What's Al-Sharia, and What's Wrong With Sharia -Islamic Law?

"Islamically" speaking, there's actually no such thing as "Sharia Law" in the first place: it's a bilingual oxymoron, incorrectly implying that something perfect can be made by men. But all those efforts, and all the confusion that surrounds them, make us wonder whether we Muslims who live here will eventually have to make what we consider a false choice, between our country and our religion. The simple truth is, to most Muslims, for everything other than what we consider the "5 pillar items" like our declaration of faith, our charity, our prayers, our pilgrimage and our fasting in Ramadan, rather than a rigidly fixed set of laws, al-Sharia, "the path to the water hole" is a set of principles (principles like equality, justice, and the importance of linking rights to responsibilities and risks to rewards) promoting a set of simple practices (like living humbly, serving God and minding your own business) that Muslims believe are divinely ordained and therefore perfect. And so we also believe that if they were followed perfectly that would give us a perfect world, sais Dr. David Lieperd* 

Because most of us realize that no matter how they start out our laws end up being made by not-so-perfect people who don't always live up to those principles. In fact, sometimes they subvert those high-minded ideals for their own sake, and create laws that do the opposite of what they're supposed to do.

And when believers do that to their own religion, Muslims know that's called an abomination.

Most of us know that just calling something Sharia doesn't make it so. 

But the problem is that it's the abominations of al-Sharia we so often end up talking about regardless, and the abominations we sometimes even end up defending, things like stoning adulterers, and/or oppressing women, and/or condoning pedophilia, for the sake of religious freedom. 

But since those abominations are clearly indefensible Islamically, they can be --and should be-- rejected Islamically, according to al-Sharia.

* Canadian Muslim Leader, Author and Spokesperson. Advisor to the Canadian Council of Imams.