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Every Sunday at 3:00amAbout the Show
Inspired
Inspired is the nation's leading public radio show about faith, ethics and spirituality. Each week we offer you analyses of the big headlines alongside lesser-told stories – those of Orthodox Jewish artists and African-American atheists, Muslim feminists and spiritual seekers. Through these stories, a rough sketch of our country’s religious landscape begins to emerge. It’s a marketplace of beliefs and ideas too complex for sound bites, and too important to ignore.
What is Sharia? Divine, Abstract and … Extraterrestrial
Is there another religious word that was once seemingly so esoteric but today causes such anxiety in American politics and culture than sharia? But for all talk about it, few people – both who identify as Muslim and do not – seem to know what it really is. We want to get a better understanding of what sharia is and is not, so we turn to American University teaching assistant professor Sara Omar. Sara completed her PhD in Islamic Studies at Harvard University and now works as a professorial lecturer on critical race, gender and culture studies at American University.
How Sharia Differs from Evolving Islamic Laws
We’re learning how Muslim scholars for centuries have attempted to make sense of God’s divine will, or sharia, and to bring it down to decidedly imperfect, human levels…through Islamic law. There are numerous interpretations, and then there are varying degrees to which countries incorporate or don’t incorporate Islamic law in their governance. But when states support problematic interpretations of Islam – and when leaders purposefully conflate Islamic law as being the word of God – it leads to a broader misunderstanding of what sharia is at its core. We learn more from the authors of the new book Shariah: What Everyone Needs to Know, John Esposito, professor of religion and international affairs and of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University and Natana DeLong-Bas, assistant professor of theology at Boston College.
“Islamaphobia Network” Promotes the Idea of a Scary Sharia
The concept of sharia law as a threat to the United States, its laws and way of life is a pretty recent introduction into the American zeitgeist. Wajahat Ali, a commentator, playwright, producer, and lawyer, researched to find out how this idea became the behemoth of misunderstanding and a political wedge tool it is today. He co-authored the report “Fear, Inc: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America” with the Center for American Progress back in 2011
