This was written in the spring of 2010 as a resource for the Vineyard USA (a recent Protestant denomination). I just added a paragraph in the next to last section, so as to update it. The initial intended audience is American evangelical Christians who are trying to make sense of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Along with many others, I argue that the Christian Right's seeming unconditional support for the State of Israel is altogether one-sided, morally wrong, theologically problematic, and bad for Israel's security in the long run. As followers of Jesus, we should be fostering peace and understanding between all peoples -- as much as it is possible in each case.
For a wider audience, this may be your best primer on "Christian Zionism" -- the ideology that has secured solid backing for Israel in the US Evangelical community since the 1980s.
This article was published in the Brill journal Die Welt des Islams (vol. 47, issue 2, 2007) under the title, "Maqasid al-Shari'a: Epistemology and Hermeneutics of Muslim Theologies of Human Rights
Abstract:
This essay explores the purposive strategy of modern Islamic legal theory (i.e., based on maqāsid al-sharīa, with public benefit, or maslaha, as the sharīa's main purpose) and its use in articulating an Islamic theology of human rights. After a synopsis of contemporary research on Islam and human rights, the essay highlights the main issues involved in the twentiethcentury turn to a purposive approach in usūl al-fiqh (Islamic legal theory). The “maqāsidī ” strategy as it is applied to human rights is then monitored in three distinct currents: traditionalists (Muhammad al-Ghaz¯lī and Muhammad 'Amāra); progressive conservatives (Muhammad Talbi, Muhammad al-Mutawakkal, and Rāshid al-Ghannūshī); progressives working with a postmodern epistemology (Ebrahim Moosa and Khaled Abou El Fadl). In conclusion, this move toward ethical objectivism and an epistemological favoring of ethical values over particular formulations of the text could enable a greater number of conservatives and progressives to converge on some of the burning questions of human rights today.