"Five myths about sharia."

From my UW Law colleague Asifa Quraishi-Landes in The Washington Post.

The myths are:

1. Sharia is “Islamic law"... 2. In Muslim countries, sharia is the law of the land.... 3. Sharia is anti-woman.... 4. Islam demands brutal punishments.... 5. Sharia is about conquest....

Debunkings at the link (which seems open to nonsubscribers, so don't skimp on doing the reading before opining — the idea is not to be ignorant). Key thought:

The human interpretation of sharia is called “fiqh,” or Islamic rules of right action, created by individual scholars based on the Koran and hadith (stories of the prophet Muhammad’s life). Fiqh literally means “understanding” — and its many different schools of thought illustrate that scholars knew they didn’t speak for God.

ADDED: Actually, the pay wall is a barrier. You could try getting in through private browsing. Anyway, I was looking at the comments over there. The top-rated one was:

That might be the most hilarious and absurd Islamic apologist statement I've ever heard... claiming that Sharia law and, thus Islam, is actually "feminist" because it allows women to orgasm during sex. I can't stop laughing. 

From Quraishi-Landes's text: "Fiqh scholars...  have concluded that women have the right to orgasm...."

Asifa Quraishi: “Western feminists have lost opportunities to work with - rather than against - Islam and Muslim women."

At the Wisconsin Law School feminism conference, I'm listening to Wisconsin lawprof Asifa Quraishi. You can click on the link to the abstract of her paper here. Excerpt:

[Muslim women] are are a topic of feminist attention because Islam itself is considered to be a primary problem standing in the way of feminist work. More and more, Muslim women in my world feel the irony that dominant western feminism simultaneously ignores us and is obsessed with us. It is an attitude that echoes the colonialist mind.

Asifa finds and stresses the parts of the Islamic tradition that serve the interests of women and that make a stronger basis for arguments to people in Muslim countries than Western-style feminism and criticisms of Islam.

She asks: Why is the veil so important to Westerners? Aren't you subordinating Muslim women when you impose your interpretation that it symbolizes subordination? She says there could be an interpretation that veiling is empowering. Moreover, there is an Islamic tradition that can be understood to give women personal choice about covering her head.

Asifa is wearing a headscarf as she says this, and she talks about how she is perceived by Muslims and western feminists when she's wearing it. Then she removes the scarf and asks us if we now hear what she is saying differently. Something is gained and something is lost either wearing the scarf or not wearing the scarf — and she's seen this and struggled with it since she was a girl.