Iran and World

Liberty must always be exercised, and may only be maintained, �in a way of subjection to authority.� This sounds like it could have been written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the trailblazer of the modern Left, whose �social compact� decreed that any dissenter from �the general will� would be compelled to obey � meaning �nothing less than that he will be forced to be free.� Or it could be the handiwork of any of a thousand Muslim jurisprudents teaching that submission to Allah and His law is the essence of Islam.

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But it is neither. Those are the words of John Winthrop, the legendary founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the man Paul Johnson, the peerless British historian, calls �the first great American.�

As Johnson recounts in A History of the American People, on July 3, 1645, Winthrop delivered a speech on the tension between order and liberty. His conception of the latter was, by our standards, bracingly narrow and circumscribed by religious duty. �It is of the same kind of liberty whereof Christ hath made us free.� In Winthrop�s view, �if you stand for your natural, corrupt liberties, and will do what is good in your own eyes, you will not endure the least weight of authority. . . . But if you will be satisfied to enjoy such civil and lawful liberties, such as Christ allows you, then you will quietly and cheerfully submit under that authority which is set over you . . . for your good.�

These sentiments, and the context of our founding as a nation, are worth remembering when we think about sharia, Islam�s legal system. Or, better, when we think about why we think about sharia.

I�ve been involved in that thinking for a few years now. For me, the subject has two objectives for non-Muslim Americans. First, sharia is a useful barometer for distinguishing real Muslim moderates from Islamists. The latter seek to undermine American liberties, but some have been able to pose as moderates, because they do not employ terrorist tactics in the pursuit of their extreme ends.

Second, focusing on sharia is the most promising strategy for empowering authentic moderate Muslims. Sharia, as classically construed by authoritative scholars, is strewn with tenets that run counter to Western principles of liberty � in the areas of freedom of conscience, equality, free expression, economic liberty, the settlement of policy disputes without violence, what �cruel and unusual punishments� should be unacceptable, and so on.

This comparison between Western and Islamic cultures is not perfect. To begin with, there is no universally accepted version of sharia. But that is a cause for optimism: It yields hope that a credible construction of sharia could develop that both embraces Western principles and marginalizes the fundamentalist interpretation. On this score, much of the criticism against those of us who focus on sharia is misplaced.Naysayers claim that we�ve got sharia wrong, that it doesn�t really exist at all outside the realm of private spiritual guidance, or that various overlooked nuances complicate or nullify such categorical claims as that apostasy from Islam is a capital offense under sharia.

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But these criticisms are fundamentally flawed.