Don’t blame the Muslims

[supergee]

Anti-abortion laws are not “Shariah law”. Actually, Shariah is a large and complex system that includes rules protecting workers and the poor, just like parts of Leviticus the Radical Right would rather you didn’t look at.

Comments

[lavendertook]

Yes--thank you--needs to be said a lot, especially with Atwood modeling the society in Handmaids Tale more on Islam than Christianity--which is why I've never been a big fan of it. There was no good reason not to frame it on Western Christianity and critique her own house, and we don't need that distraction when it's the fundamentalist Christians taking apart women's rights here.

[minoanmiss]

Oh huh I didn't know that. The book resonated so hard with my experience of Christianity I didn't know it was supposed to be about oppression stemming from any other religion.

[lavendertook]

I think it's an old criticism that maybe is not resonating anymore. I think it was more based on comments Atwood made in the 90's (when I was in grad school) about modeling the dystopia on Islamic regimes and a cautionary extrapolation on where Christianity in the US could go, instead of being not much of an extrapolation of what Dominionists really were envisioning and had been working and voting for. Basically she did the kind of lumping of Islam and Sharia law that supergee is talking about above, perhaps unwittingly--and maybe that's not going on with how The Handmaid's Tale is being interpreted now, Atwood and the critics have moved on, and I'm being an old fogie who should do a reread of the book.

[snippy]

The only reason to use "it's Christian Shariah law" to them is because they have used it against Muslims, so you're calling them on their hypocrisy. But it's still wrong, I just understand why people do it.

[arlie]

It's pretty clear that for most of these people, "Sharia law" is the only example they have for laws made by religious offcials rather than seperately political officials.

There really isn't a term for that in European history - even at the height of the middle ages, there was Church Law and King's Law. Yes, the King's minsters were often churchmen, and an Archbishop might also be the head of the secular government, under the king. But they were conceptually seperate, even if theoretically always in agreement. Whereas Mohammed was a head of state, and made relevant decisions in both contexts - and that pattern continued.

Yes, for large chunks of history the dar-al-Islam was a much better place to be for a lot of people than any Christian country. But both were governments of men, for men; of upper classes for upper classes; etc. - with occassional impulses of kindness or fairness, some of them part of the local official ideals. Both lots officially extolled charity, for example. But self-determination was not a thing; that's modern. Everyone had their place, and was kept in it forcibly if required. It's just that at times women's place was less bad in Islamic areas.