Is Sharia Law Barbaric?

In the current age of increasing anti-Muslim sentiment, it has become routine to hear ignorant pundits and bigoted political activists make baseless claims regarding the reality of Islam. A conscious effort is underway to paint Islam as inherently violent and its legal system as archaic and prehistoric. Far more alarming for Muslims, the greatest avenue for introduction to the faith, the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم is caricatured as a warlord by using false historical narratives and taking other true reports out of historical context. These claims could not be further from the truth. The immense canon of Islamic History from the pluralistic societies of medieval Cordoba to the small British Muslim community of Abdullah Quilliam in the early 20th century testify to the fact that Islam is a powerful force for peaceful coexistence and social equality. As Muslims, it is now incumbent upon us to remove the falsities from the truth and show that our faith is peaceful and fair, our legal system just and equitable and that our founder was “a mercy for the worlds”.