Sharia Versus the U.S. Constitution

About this book

Can a nation founded on the consent of the governed accommodate a legal system that claims divine authority over every area of life? In Sharia Versus the U.S. Constitution, Dr. A. S. Ibrahim offers a clear, rigorous, and accessible answer-one that every American voter, lawmaker, and judge deserves to have.Drawing on the Quran, the hadith, and centuries of established Islamic jurisprudence, Ibrahim moves through the American constitutional order amendment by amendment, showing precisely where its guarantees collide with the requirements of Islamic law. The Establishment Clause was written to prevent the very fusion of religious and civil authority that sharia demands. The free exercise of religion cannot coexist with laws prescribing death for apostasy. The Fourteenth Amendment's promise of equal protection stands in direct opposition to a legal order that assigns diminished status to women, non-Muslims, and religious minorities. The Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment was meant to close the door on the punishments sharia prescribes.Ibrahim's argument is sourced, systematic, and grounded entirely in primary texts-a rigorous comparison of two systems of law that cannot occupy the same ground. He also examines the quiet spread of sharia arbitration and parallel legal structures in Britain and Europe-a warning the United States has been slow to heed-and explains why one law for all citizens is not merely an American preference but the constitutional floor beneath which no accommodation can fall.Born in Egypt and trained in the classical Islamic sources, A. S. Ibrahim writes with both scholarly authority and firsthand knowledge of what Islamic law looks like when it governs. This book equips readers to understand what is truly at stake-and why the choice before Americans is a choice between two irreconcilable visions of law, liberty, and self-government.