First off, Professor Asma Afsaruddin’s piece greatly challenged my expectations of what Sharia law was, what it encompassed, and how it was created and understood. All my life all I have heard about Sharia law is the fanatical hysteria that accompanies it in most American discussion settings. All I had ever heard about it was that it horribly mistreated women and homosexuals and had horrific punishments for any kind of crime. The debunking of the anti-women sentiment that the term Sharia tends to carry was really eye opening for me. When professor Amsa talked about the Quran granting rights of equal access to knowledge for women and that they must consent before being married was astounding to me as I had never heard of these things before.
Secondly, the second articles made more sense because I read Professor Asma’s piece first. Without her article explaining all of the basics in an easy to understand way I would have been lost reading the other two. I did however do some digging into any terms I did not understand. Dictionary definitions were helpful, and I always do whatever I can to stay off of Wikipedia and find credible sources. On this topic I preferred to find sources that seemed credible, and were also at least somewhat associated with Islam. Sure American/British sources may be credible on the topic, but they can also carry a different skew that I was not looking for on this topic.