There is another inconvenient fact that tends to disappear whenever the Republican sermon about Sharia begins: Islam and Christianity are not theological strangers.
Both belong to the Abrahamic tradition. Both trace their religious ancestry to Abraham, and both worship the one God associated with Abraham. Muslims regard Abraham (Ibrahim) as one of the great prophets of Islam, while Christians regard Abraham as a foundational figure in their own religious tradition. Islam also regards Ishmael as an important ancestor of the Arab peoples, while the biblical tradition places particular emphasis on Isaac and the covenant associated with him.
The theological differences between Christianity and Islam are enormous—most obviously concerning the divinity of Jesus and the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. But those differences should not obscure the extraordinary amount of common ground between the two traditions.
And that common ground includes something rather important for our discussion:
Both traditions contain extensive systems of divine commandments governing human behavior.
Biblical law and Islamic jurisprudence are not identical, nor should anyone pretend they are. But they share a recognizable family resemblance because both emerge from ancient Near Eastern traditions of divine revelation, religious obligation, morality, family structure, property, sexual conduct, charity, dietary restrictions, and punishment.
Both traditions, for example, condemn murder, theft, adultery, false testimony, and other forms of conduct regarded as offenses against both God and society. Both contain detailed prescriptions concerning marriage, divorce, inheritance, charity, food, sexual morality, and economic behavior. Both distinguish between actions that are obligatory, permissible, discouraged, and forbidden.
And, perhaps most inconveniently for those who insist that the mere existence of Sharia makes Islam uniquely barbaric, some of the punishments prescribed in classical Islamic jurisprudence have recognizable counterparts in biblical law.
The Torah contains capital punishment for certain offenses, including adultery and some forms of religious transgression. Classical Islamic jurisprudence likewise developed severe punishments for certain offenses, although the precise rules, evidentiary requirements, and application varied substantially among legal schools and historical societies.
The biblical law of lex talionis—the famous principle of “eye for an eye”—belongs to the same ancient world of proportional punishment from which Islamic jurisprudence also inherited certain principles of retaliation. The Quran permits retaliation for murder and bodily injury while also encouraging forgiveness and compensation. Classical Islamic law developed detailed rules surrounding qisas, or retaliatory justice, and diyah, financial compensation.
The similarities become even more striking when we move from punishment to everyday morality.
The Bible prohibits adultery. So does Islam.
The Bible prohibits theft. So does Islam.
The Bible condemns false testimony. So does Islam.
The Bible establishes rules concerning inheritance. So does Islamic law.
The Bible contains dietary restrictions. So does Islam.
The Bible commands charity toward the poor. So does Islam.
The Bible regulates marriage and sexual conduct. So does Islam.
The Bible prohibits charging interest in certain contexts. Islamic jurisprudence contains the prohibition of riba, traditionally understood as impermissible interest or usury.
None of this means that the two systems are the same. They most certainly are not. Their texts, jurisprudential traditions, historical development, and modern applications differ considerably. Biblical law itself is not a single modern legal code, and Christian denominations disagree profoundly about which Old Testament commandments remain religiously or morally binding. Likewise, Sharia encompasses numerous schools of interpretation and is practiced very differently around the Muslim world.
But that is precisely the point.
If the existence of religious commandments concerning human conduct is sufficient evidence that a religion is inherently unfit for civilization, then Christianity has just convicted itself.
One cannot reasonably point toward a Muslim legal tradition and say, “Look at those barbaric religious laws!” while pretending that one’s own sacred texts contain no comparable commandments, prohibitions, or punishments.
That is not an argument against religious law. It is an argument against someone else’s religious law.
And there is a particularly delicious irony in the historical relationship between these traditions. The Abraham who appears in the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament also appears prominently in the Quran. The God of Abraham is not invented anew when Islam appears in the seventh century. Islam understands itself as a restoration of the monotheistic tradition associated with Abraham and the earlier prophets.
Christians and Muslims subsequently developed profoundly different theological conclusions from that shared inheritance. But the common ancestry remains.
So when a Christian nationalist announces that Sharia must be resisted because it represents the dangerous idea that God’s commandments should influence human law, one might reasonably ask whether the objection is actually to theocracy—or merely to the wrong theology.
Because if the argument is that government should never impose religious doctrine upon citizens who do not share it, then we have discovered something remarkably useful:
We agree.
Keep biblical law out of the civil law when biblical law conflicts with constitutional rights.
Keep Sharia out of the civil law when Sharia conflicts with constitutional rights.
Keep Hindu religious law, Jewish religious law, Catholic canon law, or any other sectarian legal code from becoming a substitute for the Constitution.
“The problem isn’t the name. The problem is theocracy.”
– Civil Heresy
That is what secular government is supposed to accomplish.
The genius of the American experiment was not to determine which religion possessed the correct God and then build a government around that conclusion. It was to recognize that government becomes extraordinarily dangerous when it acquires the authority to enforce somebody’s answer to a theological question.
The issue, therefore, is not whether Abraham had the correct God.
The issue is whether you should be forced to obey the interpretation of that God held by somebody else.
And that is where the Sharia scare becomes so revealing. The same people warning Americans that Muslims might someday impose religious law are sometimes advocating laws justified explicitly or implicitly by their own interpretation of Christian scripture.
They are not necessarily opposing religious government.
They may simply be hoping to make sure their religion gets there first.
That is a distinction Americans should understand very clearly.
Because the moment government acquires the power to punish you for violating somebody else’s definition of God’s law, it becomes almost irrelevant whether the law is called Sharia, Biblical law, canon law, or something else entirely.
The problem isn’t the name. The problem is theocracy.
And the Founders did not construct a constitutional republic to give one religion the privilege of becoming America’s official interpreter of God.
They constructed one in which God, theology, conscience, and religious belief could remain matters of individual conviction—while the government remained accountable to the Constitution.
That is a far more formidable defense against religious extremism than any invented war against Sharia.
Why It Matters
Public debates about Sharia often portray Islamic law as uniquely incompatible with democracy while overlooking the similar role that religious commandments have historically played within Christianity and Judaism. This essay argues that the real constitutional issue is not which religion’s laws are being proposed, but whether any religious tradition should be permitted to replace or override the Constitution. By shifting the focus from theology to constitutional principles, it offers a consistent standard for protecting both religious liberty and secular government.
Key Takeaways
- Christianity and Islam both belong to the Abrahamic tradition and share significant moral and legal concepts despite profound theological differences.
- Biblical law and classical Islamic jurisprudence contain many comparable rules concerning morality, family life, inheritance, charity, and social conduct.
- The existence of religious law is not unique to Islam and therefore cannot, by itself, justify claims that one religion is inherently incompatible with civilization.
- A constitutional republic protects religious freedom by preventing any religious legal system from becoming civil law when it conflicts with constitutional rights.
- The essay argues that opposition should be directed toward theocracy itself, regardless of which religion seeks to impose its doctrines through government.
Key Questions to Consider
Q1. What is the central argument of the essay?
The essay argues that the constitutional problem is not Sharia specifically, but any attempt to replace or supersede constitutional government with religious law.
Q2. Why does the essay compare biblical law and Sharia?
It demonstrates that both Christianity and Islam contain extensive systems of religious commandments governing human conduct, challenging the idea that religious law is uniquely Islamic.
Q3. Does the essay argue that biblical law and Sharia are identical?
No. It explicitly acknowledges substantial theological, historical, and jurisprudential differences while arguing that both traditions share common roots as Abrahamic religions with comprehensive moral and legal teachings.
Q4. What role does the Constitution play in the essay?
The Constitution is presented as the common civil authority that protects religious liberty by preventing any one religious tradition from imposing its doctrines upon citizens who do not share those beliefs.
Q5. What broader lesson does the essay offer?
The essay concludes that the strongest defense against religious extremism is not opposition to one particular faith, but a consistent commitment to secular constitutional government that protects freedom of conscience for everyone.
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