God's law or private law?

[Leonardo17]

But I think, even in the past. What we call religion had to be a matter of individual choice. Otherwise why would monotheistic prophets always be greatly challenged by the already existing order. I think that those rulers did not like the sense of personal choice and autonomy that were brought by these new religions. But that my point of view.  

It seems to me that "monotheistic prophets" being greatly challenged by rulers or the pre-existing status quo is a good demonstration that religion has never been a matter of individual choice.  We often note that the religion a person holds is mostly determined by the religion of their parents.  We could extend that observation.  Many of the parents in lands conquered by abrahamist warlords would be some other religion today if not for that fact of history.   Pockets of internal resistence alongside continuous tradition just outside of political borders  demonstrates that..for better and for worse, which of two groups of men did more killing than the other..on a single day, have determined the religions of untold millions of people who might have never thought of making any individual choice..or, indeed..who think of making one every day and are suppressed by the heirs to those "monotheistic prophets" authority.

Although I don’t know a lot about early History of İslam, I will try to answer these based on the historical facts.
 
1) As a beginner-level reader of the Quran I can tell you this: The holy books uses this phrase in many places while referring to the societies that were subjugated by God (Like the Egyptians, or the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomora or the people that were destroyed by the flood at the time of the prophet Noah): It says “They did not want to change their fathers way of doing things” or it gives a voice to these people and makes them say things like “Shall we abandon our father’s way to adopt the ways of your God?”.
 
Because of this, not all but many Muslims like to debate things rather than obey to some rules simply because it is “the tradition of our father (and mothers of course)”. A few days ago I had this debate with someone. She believed that the process of ritual killing was established so that we wouldn’t be killing humans for the sake of God. I was arguing that the aim here was to give some meat to eat to the poorest and that for that reason I had stopped to perform this tradition for many years now. This works in all areas of religion. Another debate concerns the fasting month of Ramadan. Again there are people who say “It’s an order given by God” and there are people who say “Any living creature can remain without eating for some time if we want them to, so the focus here should be the training of the Ego. Not the simple performance of remaining hungry during the day.” So true Muslims will not refrain from debating these thing and in the end it is the individual who decides. Because even in the minds of the most dogmatic believers, this “judgement by God” is mostly on individual level. It is only I who faces the consequences of my action. No one else. So this relation with God is understood as something deeply personal. A third person may show you the way, he/she may have advices for you. But that is all. Even the Prophet is only a messenger of God. (He is not “divine” like in Christianity).
 
2) For Early Christians: They were always persecuted until the reign of Constantine and the Edict of Milan in 313. In Cappadocia (and in other places) they built entire subterranean cities to avoid the prosecution by the Romans. Their expansion were entirely peaceful. It was only in the first Millennium that Christians adopted the notion of “holy war”.
 
3) For Islam, it’s more complicated (again this is all based on Wikipedia). At the time of the prophet, He was directly attacked by the inhabitants of Medina. And Mustafa Kemal describes this Battle of Badr a a sign of the extraordinary genius of the prophet because in terms of numbers etc. it was an impossible to win battle in many ways. So he only conquered Makkah at the time.
 
During the Rashidun Caliphate (or the four true caliphs who ruled between 632 and 661 AD) there were other issues. When the prophet died there started to be other “prophets” in many parts of Arabia. Since the Arabs of the time were very warlike, the logical solution was to subdue them all. Then they became neighbors with the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires. Arab sources say that it was the Byzantines who wanted to subdue them at first. Anyway, both the East-roman and Sassanid Empires of the time were very weak and corrupt empires. So they marched on them too. But conversions to Islam was not really like in the Spanish Reconquista. Religious minorities had rights and they were free to practice whatever religion they wanted as long as they kept paying taxes. This was maintained until the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1923.
 
Another subject of debate is around the term “Dar-al-Harb” in Arabic. In the classical interpretation this designates all the non-Muslim areas of the world (including Shias if you are a Sunni and Sunnis, if you are a Shia).Yet there is a modern scholar called Y.N. Ozturk who even taught Islamic thought at the Theological Seminary of Barrytown in New York as a guest professor for one year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya%C5%9Far...zt%C3%BCrk). In his definition, this “Dar-al-Harb” is not “everyone who doesn’t accept you faith”. In his vision “Dar-al-Harb” is land in which the supremacy of law is not present, in which corrupt leaders are working for their own good instead of the good of people by not obeying to the rules of reason (and the Quran of course), that are oppressive and unrespect full toward their own people and aggressive and threatening toward the peoples of other countries. Or in sum this “Dar-Al-Harb” means “rogue countries” or “corrupt states”. So I believe The Byzantines and the Sassanids did fall into that category because (for instance) there are records of the Jewish communities in cities like Damascus, welcoming the Arabs as liberators. Because they had adopted “Islamic Law” which include the principle of rule of law in which they were given a status and they were more respected as individuals in comparison with the Theodosian Law which was a very complicated and inefficient system of law, that wasn’t functioning at all in an increasingly corrupt and decadent east-Roman Empire.
 
Just as a note: Islamic Law also became entirely inefficient starting from the 18th century. So Ottoman Sultans started to apply western legislature to their Jew, Christian and other minorities. But the System was entirely inefficient with Muslim populations as well. It had become a totally inefficient system (that required two female witnesses for on male witness for instance), it didn’t work in any area so in 1926, we had to elaborate a new system of law based on the Italian and Swiss legal system, not because of pure admiration but because this İslamic Law was seen as Obsolete by all jurists since at least a century.
 
   So I don’t believe that İslam is a war-loving religion (as it is claimed by the fanatical versions of Islam). I see it as a matter of historical reality. In the 7th century A.D. the only common currency of the world was violence. So maybe Early Muslim rulers had to adopt this language whether they wanted or not. What concerns me in this situation, is the definition of “Dar-al-Harb”. So in the 21st century there is no foreign entity that I perceive like the decadent east-Roman Empire led by the Emperor Heraclius. For me “Dar-al-Harb” could be exactly where I am actually . I understand this as “If your rulers don’t seem to know where they came from and where they are going anymore, you have the right to challenge them, and I will support you in this endeavor”.
 
   So I think there are two keys to understand ancient scriptures:
a) A certain level of spiritual understanding. The Mullahs of Iran (and many other dogmatic scholars) have in some cases memorized the entire scripture (this is true), and yet their spiritual understanding is around 0. So I think these books reveal their meaning to some people but not to others.
b) a scientific and rational approach based on reason and logic. This Y.N. Ozturk does that. He is a jurist and theologian and has written around 40 books on the subject. Many Wahhabi / Salafist scholars don’t have this scientific approach so they “end up repeating the mistakes of their fathers”.
 
Anyway. All of this is for interested parties only. You may just pick up Richard Dawkins’s book “The Greatest Show on Earth” and read it. The only reason why I am into this things (other than the fact that I happen to be a believer) is that I want to have some concrete evidence against I.sils who are banning women from Universities and are doing all sorts of stupidity “In the name of God”. I am only here to show that what they are obeying to is… themselves, not really God.