Heaven on Earth: A Journey Through Shari'a Law from the Deserts of Ancient Arabia to the Streets of the Modern Muslim World

In the wake of the colossal acts of terrorism of the last decade, the legal historian and human rights lawyer Sadakat Kadri realized that many people in the West had ideas about the origins and implications of the sharia, or Islamic law, that were hazy, contradictory, or simply wrong. Even as sharia became a loaded word and an all-encompassing explanation, most of us remained ignorant of its true meaning. And we were doing this at our peril. In Heaven on Earth, Kadri brings lucid wit and analytical skill to the thrilling and turbulent story of Islams foundation and expansion. He shows how legal ideas gradually evolved out of thousands of reports about the Prophet Mohammad, most of which were not even written down until two centuries after his death. And he explains how, just in the last forty years, the sharia has been appropriated and transformed by hardliners desperate to impose their oppressive vision. In the second half of