Sonn Tamara - Comparing religions through law: Judaism and Islam

Laws embody the norms by which societies live. They set forth in tangible and concrete form the practical consequences of abstract beliefs. An obvious example makes the point. A social order that deems all human life precious will forbid murder and punish the act without discrimination as to the victim. One that does not will build death factories. When we turn to religion we find the same thing. Religions that aspire to be realized in collective conscience, not only in individual conviction, will frame for themselves public policy through laws that define what is to be done or not done and they will enforce those laws in Gods name. The history of Islamic, Christian and Judaic religious systems alike sets forth ample evidence that characteristic of monotheism from scripture forward is the aspiration to legislate theology and morality. And those religions that identify the entire social order as the setting for serving God will legislate, without differentiating the religious from the secular, norms of behavior for the whole of the society in which they find themselves. In that way theological conviction about God and what God wants of human beings will take the palpable form of rules that regulate conduct. Such rules will extend even to what outsiders deem the most minor and trivial actiona gesture required or forbidden, a bit of nourishing food deemed unclean.

This book takes up two religions of law; that is, religions that aspire to define the character of the social order of the faithful and who legislate in Gods name. The two, Islam and Judaism, concur on much, and here we propose to compare their legal systems to discover the extent of their concurrence and the nature of their differences. In general, seen up close Judaism and Islam as religions of law exhibit significant divergence, but, viewed in the larger context of world religions, they stand side by side in their fundamental convictions about God and the social order. Accordingly, the work at hand compares religions that are sufficiently alike to sustain comparison, but also suitably different so as to yield interesting hypotheses about the character of each religion. The hypothesis set forth here is simple. The purpose of comparing religions is defining the religions that are compared, each in contrast with the other. However much religions have in common, in the end they never prove to be wholly like one another. Not concentric at all, each emerges as eccentric, making its distinctive statement in its own language. And where the eccentricities occur, there the religions find their definitions, their distinctive qualities. The points of concentricity then will emerge as routine; those of eccentricity, indicative.

Here the two comparable, in important ways concurring, religions turn out not to speak dialects of one language at all, even though both worship the one and only God, who, by their own word, is the very God they worship in common, and even though both deem worship to take place in the details of the workaday world. So where they do differ and sustain particular definition, it is on all that matters. The real question of comparison then arises from the contrast. Against the contrary view, that religions intersect and concur on what counts, we present this exercise in examining how the two monotheisms that come to expression in public policy and law compare so as to contrast. Accordingly, addressing the problem of comparing religions what do we compare and whyrequires us not only to theorize, but also to test theories of comparison and contrast. That is what we promise in this book. Our basic theory, then, is that when we see Islam and Judaism from a distance and in the perspective of other world religions, they concur on much, but when we set them side by side in close proximity, though they share an emphasis on law, they find difficult the identification of common thought and expression. And yet, both readily concur (along with Christianity) that they worship one and the same God, who is the only God of all creation, and who makes himself manifest through prophets that, at critical junctures, both deem authentic.

The plan of the book is simple. We have taken as our principal task the exposition of the facts of the two religions, set forth each in its own terms. Chapter 1 spells out the theory of comparing religions that guides us. We lay out some of the obstacles that impede the work and how we propose to overcome them. Chapters 2 through 5 define the terms of discussion here. These chapters, the shank of the book, provide the basic facts needed to see how Judaism and Islam compare and contrast. We cover the following topics: (1) the documentary sources, (2) the intellectual rules governing the formulation of law, and (3) the institutional and (4) personal mediacourts, qualified religious judgesby which in theory the religions treated here take shape and enforce law. In these chapters we set forth the context in which we compare the religio-legal systems of the two religions.