Contrary to what secularism claims, competing moral visions cannot be reconciled within one legal system. Example: Abortion.

I have talked to many Muslims who consider themselves orthodox and “traditional” believers who accept the consensus fiqh position that 120 days after conception, barring threat to the mother’s life, termination of pregnancy is tantamount to murder. But those same Muslims will support a woman’s absolute “right to choose.” How is that reconcilable?

The fiqh is based on an ontological fact, namely the point at which the soul is breathed into a fetus, i.e., 120 days after conception (or 40 days according to other opinions). That fact does not vary based on whether the mother is Muslim or kafir. Whether Muslim or not, 120 days after conception, there will be a soul breathed into the fetus’ body. This means that even if the mother is non-Muslim, abortion after 120 days is still the unjust taking of a soul, i.e., murder. So how could Muslims who accept the ontological fact nonetheless support a woman’s unconditional “right to choose”?

These Muslims are supporting murder and there are no two ways about it. Murder is also not a “personal choice” that can validly occur “behind closed doors.” Furthermore no Islamic scholar ever held that, in a multi-faith polity under Muslim rule, the Shar`i prohibition of murder only applied to Muslims and could not be enforced upon a non-Muslim “minority.” In other words, all the usual strategies modernist Muslims today use to justify supporting liberal, un-Islamic political positions spectacularly fail in the case of abortion. The only way a woman’s unconditional right to terminate pregnancy can be supported by Muslims is if they reject scholarly consensus and the clear indicants in revelation that support that consensus. Obviously some deviants have no problem with that. As far as the politics go, Muslim leaders have also opted to take a “neutral” stance despite the fact that the Islamic morality of the situation is clear. Every year, nearly 1 million abortions are documented in the US alone. In order to avoid the label of “religious fundamentalism” and being lumped in with the religious right, these Muslim prefer to stay silent in the face of rampant murder. Often, these are the same people who will wax poetic from the minbar about how Islam abolished the pre Islamic practice of burying daughters. But because of myopic, ill-informed political calculations, they stay silent about the burying of daughters AND sons happening today all around us. MashaAllah, how “prophetic.” How dedicated to “social justice.”