and cultural divisions. The Shafi'i, for example, is widespread in the Malay archipelago and East Africa, historically the territorially range of Arab traders and slavers.

But we can go even further than defining the madh'hab. These divisions are more analogous to the divisions between Catholicism (Latin and Eastern), Orthodox, and the Anglican faith. The "Protestant" equivalents in Islam would be sects like the Ahmadiyya Muslims of India (who can be compared to, for example, Quakers or Unitarians in the Christian tradition), various aqidahs (a theological division that is analogous to, say, the difference between Baptists and Anabaptists, or different types of Presbyterian), Sufism (a mystical-ascetic tradition that itself has a number of subcategories, called tariqa, such as the Albanian Bektashi and the Chishti of Nuristan), the Tolu-e-Islam in Pakistan (an interesting case study if you are looking at Islam, as they reject the religious authority of the hadith and sunnah, which are major sources of Sharia, but hold the Quran to be infallible), and dozens of other highly localized groups.

Thus if one wants to discuss the opinions on whether or not Sharia is a detriment to egypt one needs to clear up what Sharia means in an egyptian context, which usually leads to lots of tangents like history.

Egypt is always interesting and difficult to talk about, because of how mixed the population has been there for centuries. In any case, from what I gather, the Muslim Brotherhood is a fairly liberal Islamist group. They reject the Iranian model of vesting all authority in a supreme ayatollah, and promote traditional democratic structures. However, they still want a somewhat undefined role for Islamic scholars in the law-making process, but a large part of their ideology is based on the idea of a "bottom-up" structure to Islam, as opposed to a strict "top-down" hierarchy. This article states it well:

The Supreme Constitutional Court—and now many Egyptian intellectual and political figures—have come to see the Islamic sharia as relevant to modern law in two ways. First, the Islamic sharia is based on certain general goals or maqasid (such as the protection of life or religion), a concept derived from medieval jurisprudence to guide legal scholars in determining the law in difficult or ambiguous situations but now employed in a fairly expansive way by specialists and increasingly non-specialists (with some intellectuals, even those firmly in the Islamist camp, arguing that the maqasid have to be expanded still further beyond the older concepts to include additional goals like freedom).

[Blayne]

@Blayne,
After another poster pointed out to me that I was too adverserial I've reviewed my responses to you in this topic and I tend to agree. I let our previous exchanges color my response in this one without explaining myself on why I got adverserial over these nitpicks.
Sorry about that, your responses in this topic alone shouldn't have had me detoriate as fast as I did. I'll make a new response outlining my reasoning and hope to restart the dialog that way.

Sorry for not getting back to you on this, I would like to thank you for being gracious and it's not a problem. Although I am a little confused as to what you mean by previous exchanges, do you mean like a few weeks ago in a different thread or a few years ago last time I was around?

I'll try to post evidence for my previous reasonings when my friend has time off to get back to me.