Incompatible

There was a recent Associated Press article that should help explain why it is important to understand the differences between Christianity and Islam and laws based on each.

“Iran has imposed new restrictions on 12 university social sciences deemed to be based on Western schools of thought and therefore incompatible with Islamic teachings, state radio reported Sunday.

“The list includes law, philosophy, management, psychology, political science and the two subjects that appear to cause the most concern among Iran's conservative leadership — women's studies and human rights.”

It would appear to me that this refusal and the term education would be incompatible. Can you imagine the response if any American university refused to offer studies in Sharia, the Islamic law? Or, imagine if universities were to deny any student the opportunity to study philosophies from any corner of the world? What religions would be denied studies in higher education?

Forget the universities for a moment – how about management? How many corporations offer their employees management skill courses? How many people move upward based on management skills (OK, as an aside, I do know many look upon them as jokes – but, hey, they are still offered!)

The lack of education leads to such legal decisions as this one documented in New Jersey regarding Sharia law in America. What happened to the stereotypically American response, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.” Apparently this husband preferred not to learn of rights given under American law. And the New Jersey judge agreed that this was just fine.

Duke University has online Sharon L. Davies’ “The Jurisprudence of Willfulness… ”, which begins with the acknowledgement, "The principle of ignorantia legis non excusat -- ignorance of the law does not excuse -- is perhaps the most well-rooted maxim in the Anglo-American criminal law. It has been recognized by courts and legal thinkers for centuries, it has been enacted into law, and it is familiar to jurist and layperson alike." Of course, the next three words in her title are “An Evolving Theory,” and her paper is a discussion of how that maxim is changing.

The men who wrote our Declaration of Independence did so for political reasons, many of them monetary. Yet they included wording such as “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

I appreciate that freedom and wish it to remain a part of the cultural fabric of my country, the tradition, the basis of the United States of America government and legal system. So far it has been, through many difficulties that threatened it. May God grant that it continue to be so.

What does all of this have to do with my Bible reading? That Bible cannot be studied in Iran, either. The Bible is contraband in many other countries around the world. My country allows me to write as I please and post it for anyone in the world to read. Some countries dislike that ability. They do not appreciate the individual’s ability to post their beliefs that:

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:32 KJV)

But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. (Galatians 1:8 KJV)

Study – check it out. Follow the example of the Bereans to see if this is so.

These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. (Acts 17:11 KJV)