Does Islam Need the Shariah? A Reply to a Christian Interrogation

Dr Shabbir Akhtar was born in Pakistan and raised there and later in Bradford. He read Philosophy at Cambridge University. Apart from publishing books and articles on the academic philosophy of religion, he has written on current affairs, in the UK’s national newspapers. His books range from Be Careful with Muhammad (1989, on the Rushdie affair) to his recent Islam as Political Religion (Routledge, 2010).

Since 2012, he has been a Member of the Faculty of Theology and Religions at Oxford University where he is currently writing a commentary on the Greek New Testament, having already published a commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (Routledge, 2017).

Dr Akhtar will explain why the law is as central to Islam as theology is to Christianity. He will assess St Paul’s arguments about the Jewish law and explain why Islam sees ‘lawless’ Christianity as a regression to an animist view of religion. Paul’s stance on ‘faith versus works of the law’ will be addressed in the context of Islamic and Jewish perspectives and reservations.