It’s not easy swimming fully clothed, or so I have read. It is particularly difficult for Muslim women to swim in Prophet-mandated clothing according to Dalal Al-Bizri, Lebanese sociologist and columnist for the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat.

It’s not really swimming she writes, but “a struggle with the weight of waterlogged clothing. This, in addition, to the nasty skin abrasions caused by the corrosive combination of salt and sand that gets embedded in clothing that takes forever to dry.”

For a layman writing about Islamic jurisprudence it is not unlike going swimming fully-clothed, metaphorically-speaking. You are constantly in danger of being dragged beneath the waves of your own logic as you struggle to explain things that on the surface (pun intended) seem to defy common sense, to be the product of an over-active imagination if not a deranged mind.

There is method however in the madness in the Law that would bring structure and logic to the lives of those who willingly submit to the will of Allah, the meaning of “Muslim.”

Islam is not so much a religion as a way of life; a way of life with a nearly infinite set of rules to guide every waking moment of a believer’s existence from how they must dress, to what they can eat, to with whom and when they can engage in intimate relations, to the company they can keep, to how they must think, to how far and where they can let their imagination stray.

The Koran is only the beginning. That beginning we talked about in Pain, Pleasure and Prejudice, The Complete Layman’s Guide to the Koran. We will briefly return to the Koran in Going Swimming Fully Clothed to explain how Allah’s revelations as to how mankind must behave and how he should be worshipped fits into what is commonly referred to as Islamic Law or The Sharia.

Enjoy!

Bernard Payeur