Shariah’s Black Box

Notwithstanding a reluctance based on practical considerations to engage in a full analysis of the material endogenous elements of Shariah, in order to provide a factual predicate for the analysis of the disclosure (and other) laws that follow it will be helpful to assume a fact or two about Shariah. Therefore, by way of example and for purposes of the analysis, this memorandum assumes that after a good faith investigation, the lawyer advising the financial institution desiring to enter the lucrative SCF industry will determine that there is a reasonable basis to conclude that a consensus exists among Shariah authorities on the fundamental purpose and methodologies of Shariah: The purpose is submission. Shariah seeks to establish that Allah is the divine lawgiver and that no other law may properly exist but Allah’s law. Shariah seeks to achieve this goal through persuasion and other non-violent means.  But when necessary and under certain prescribed circumstances the use of force and even full-scale war to achieve the dominance of Shariah worldwide is not only permissible, but obligatory.

While this memorandum poses these conclusions as a hypothetical, they are hardly conjectural. In fact, they reflect the rulings of the classical Shariah authorities dating back almost a millennium and include the most contemporary of Shariah authorities issuing authoritative legal rulings today. Although post-9/11 scholarship on Islamic terrorism has made the point that the terrorists almost always base their actions on legal rulings by Shariah authorities,[162] a wholesale confusion remains because policy-makers and lawyers have not approached the doctrinal basis for Jihad or Islamic holy war objectively or analytically. Indeed, other than the reflexive, “Islam is a noble religion of peace,” no government agency or department, including the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense, has undertaken a public analysis of the doctrines driving the Islamic terrorists who seek the destruction of the U.S. and its constitutional government.[163] The result has been that, until recently, no scholar from any discipline connected to this field of study has systematically examined the strategic doctrines which provide the theoretical, legal, spiritual, and traditional motivations underpinning the war on theU.S. and Western interests by the Islamic terrorist combatants.

In what amounts to a strategic and analytical tour de force, Major Stephen Collins Coughlin, assigned to Military Intelligence in the U.S. Army Reserves, has produced a study on Shariah and its foundational role as controlling doctrine for Shariah-adherent terrorists in their holy war against the infidel.[164] The unpublished study has been accepted by the faculty of the National Defense Intelligence College in partial fulfillment of the requirement for Coughlin’s Master of Science degree in Strategic Intelligence. The strength of the study is that it examines meticulously Shariah as law as it is defined and interpreted by Shariah authorities themselves. Further, the analysis surveys the binding rulings of Shariah authorities from the classical periods dating back to the early days after Mohammed’s death, including also the so-called Golden Era of Islamic enlightenment, through the chaotic period around the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the secular-based military autocracies which continue to dominate most of the Muslim world today, right through to the present. The contemporary survey also includes a best-selling 7^th grade text book used in Islamic day schools throughout the U.S. to validate the study’s choice of authorities and to confirm that their legal rulings are used pedagogically as the foundation for understanding traditional, Shariah-centered Islam.[165] Further, Coughlin carefully authenticates the authorities so that one is not misled into accepting either a weak authority or an “extremist” view point. Finally, the work is by far the best of any such scholarship attempted because it treats doctrinal Shariah as Shariah expects to be treated and as evidenced by the published rulings of the Shariah authorities: as a sectarian legal-political-military normative social construct sourced in divine and immutable law.

What the study demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt is that Shariah and the doctrines of war articulated as the Law of Jihad are valid today as they were one thousand years ago. Jihad should be implemented as circumstances permit, and the contemporary authoritative Shariah scholars continue to teach, preach and issue legal rulings to this effect. What Coughlin’s investigation further explicates is that, per Shariah, once the Shariah authorities reach a consensus on a legal ruling or doctrine which is based on the Qur’an and Hadith, that ruling or doctrine is considered immutable and irrevocable.[166] This adds yet further concretization to the rulings on Jihad because the purpose of Islam and the methodologies to achieve those ends per Shariah are universally accepted by the Shariah authorities with but relatively minor exceptions as to specifics.[167]