Sharia (; ar, شريعة, sharīʿa ) is a body of

religious law Religious law includes ethical and moral codes taught by religious traditions. Different religious systems hold sacred law in a greater or lesser degree of importance to their belief systems, with some being explicitly antinomian whereas others ...

that forms a part of the

Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...

ic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam and is based on the sacred scriptures of Islam, particularly the

Quran The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Classical Arabic, Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation in Islam, revelation from God in Islam, ...

and the

Hadith Ḥadīth ( or ; ar, حديث, , , , , , , literally "talk" or "discourse") or Athar ( ar, أثر, , literally "remnant"/"effect") refers to what the majority of Muslims believe to be a record of the words, actions, and the silent approval ...

. In

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

, the term ''sharīʿah'' refers to

God In monotheism, monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator deity, creator, and principal object of Faith#Religious views, faith.Richard Swinburne, Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Ted Honderich, Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Ox ...

's immutable

divine law Divine law is any body of law that is perceived as deriving from a transcendent source, such as the will of God or godsin contrast to man-made law or to secular law. According to Angelos Chaniotis and Rudolph F. Peters, divine laws are typicall ...

and is contrasted with ''

fiqh ''Fiqh'' (; ar, فقه ) is Islamic jurisprudence. Muhammad-> Companions-> Followers-> Fiqh. The commands and prohibitions chosen by God were revealed through the agency of the Prophet in both the Quran and the Sunnah (words, deeds, and ...

'', which refers to its human scholarly interpretations. In the historical course, fiqh sects have emerged that reflect the preferences of certain societies and state administrations on behalf of people who are interested in the theoretical (method) and practical application (

Ahkam ''Ahkam'' (, ar, أحكام "rulings", plural of ()) is an Islamic term with several meanings. In the Quran, the word ''hukm'' is variously used to mean arbitration, judgement, authority, or God in Islam, God's will. In the early Islamic peri ...

fatwa A fatwā ( ; ar, فتوى; plural ''fatāwā'' ) is a legal ruling on a point of Islamic law (''sharia'') given by a qualified '' Faqih'' (Islamic jurist) in response to a question posed by a private individual, judge or government. A jurist i ...

) studies of laws and rules, but sharia has never been a valid legal system on its own. It has been used together with " customary (Urf) law" since

Omar ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb ( ar, عمر بن الخطاب, also spelled Omar, ) was the second Rashidun caliph, ruling from August 634 until his assassination in 644. He succeeded Abu Bakr () as the second caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate o ...

or the

Umayyads Umayyads may refer to: *Umayyad dynasty, a Muslim ruling family of the Caliphate (661–750) and in Spain (756–1031) *Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) :*Emirate of Córdoba (756–929) :*Caliphate of Córdoba The Caliphate of Córdoba ( ar, خ ...

. It may also be wrong to think that the Sharia, as a religious argument or belief, is entirely within or related to Allah's commands and prohibitions. Several non-graded crimes are mentioned in the Qur'an, and they are met with qisas or a single ungraded corporal punishment. Many regulations such as

tazir In Islamic Law, ''tazir'' (''ta'zeer'' or ''ta'zir'', ar, تعزير) refers to punishment for offenses at the discretion of the judge (Qadi) or ruler of the state.hudud, rajm, which is considered contrary to the Qur'an by some jurists and the sharp distinction between free women and concubines in

women's clothing Clothing (also known as clothes, apparel, and attire) are items worn on the body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials and natural ...

can be counted within this scope. Traditional theory of Islamic jurisprudence recognizes four

sources of Sharia Various sources of Islamic Laws are used by Islamic jurisprudence to elaborate the body of Islamic law. In Sunni Islam, the scriptural sources of traditional jurisprudence are the Holy Qur'an, believed by Muslims to be the direct and unaltered w ...

: the ''

'', ''

sunnah In Islam, , also spelled ( ar, سنة), are the traditions and practices of the Islamic prophet Muhammad that constitute a model for Muslims to follow. The sunnah is what all the Muslims of Muhammad's time evidently saw and followed and passed ...

'' (authentic hadith), '' qiyas'' (analogical reasoning), and ''

ijma ''Ijmāʿ'' ( ar, إجماع , " consensus") is an Arabic term referring to the consensus or agreement of the Islamic community on a point of Islamic law. Sunni Muslims regard ''ijmā as one of the secondary sources of Sharia law, after the Qur ...

'' (juridical consensus). John L. Esposito, Natana J. DeLong-Bas (2001),
Women in Muslim family law
'', p. 2.

Syracuse University Press Syracuse University Press, founded in 1943, is a university press that is part of Syracuse University. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. History SUP was formed in August 1943 when president William P. Tolley prom ...

, . Quote: " .. by the ninth century, the classical theory of law fixed the sources of Islamic law at four: the ''Quran'', the ''Sunnah'' of the Prophet, ''qiyas'' (analogical reasoning), and ''ijma'' (consensus)." Different legal schools—of which the most prominent are

Hanafi The Hanafi school ( ar, حَنَفِية, translit=Ḥanafiyah; also called Hanafite in English), Hanafism, or the Hanafi fiqh, is the oldest and one of the four traditional major Sunni schools ( maddhab) of Islamic Law (Fiqh). It is named aft ...

Maliki The ( ar, مَالِكِي) school is one of the four major schools of Islamic jurisprudence within Sunni Islam. It was founded by Malik ibn Anas in the 8th century. The Maliki school of jurisprudence relies on the Quran and hadiths as primary ...

, Shafiʽi,

Hanbali The Hanbali school ( ar, ٱلْمَذْهَب ٱلْحَنۢبَلِي, al-maḏhab al-ḥanbalī) is one of the four major traditional Sunni schools (''madhahib'') of Islamic jurisprudence. It is named after the Arab scholar Ahmad ibn Hanbal ...

, and Jaʽfari—developed methodologies for deriving Sharia rulings from scriptural sources using a process known as ''

ijtihad ''Ijtihad'' ( ; ar, اجتهاد ', ; lit. physical or mental ''effort'') is an Islamic legal term referring to independent reasoning by an expert in Islamic law, or the thorough exertion of a jurist's mental faculty in finding a solution to a le ...

''. Traditional jurisprudence (''fiqh'') distinguishes two principal branches of law, '' ʿibādāt'' (rituals) and '' muʿāmalāt'' (social relations), which together comprise a wide range of topics. Its rulings are concerned with ethical standards as much as with legal norms, assigning actions to one of five categories:

mandatory Mandate most often refers to: * League of Nations mandates, quasi-colonial territories established under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, 28 June 1919 * Mandate (politics) In representative democracies, a mandate (or seat) ...

, recommended,

neutral Neutral or neutrality may refer to: Mathematics and natural science Biology * Neutral organisms, in ecology, those that obey the unified neutral theory of biodiversity Chemistry and physics * Neutralization (chemistry), a chemical reaction in ...

, abhorred, and prohibited. This classification has also been integrated with the motto

enjoining good and forbidding wrong Enjoining (what is) right and forbidding (what is) evil ( ar, ٱلْأَمْرْ بِٱلْمَعْرُوفْ وَٱلنَّهْيْ عَنِ ٱلْمُنْكَرْ, al-amr bi-l-maʿrūf wa-n-nahy ʿani-l-munkar) are two important duties imposed ...

, which is accepted as a type of

jihad Jihad (; ar, جهاد, jihād ) is an Arabic word which literally means "striving" or "struggling", especially with a praiseworthy aim. In an Islamic context, it can refer to almost any effort to make personal and social life conform with Go ...

and has a place in the Qur'an about 30 repeat. Fiqh was elaborated over the centuries by legal opinions (

s) issued by qualified jurists (

mufti A Mufti (; ar, مفتي) is an Islamic jurist qualified to issue a nonbinding opinion ('' fatwa'') on a point of Islamic law (''sharia''). The act of issuing fatwas is called ''iftāʾ''. Muftis and their ''fatwas'' played an important rol ...

s) and historically applied in Sharia courts by ruler-appointed

judges A judge is an official who presides over a court. Judge or Judges may also refer to: Roles *Judge, an alternative name for an adjudicator in a competition in theatre, music, sport, etc. *Judge, an alternative name/aviator call sign for a membe ...

, complemented by various economic, criminal and administrative laws issued by

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

rulers. In the 21st century, the role of Sharia has become an increasingly contested topic around the world especially on political basis. There are ongoing theoretical debates as to whether Sharia is compatible with

democracy Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation (" direct democracy"), or to choose gov ...

human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

freedom of thought Freedom of thought (also called freedom of conscience) is the freedom of an individual to hold or consider a fact, viewpoint, or thought, independent of others' viewpoints. Overview Every person attempts to have a cognitive proficiency ...

women's rights Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. In some countries, ...

LGBT rights Rights affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction—encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the death penalty for homosexuality. Notably, , 33 ...

, and

bank A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets. Because ...

ing. The

European Court of Human Rights The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR or ECtHR), also known as the Strasbourg Court, is an international court of the Council of Europe which interprets the European Convention on Human Rights. The court hears applications alleging that a ...

in Strasbourg (ECtHR) ruled in several cases that Sharia is "incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy". Some traditional practices include serious violations of

, especially on

women A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or Adolescence, adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female hum ...

and

freedom of religion Freedom of religion or religious liberty is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. It also includes the freedom ...

. The manner of its application in modern times has been a subject of dispute between

Muslim fundamentalists Islamic fundamentalism has been defined as a puritanical, revivalist, and reform movement of Muslims who aim to return to the founding scriptures of Islam. Islamic fundamentalists are of the view that Muslim-majority countries should return ...

and

modernists Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

. In the modern era, traditional laws in the Muslim world have been widely replaced by statutes inspired by European models. Judicial procedures and legal education were likewise brought in line with European practice. While the constitutions of most Muslim-majority states contain references to Sharia, its rules are largely retained only in family law. The legislators who codified these laws sought to modernize them without abandoning their foundations in traditional jurisprudence. The

Islamic revival Islamic revival ( ar, تجديد'' '', lit., "regeneration, renewal"; also ', "Islamic awakening") refers to a revival of the Islamic religion. The revivers are known in Islam as ''mujaddids''. Within the Islamic tradition, ''tajdid'' has bee ...

of the late 20th century brought along calls by Islamist movements for full implementation of Sharia, including '' hudud'' corporal punishments, such as

stoning Stoning, or lapidation, is a method of capital punishment where a group throws stones at a person until the subject dies from blunt trauma. It has been attested as a form of punishment for grave misdeeds since ancient times. The Torah and Ta ...

. Today, fundamentalist terrorist organizations and modernist Islamists have advocated the implementation of the different interpretations of the sharia adopted by them through religious-political-terrorist organizations and different propaganda methods. On the other hand, theologian thinkers such as

Fazlur Rahman Malik Fazlur Rahman Malik ( ur, ; September 21, 1919 – July 26, 1988), commonly known as Fazlur Rahman, was a modernist scholar and Islamic philosopher from today's Pakistan. Fazlur Rahman is renowned as a prominent liberal reformer of Islam, who ...

joined this discussion with their views that can be summarized as the Qur'anic expressions and the provisions derived from them have historical characteristics and should be abandoned. In some cases, this resulted in traditionalist legal reform, while other countries witnessed juridical reinterpretation of Sharia advocated by progressive reformers.

Etymology and usage

The primary range of meanings of the

word ''šarīʿah'', derived from the root ''š-r-ʕ'', is related to religion and religious law. The lexicographical tradition records two major areas of use where the word ''šarīʿah'' can appear without religious connotation. In texts evoking a pastoral or nomadic environment, the word, and its derivatives refer to watering animals at a permanent water-hole or to the seashore, with special reference to animals who come there. Another area of use relates to notions of stretched or lengthy. This range of meanings is cognate with the Hebrew ''saraʿ'' and is likely to be the origin of the meaning "way" or "path". Both these areas have been claimed to have given rise to aspects of the religious meaning. Some scholars describe the word ''šarīʿah'' as an archaic

word denoting "pathway to be followed" (analogous to the

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

term

Halakha ''Halakha'' (; he, הֲלָכָה, ), also transliterated as ''halacha'', ''halakhah'', and ''halocho'' ( ), is the collective body of Jewish religious laws which is derived from the written and Oral Torah. Halakha is based on biblical commandm ...

h The Way to Go",Abdal-Haqq, Irshad (2006). ''Understanding Islamic Law – From Classical to Contemporary'' (edited by Aminah Beverly McCloud). Chapter 1 ''Islamic Law – An Overview of its Origin and Elements''.

AltaMira Press Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group is an independent publishing house founded in 1949. Under several imprints, the company offers scholarly books for the academic market, as well as trade books. The company also owns the book distributing compa ...

. p. 4. or "path to the water hole" and argue that its adoption as a metaphor for a divinely ordained way of life arises from the importance of water in an arid desert environment.Weiss, Bernard G. (1998). ''The Spirit of Islamic Law''. Athens, Georgia:

University of Georgia Press The University of Georgia Press or UGA Press is the university press of the University of Georgia, a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Athens, Georgia. It is the oldest and la ...

. p. 17. .

Use in religious texts

In the Quran, ''šarīʿah'' and its cognate ''širʿah'' occur once each, with the meaning "way" or "path". The word ''šarīʿah'' was widely used by Arabic-speaking Jews during the Middle Ages, being the most common translation for the word ''torah'' in the 10th-century Arabic translation of the

Torah The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the s ...

by Saʿadya Gaon. A similar use of the term can be found in Christian writers. The Arabic expression ''Sharīʿat Allāh'' (شريعة الله "God’s Law") is a common translation for תורת אלוהים (‘God’s Law’ in Hebrew) and νόμος τοῦ θεοῦ (‘God’s Law’ in Greek in the New Testament om. 7: 22. In Muslim literature, ''šarīʿah'' designates the laws or message of a prophet or God, in contrast to ''

'', which refers to a scholar's interpretation thereof. In older English-language law-related works in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, the word used for Sharia was ''sheri''. It, along with the French variant ''chéri'', was used during the time of the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

, and is from the Turkish ''şer’''(''i'').

Contemporary usage

The word ''sharīʿah'' is used by Arabic-speaking peoples of the

Middle East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...

to designate a prophetic religion in its totality. For example, ''sharīʿat Mūsā'' means law or religion of Moses and ''sharīʿatu-nā'' can mean "our religion" in reference to any monotheistic faith. Within Islamic discourse, ''šarīʿah'' refers to religious regulations governing the lives of Muslims. For many Muslims, the word means simply "justice," and they will consider any law that promotes justice and social welfare to conform to Sharia. Jan Michiel Otto distinguishes four senses conveyed by the term ''sharia'' in religious, legal and political discourse: * ''Divine, abstract sharia'': God's plan for mankind and the norms of behavior which should guide the Islamic community. Muslims of different perspectives agree in their respect for the abstract notion of sharia, but they differ in how they understand the practical implications of the term. * ''Classical sharia'': the body of rules and principles elaborated by Islamic jurists during the first centuries of

. * ''Historical sharia(s)'': the body of rules and interpretations developed throughout Islamic history, ranging from personal beliefs to state legislation and varying across an ideological spectrum. Classical sharia has often served as a point of reference for these variants, but they have also reflected the influences of their time and place. * ''Contemporary sharia(s)'': the full spectrum of rules and interpretations that are developed and practiced at present. A related term ' (, Islamic law), which was borrowed from European usage in the late 19th century, is used in the Muslim world to refer to a legal system in the context of a modern state.

Historical origins

A similar legal concept '' Eye for an eye'' first recorded in the

Code of Hammurabi The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian legal text composed 1755–1750 BC. It is the longest, best-organised, and best-preserved legal text from the ancient Near East. It is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, purportedly by Hamm ...

. Qisas was a practice used as a resolution tool in inter-tribal conflicts in pre-Islamic Arab society. The basis of this resolution was that a member from the tribe to which the murderer belonged was handed over to the victim's family for execution, equivalent to the social status of the murdered person. The condition of social equivalence meant the execution of a member of the murderer's tribe who was equivalent to the murdered, in that the murdered person was male or female, slave or free, elite or commonone. For example, only one slave could be killed for a slave, and a woman for a woman. In these cases, ''compensatory payment ( Diyya)'' could be paid to the family of the murdered person. On this pre-Islamic understanding added a debate about whether a Muslim can be executed for a non-Muslim during the Islamic period. The main verse for implementation in Islam is Al Baqara, 178 verse: "Believers! Retaliation is ordained for you regarding the people who were killed. Free versus free, captive versus captive, woman versus woman. Whoever is forgiven by the brother of the slain for a price, let him abide by the custom and pay the price well." Blue koran sanaa

According to the traditionalist (''Atharī'') Muslim view, the major precepts of Sharia were passed down directly from the Islamic prophet

Muhammad Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 Common Era, CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Muhammad in Islam, Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet Divine inspiration, di ...

without "historical development" and the emergence of Islamic jurisprudence (''fiqh'') also goes back to the lifetime of Muhammad. Modern historians have presented alternative theories of the formation of fiqh. At first Western scholars accepted the general outlines of the traditionalist account. In the late 19th century, an influential revisionist hypothesis was advanced by Ignac Goldziher and elaborated by Joseph Schacht in the mid-20th century. Schacht and other scholars argued that having conquered much more populous agricultural and urban societies with already existing laws and legal needs, the initial Muslim efforts to formulate legal norms regarded the Quran and Muhammad's hadiths as just one source of law, with jurist personal opinions, the legal practice of conquered peoples, and the decrees and decisions of the caliphs also being valid sources. According to this theory, most canonical hadiths did not originate with Muhammad but were actually created at a later date, despite the efforts of hadith scholars to weed out fabrications. After it became accepted that legal norms must be formally grounded in scriptural sources, proponents of rules of jurisprudence supported by the hadith would extend the chains of transmission of the hadith back to Muhammad's companions. In his view, the real architect of Islamic jurisprudence was

Al-Shafi‘i Abū ʿAbdillāh Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī ( ar, أَبُو عَبْدِ ٱللهِ مُحَمَّدُ بْنُ إِدْرِيسَ ٱلشَّافِعِيُّ, 767–19 January 820 CE) was an Arab Muslim theologian, writer, and schola ...

(d. 820 CE/204 AH), who formulated this idea (that legal norms must be formally grounded in scriptural sources) and other elements of classical legal theory in his work '' al-risala'', but who was preceded by a body of Islamic law not based on primacy of Muhammad's hadiths. While the origin of hadith remains a subject of scholarly controversy, this theory (of Goldziher and Schacht) has given rise to objections, and modern historians generally adopt more cautious, intermediate positions, and it is generally accepted that early Islamic jurisprudence developed out of a combination of administrative and popular practices shaped by the religious and ethical precepts of Islam. It continued some aspects of pre-Islamic laws and customs of the lands that fell under Muslim rule in the aftermath of the early conquests and modified other aspects, aiming to meet the practical need of establishing Islamic norms of behavior and adjudicating disputes arising in the early Muslim communities. Juristic thought gradually developed in study circles, where independent scholars met to learn from a local master and discuss religious topics. At first, these circles were fluid in their membership, but with time distinct regional legal schools crystallized around shared sets of methodological principles. As the boundaries of the schools became clearly delineated, the authority of their doctrinal tenets came to be vested in a master jurist from earlier times, who was henceforth identified as the school's founder. In the course of the first three centuries of Islam, all legal schools came to accept the broad outlines of classical legal theory, according to which Islamic law had to be firmly rooted in the Quran and hadith.

Doctrine and formation of traditional jurisprudence (''fiqh'')

According to the traditionalist Muslim (Atharī) view, the major precepts of Sharia were passed down directly from the Islamic prophet

without "historical development" and the emergence of Islamic jurisprudence (''fiqh'') also goes back to the lifetime of Muhammad. In this view, his companions and followers took what he did and approved of as a model (

) and transmitted this information to the succeeding generations in the form of

hadith Ḥadīth ( or ; ar, حديث, , , , , , , literally "talk" or "discourse") or Athar ( ar, أثر, , literally "remnant"/"effect") refers to what the majority of Muslims believe to be a record of the words, actions, and the silent approval ...

. These reports led first to informal discussion and then systematic legal thought, articulated with greatest success in the eighth and ninth centuries by the master jurists

Abu Hanifah Nuʿmān ibn Thābit ibn Zūṭā ibn Marzubān ( ar, نعمان بن ثابت بن زوطا بن مرزبان; –767), commonly known by his '' kunya'' Abū Ḥanīfa ( ar, أبو حنيفة), or reverently as Imam Abū Ḥanīfa by Sunni Mus ...

Malik ibn Anas Malik ibn Anas ( ar, مَالِك بن أَنَس, ‎ 711–795 CE / 93–179 AH), whose full name is Mālik bin Anas bin Mālik bin Abī ʿĀmir bin ʿAmr bin Al-Ḥārith bin Ghaymān bin Khuthayn bin ʿAmr bin Al-Ḥārith al-Aṣbaḥī ...

, and

Ahmad ibn Hanbal Ahmad ibn Hanbal al-Dhuhli ( ar, أَحْمَد بْن حَنْبَل الذهلي, translit=Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal al-Dhuhlī; November 780 – 2 August 855 CE/164–241 AH), was a Muslim jurist, theologian, ascetic, hadith traditionist, and ...

, who are viewed as the founders of the

Shafiʿi The Shafii ( ar, شَافِعِي, translit=Shāfiʿī, also spelled Shafei) school, also known as Madhhab al-Shāfiʿī, is one of the four major traditional schools of religious law (madhhab) in the Sunnī branch of Islam. It was founded by ...

, and

legal schools (''

madhhab A ( ar, مذهب ', , "way to act". pl. مَذَاهِب , ) is a school of thought within ''fiqh'' (Islamic jurisprudence). The major Sunni Mathhab are Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali. They emerged in the ninth and tenth centuries CE an ...

s'') of Sunni jurisprudence. Classical jurists held that human reason is a gift from God which should be exercised to its fullest capacity. However, they believed that use of reason alone is insufficient to distinguish right from wrong, and that rational argumentation must draw its content from the body of transcendental knowledge revealed in the Quran and through the sunnah of Muhammad. ( Husn and Kubh) Expressions used in the Qur'an and authentic hadith that can serve as a basis for legislation and judiciary, which are called nass by theorist jurists, are examined (in terms of linguistics, meaning, aim, context, scope, restrictions, etc.); new provisions are introduced, the scope is expanded by making comparisons (analogy) or exceptions are made.(

Ijtihad ''Ijtihad'' ( ; ar, اجتهاد ', ; lit. physical or mental ''effort'') is an Islamic legal term referring to independent reasoning by an expert in Islamic law, or the thorough exertion of a jurist's mental faculty in finding a solution to a le ...

) Classical Fiqh theory predicts that all legal problems of humanity can be resolved in this way.

Principles of jurisprudence (''uṣūl al-fiqh'' / ijtihad process)

Fiqh is traditionally divided into the fields of '' uṣūl al-fiqh'' (lit. the roots of fiqh), which studies the theoretical principles of jurisprudence, and ''furūʿ al-fiqh'' (lit. the branches of fiqh), which is devoted to elaboration of rulings on the basis of these principles. Traditional theory of Islamic jurisprudence elaborates how scriptures should be interpreted from the standpoint of linguistics and rhetoric. It also comprises methods for establishing authenticity of hadith and for determining when the legal force of a scriptural passage is abrogated by a passage revealed at a later date. In addition to the Quran and sunnah, the classical theory of Sunni fiqh recognizes two other sources of law: juristic consensus ('' ijmaʿ'') and analogical reasoning ('' qiyas''). It therefore studies the application and limits of analogy, as well as the value and limits of consensus, along with other methodological principles, some of which are accepted by only certain legal schools. This interpretive apparatus is brought together under the rubric of

, which refers to a jurist's exertion in an attempt to arrive at a ruling on a particular question. The theory of

Twelver Shia Twelver Shīʿīsm ( ar, ٱثْنَا عَشَرِيَّة; '), also known as Imāmīyyah ( ar, إِمَامِيَّة), is the largest branch of Shīʿa Islam, comprising about 85 percent of all Shīʿa Muslims. The term ''Twelver'' refers t ...

jurisprudence parallels that of Sunni schools with some differences, such as recognition of reason ('' ʿaql'') as a source of law in place of ''qiyas'' and extension of the notion of sunnah to include traditions of the

imams Imam (; ar, إمام '; plural: ') is an Islamic leadership position. For Sunni Muslims, Imam is most commonly used as the title of a worship leader of a mosque. In this context, imams may lead Islamic worship services, lead prayers, serve ...

Legal Sources of Sharia / Legalization of
Ahkam ''Ahkam'' (, ar, أحكام "rulings", plural of ()) is an Islamic term with several meanings. In the Quran, the word ''hukm'' is variously used to mean arbitration, judgement, authority, or God in Islam, God's will. In the early Islamic peri ...

Islamic scholar Sayyid Rashid Rida (1865 - 1935 C.E) lists the four basic sources of Islamic law, agreed upon by all Sunni Muslims:

"the ell-knownsources of legislation in Islam are four: the ''
Qur'an The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , sing. ...
'', the ''
Sunnah In Islam, , also spelled ( ar, سنة), are the traditions and practices of the Islamic prophet Muhammad that constitute a model for Muslims to follow. The sunnah is what all the Muslims of Muhammad's time evidently saw and followed and passed ...
'', the consensus of the ''
ummah ' (; ar, أمة ) is an Arabic word meaning "community". It is distinguished from ' ( ), which means a nation with common ancestry or geography. Thus, it can be said to be a supra-national community with a common history. It is a synonym for ' ...
'' and ''
ijtihad ''Ijtihad'' ( ; ar, اجتهاد ', ; lit. physical or mental ''effort'') is an Islamic legal term referring to independent reasoning by an expert in Islamic law, or the thorough exertion of a jurist's mental faculty in finding a solution to a le ...
'' undertaken by competent jurists"

* ''

'': In Islam, the Quran is considered to be the most sacred source of law. Classical jurists held its textual integrity to be beyond doubt on account of it having been handed down by many people in each generation, which is known as "recurrence" or "concurrent transmission" (''tawātur''). Only several hundred verses of the Quran have direct legal relevance, and they are concentrated in a few specific areas such as inheritance, though other passages have been used as a source for general principles whose legal ramifications were elaborated by other means. * ''

'': The body of hadith provides more detailed and practical legal guidance, but it was recognized early on that not all of them were authentic. Early Islamic scholars developed a methodology for evaluating their authenticity by assessing trustworthiness of the individuals listed in their transmission chains. These criteria narrowed down the vast corpus of prophetic traditions to several thousand "sound" hadiths, which were collected in several canonical compilations. The hadiths which enjoyed concurrent transmission were deemed unquestionably authentic; however, the vast majority of hadiths were handed down by only one or a few transmitters and were therefore seen to yield only probable knowledge. The uncertainty was further compounded by ambiguity of the language contained in some hadiths and Quranic passages. Disagreements on the relative merits and interpretation of the textual sources allowed legal scholars considerable leeway in formulating alternative rulings. * ''

Ijma ''Ijmāʿ'' ( ar, إجماع , " consensus") is an Arabic term referring to the consensus or agreement of the Islamic community on a point of Islamic law. Sunni Muslims regard ''ijmā as one of the secondary sources of Sharia law, after the Qur ...

'': It is the consensus that could in principle elevate a ruling based on probable evidence to absolute certainty. This classical doctrine drew its authority from a series of hadiths stating that the Islamic community could never agree on an error. This form of consensus was technically defined as agreement of all competent jurists in any particular generation, acting as representatives of the community. However, the practical difficulty of obtaining and ascertaining such an agreement meant that it had little impact on legal development. A more pragmatic form of consensus, which could be determined by consulting works of prominent jurists, was used to confirm a ruling so that it could not be reopened for further discussion. The cases for which there was a consensus account form less than 1 percent of the body of classical jurisprudence. * '' Qiyas'': It is the Analogical reasoning that is used to derive a ruling for a situation not addressed in the scripture by analogy with a scripturally based rule. In a classic example, the Quranic prohibition of drinking wine is extended to all intoxicating substances, on the basis of the "cause" (''ʿilla'') shared by these situations, which in this case is identified to be intoxication. Since the cause of a rule may not be apparent, its selection commonly occasioned controversy and extensive debate. Majority of Sunni Muslims view '' Qiyas'' as a central Pillar of ''

''. On the other hand;

Zahiri The Ẓāhirī ( ar, ظاهري, otherwise transliterated as ''Dhāhirī'') ''madhhab'' or al-Ẓāhirīyyah ( ar, الظاهرية) is a Sunnī school of Islamic jurisprudence founded by Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī in the 9th century CE. It is chara ...

tes,

, Al-Bukhari, early

Hanbalites The Hanbali school ( ar, ٱلْمَذْهَب ٱلْحَنۢبَلِي, al-maḏhab al-ḥanbalī) is one of the four major traditional Sunni schools (''madhahib'') of Islamic jurisprudence. It is named after the Arab scholar Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d ...

, etc rejected ''Qiyas'' amongst the Sunnis. Twelver Shia jurisprudence also does not recognize the use of ''qiyas'', but relies on reason (''ʿaql'') in its place.

Quranism Quranism ( ar, القرآنية, translit=al-Qurʾāniyya'';'' also known as Quran-only Islam) Brown, ''Rethinking tradition in modern Islamic thought'', 1996: p.38-42 is a movement within Islam. It holds the belief that traditional religious cl ...

(al-Qurʾāniyya or Quran-only Islam) holds the belief that traditional religious clergy has corrupted religion, and

ic guidance should be based strictly on the

, thus opposing the religious authority of all or most of the

literature and extra non-Quranic sources. Quranists believe that religious laws (as opposed to narrations) already in the Quran are clear and complete. Quranists claim that the vast majority of hadith literature may be fabrications, and that the Quran itself criticizes the hadith (and its role in Islam) both in the technical sense and the general sense.''al-Manar'' 12(1911): 693–99; cited in Juynboll, ''Authenticity'', 30; cited in D.W. Brown, ''Rethinking tradition in modern Islamic thought'', 1996: p.120

Ijtihad

The classical process of ijtihad combined these generally recognized principles with other methods, which were not adopted by all legal schools, such as ''

istihsan ' ( Arabic: ) is an Arabic term for juristic discretion. In its literal sense it means "to consider something good". Muslim scholars may use it to express their preference for particular judgements in Islamic law over other possibilities. It is ...

'' (juristic preference), ''

istislah ''Istislah'' (Arabic استصلاح "to deem proper") is a method employed by Islamic jurists to solve problems that find no clear answer in sacred religious texts. It is related to the term مصلحة ''Maslaha'', or "public interest" (both words ...

'' (consideration of public interest) and ''

istishab Istishab ( ar, استصحاب ) is an Islamic term used in the jurisprudence to denote the principle of the presumption of continuity. It is derived from an Arabic word ''suhbah'' meaning accompany. It is one of the fundamental principles of the ...

'' (presumption of continuity). A jurist who is qualified to practice ijtihad is known as a ''mujtahid''. The use of independent reasoning to arrive at a ruling is contrasted with ''

taqlid ''Taqlid'' (Arabic تَقْليد ''taqlīd'') is an Islamic term denoting the conformity of one person to the teaching of another. The person who performs ''taqlid'' is termed ''muqallid''. The definite meaning of the term varies depending on co ...

'' (imitation), which refers to following the rulings of a mujtahid. By the beginning of the 10th century, development of Sunni jurisprudence prompted leading jurists to state that the main legal questions had been addressed and the scope of ijtihad was gradually restricted. From the 18th century on, leading Muslim reformers began calling for abandonment of taqlid and renewed emphasis on ijtihad, which they saw as a return to the vitality of early Islamic jurisprudence.

= Labelling of behaviors (Fıqh, ''aḥkām'' or ''etiquettes'')

Fiqh is concerned with ethical standards as much as with legal norms, seeking to establish not only what is and is not legal, but also what is morally right and wrong. Sharia rulings fall into one of five categories known as "the five decisions" (''al-aḥkām al-khamsa''):

(''farḍ'' or ''wājib''), recommended (''mandūb'' or ''mustaḥabb''),

(''mubāḥ''), reprehensible (''makrūh''), and forbidden (''ḥarām''). It is a sin or a crime to perform a forbidden action or not to perform a mandatory action. Reprehensible acts should be avoided, but they are not considered to be sinful or punishable in court. Avoiding reprehensible acts and performing recommended acts is held to be subject of reward in the afterlife, while neutral actions entail no judgment from God. Jurists disagree on whether the term ''

ḥalāl ''Halal'' (; ar, حلال, ) is an Arabic word that translates to "permissible" in English. In the Quran, the word ''halal'' is contrasted with ''haram'' (forbidden). This binary opposition was elaborated into a more complex classification kno ...

'' covers the first three or the first four categories. The legal and moral verdict depends on whether the action is committed out of necessity (''ḍarūra'') and on the underlying intention (''

niyya Niyyah (Arabic: نِيَّةٌ, variously transliterated niyyah, niyya , "intention") is an Islamic concept: the intention in one's heart to do an act for the sake of God (Allah). According to Ibn Rajab's ''Commentary on Imam Nawawi's Forty Hadit ...

''), as expressed in the legal maxim "acts are valuated accordingto intention." Execution of a Moroccan Jewess by Alfred Dehodencq

These actions have material or moral equivalents in the classical understanding of sharia. The abandonment of the actions that are considered fard, wajib and sunnah, and doing the things that are considered makruh and haram are penalized (as hadd or tazir punishments). Legal rights and responsibilities in Sharia begin at puberty (

baligh In Islamic legal terminology, bāligh ( ar, بالغ, adult) or mukallāf ( ar, مكلف, responsible) or muhallāq ( ar, محلاق, tendril, mentally matured) or murāhiq (, adolescent) or muhtalim ( ar, محتلم, pubescent) refers to so ...

). Constant committing of minor sins or the major sins that do not require greater punishment, which are described as wickedness ( fisq) in fiqh terminology, are punished by the judge's discretion, without a certain limit and measure. In tazir punishments, there is no obligation to prove the crime (

principle of legality The principle of legality in criminal law was developed in the eighteenth century by the Italian criminal lawyer Cesare Beccaria and holds that no one can only be convicted of a crime without a previously published legal text which clearly describe ...

) by witnessing or similar mechanisms.

Aims of Sharia and public interest

''Maqāṣid'' (aims or purposes) of Sharia and ''maṣlaḥa'' (welfare or public interest) are two related classical doctrines which have come to play an increasingly prominent role in modern times. They were first clearly articulated by

al-Ghazali Al-Ghazali ( – 19 December 1111; ), full name (), and known in Persian-speaking countries as Imam Muhammad-i Ghazali (Persian: امام محمد غزالی) or in Medieval Europe by the Latinized as Algazelus or Algazel, was a Persian polymat ...

(d. 1111), who argued that ''maslaha'' was God's general purpose in revealing the divine law, and that its specific aim was preservation of five essentials of human well-being: religion, life, intellect, offspring, and property. Although most classical-era jurists recognized ''maslaha'' and ''maqasid'' as important legal principles, they held different views regarding the role they should play in Islamic law. Some jurists viewed them as auxiliary rationales constrained by scriptural sources and analogical reasoning. Others regarded them as an independent source of law, whose general principles could override specific inferences based on the letter of scripture. While the latter view was held by a minority of classical jurists, in modern times it came to be championed in different forms by prominent scholars who sought to adapt Islamic law to changing social conditions by drawing on the intellectual heritage of traditional jurisprudence. These scholars expanded the inventory of ''maqasid'' to include such aims of Sharia as reform and women's rights (

Rashid Rida Muḥammad Rashīd ibn ʿAlī Riḍā ibn Muḥammad Shams al-Dīn ibn Muḥammad Bahāʾ al-Dīn ibn Munlā ʿAlī Khalīfa (23 September 1865 or 18 October 1865 – 22 August 1935 CE/ 1282 - 1354 AH), widely known as Sayyid Rashid Rida ( ar, � ...

); justice and freedom (

Mohammed al-Ghazali Sheikh Mohammed al-Ghazali al-Saqqa (1917–1996) ( ar, الشيخ محمد الغزالي السقا ), was an Islamic scholar whose writings "have influenced generations of Egyptians". The author of 94 books, he attracted a broad following with ...

); and human dignity and rights (

Yusuf al-Qaradawi Yusuf al-Qaradawi ( ar, يوسف القرضاوي, translit=Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī; or ''Yusuf al-Qardawi''; 9 September 1926 – 26 September 2022) was an Egyptian Islamic scholar based in Doha, Qatar, and chairman of the International Union of ...

Branches of law / Furū al Fiqh

The domain of ''furūʿ al-fiqh'' (lit. branches of fiqh) is traditionally divided into ''ʿibādāt'' (rituals or acts of worship) and ''muʿāmalāt'' (social relations). Many jurists further divided the body of substantive jurisprudence into "the four quarters", called rituals, sales, marriage and injuries. Each of these terms figuratively stood for a variety of subjects. For example, the quarter of sales would encompass partnerships, guaranty, gifts, and bequests, among other topics. Juristic works were arranged as a sequence of such smaller topics, each called a "book" (''kitab''). The special significance of ritual was marked by always placing its discussion at the start of the work. Some historians distinguish a field of Islamic criminal law, which combines several traditional categories. Several crimes with scripturally prescribed punishments are known as '' hudud''. Jurists developed various restrictions which in many cases made them virtually impossible to apply. Other crimes involving intentional bodily harm are judged according to a version of ''

lex talionis "An eye for an eye" ( hbo, עַיִן תַּחַת עַיִן, ) is a commandment found in the Book of Exodus 21:23–27 expressing the principle of reciprocal justice measure for measure. The principle exists also in Babylonian law. In Roman c ...

'' that prescribes a punishment analogous to the crime ('' qisas''), but the victims or their heirs may accept a monetary compensation (''

diya Diya may refer to: * ''Diya (film)'', 2018 Tamil- and Telugu-language film * Diya (Islam), Islamic term for monetary compensation for bodily harm or property damage * Diya (lamp), ghee- or oil-based candle often used in South Asian religious ceremo ...

'') or pardon the perpetrator instead; only ''diya'' is imposed for non-intentional harm. Other criminal cases belong to the category of '' taʿzīr'', where the goal of punishment is correction or rehabilitation of the culprit and its form is largely left to the judge's discretion. In practice, since early on in Islamic history, criminal cases were usually handled by ruler-administered courts or local police using procedures which were only loosely related to Sharia. The two major genres of ''furūʿ'' literature are the ''mukhtasar'' (concise summary of law) and the ''mabsut'' (extensive commentary). ''Mukhtasars'' were short specialized treatises or general overviews that could be used in a classroom or consulted by judges. A ''mabsut'', which usually provided a commentary on a ''mukhtasar'' and could stretch to dozens of large volumes, recorded alternative rulings with their justifications, often accompanied by a proliferation of cases and conceptual distinctions. The terminology of juristic literature was conservative and tended to preserve notions which had lost their practical relevance. At the same time, the cycle of abridgement and commentary allowed jurists of each generation to articulate a modified body of law to meet changing social conditions. Other juristic genres include the ''qawāʿid'' (succinct formulas meant to aid the student remember general principles) and collections of fatwas by a particular scholar. Classical jurisprudence has been described as "one of the major intellectual achievements of Islam" and its importance in Islam has been compared to that of

theology Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...

Schools of law

The main Sunni schools of law (''madhhabs'') are the

Shafi'i The Shafii ( ar, شَافِعِي, translit=Shāfiʿī, also spelled Shafei) school, also known as Madhhab al-Shāfiʿī, is one of the four major traditional schools of religious law (madhhab) in the Sunnī branch of Islam. It was founded by ...

and

madhhabs. They emerged in the ninth and tenth centuries and by the twelfth century almost all jurists aligned themselves with a particular madhhab. These four schools recognize each other's validity and they have interacted in legal debate over the centuries. Rulings of these schools are followed across the Muslim world without exclusive regional restrictions, but they each came to dominate in different parts of the world. For example, the Maliki school is predominant in North and West Africa; the Hanafi school in South and Central Asia; the Shafi'i school in Lower Egypt, East Africa, and Southeast Asia; and the Hanbali school in North and Central Arabia. The first centuries of Islam also witnessed a number of short-lived Sunni madhhabs. The

school, which is commonly identified as extinct, continues to exert influence over legal thought. The development of Shia legal schools occurred along the lines of theological differences and resulted in formation of the

Twelver Twelver Shīʿīsm ( ar, ٱثْنَا عَشَرِيَّة; '), also known as Imāmīyyah ( ar, إِمَامِيَّة), is the largest branch of Shīʿa Islam, comprising about 85 percent of all Shīʿa Muslims. The term ''Twelver'' refers t ...

, Zaidi and Ismaili madhhabs, whose differences from Sunni legal schools are roughly of the same order as the differences among Sunni schools. The

Ibadi The Ibadi movement or Ibadism ( ar, الإباضية, al-Ibāḍiyyah) is a school of Islam. The followers of Ibadism are known as the Ibadis. Ibadism emerged around 60 years after the Islamic prophet Muhammad's death in 632 AD as a moderate sc ...

legal school, distinct from Sunni and Shia madhhabs, is predominant in Oman. The transformations of Islamic legal institutions in the modern era have had profound implications for the madhhab system. Legal practice in most of the Muslim world has come to be controlled by government policy and state law, so that the influence of the madhhabs beyond personal ritual practice depends on the status accorded to them within the national legal system. State law codification commonly utilized the methods of ''takhayyur'' (selection of rulings without restriction to a particular madhhab) and ''talfiq'' (combining parts of different rulings on the same question). Legal professionals trained in modern law schools have largely replaced traditional

ulema In Islam, the ''ulama'' (; ar, علماء ', singular ', "scholar", literally "the learned ones", also spelled ''ulema''; feminine: ''alimah'' ingularand ''aalimath'' lural are the guardians, transmitters, and interpreters of religious ...

as interpreters of the resulting laws. Global Islamic movements have at times drawn on different madhhabs and at other times placed greater focus on the scriptural sources rather than classical jurisprudence. The Hanbali school, with its particularly strict adherence to the Quran and hadith, has inspired conservative currents of direct scriptural interpretation by the Salafi and

Wahhabi Wahhabism ( ar, ٱلْوَهَّابِيَةُ, translit=al-Wahhābiyyah) is a Sunni Islamic revivalist and fundamentalist movement associated with the reformist doctrines of the 18th-century Arabian Islamic scholar, theologian, preacher, an ...

movements. Other currents, such as networks of Indonesian ulema and Islamic scholars residing in Muslim-minority countries, have advanced liberal interpretations of Islamic law without focusing on traditions of a particular madhhab.

Pre-modern Islamic legal system

Socio-political context

The social fabric of pre-modern Islamic societies was largely defined by close-knit communities organized around kinship groups and local neighborhoods. Conflicts between individuals had the potential to escalate into a conflict between their supporting groups and disrupt the life of the entire community. Court litigation was seen as a last resort for cases where informal mediation had failed. This attitude was reflected in the legal maxim "amicable settlement is the best verdict" (''al-sulh sayyid al-ahkam''). In court disputes, qadis were generally less concerned with legal theory than with achieving an outcome that enabled the disputants to resume their previous social relationships. This could be accomplished by avoiding a total loss for the losing side or simply giving them a chance to articulate their position in public and obtain a measure of psychological vindication. Islamic law required judges to be familiar with local customs, and they exercised a number of other public functions in the community, including mediation and arbitration, supervision of public works, auditing waqf finances, and looking after the interests of orphans. Zibik

Unlike pre-modern cultures where the ruling dynasty promulgated the law, Islamic law was formulated by religious scholars without involvement of the rulers. The law derived its authority not from political control, but rather from the collective doctrinal positions of the legal schools (madhhabs) in their capacity as interpreters of the scriptures. The

(religious scholars) were involved in management of communal affairs and acted as representatives of the Muslim population vis-à-vis the ruling dynasties, who before the modern era had limited capacity for direct governance. Military elites relied on the ulema for religious legitimation, with financial support for religious institutions being one of the principal means through which these elites established their legitimacy. In turn, the ulema depended on the support of the ruling elites for the continuing operation of religious institutions. Although the relationship between secular rulers and religious scholars underwent a number of shifts and transformations in different times and places, this mutual dependence characterized Islamic history until the start of the modern era. Additionally, since Sharia contained few provisions in several areas of public law, Muslim rulers were able to legislate various collections of economic, criminal and administrative laws outside the jurisdiction of Islamic jurists, the most famous of which is the '' qanun'' promulgated by Ottoman sultans beginning from the 15th century. The Mughal emperor

Aurangzeb Muhi al-Din Muhammad (; – 3 March 1707), commonly known as ( fa, , lit=Ornament of the Throne) and by his regnal title Alamgir ( fa, , translit=ʿĀlamgīr, lit=Conqueror of the World), was the sixth emperor of the Mughal Empire, ruling ...

(r. 1658–1707) issued a hybrid body of law known as Fatawa-e-Alamgiri, based on

fatwas as well as decisions of Islamic courts, and made it applicable to all religious communities on the

Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...

. This early attempt to turn Islamic law into semi-codified state legislation sparked rebellions against Mughal rule.

Social classes; Women, slaves, non-Muslims etc

In both the rules of civil disputes and application of penal law, classical Sharia distinguishes between men and women, between Muslims and non-Muslims, and between free persons and slaves. Slavezanzibar2

Traditional Islamic law assumes a patriarchal society with a man at the head of the household. Different legal schools formulated a variety of legal norms which could be manipulated to the advantage of men or women, but women were generally at a disadvantage with respect to the rules of inheritance, blood money (''diya''), and witness testimony, where in some cases a woman's value is effectively treated as half of that of a man. Various financial obligations imposed on the husband acted as a deterrent against unilateral divorce and commonly gave the wife financial leverage in divorce proceedings. Women were active in Sharia courts as both plaintiffs and defendants in a wide variety of cases, though some opted to be represented by a male relative. Sharia was intended to regulate affairs of the Muslim community. Non-Muslims residing under Islamic rule had the legal status of

dhimmi ' ( ar, ذمي ', , collectively ''/'' "the people of the covenant") or () is a historical term for non-Muslims living in an Islamic state with legal protection. The word literally means "protected person", referring to the state's obligatio ...

, which entailed a number of protections, restrictions, freedoms and legal inequalities, including payment of the

jizya Jizya ( ar, جِزْيَة / ) is a per capita yearly taxation historically levied in the form of financial charge on dhimmis, that is, permanent Kafir, non-Muslim subjects of a state governed by Sharia, Islamic law. The jizya tax has been unde ...

tax. Dhimmi communities had legal autonomy to adjudicate their internal affairs. Cases involving litigants from two different religious groups fell under jurisdiction of Sharia courts, where (unlike in secular courts) testimony of non-Muslim witnesses against a Muslim was inadmissible in criminal cases or at all. This legal framework was implemented with varying degree of rigor. In some periods or towns, all inhabitants apparently used the same court without regard for their religious affiliation. The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb imposed Islamic law on all his subjects, including provisions traditionally applicable only to Muslims, while some of his predecessors and successors are said to have abolished jizya. According to Ottoman records, non-Muslim women took their cases to a Sharia court when they expected a more favorable outcome on marital, divorce and property questions than in Christian and Jewish courts. Over time, non Muslims in the Ottoman Empire could be more or less likely to use Islamic courts. For example, in 1729 at the Islamic court in

Galata Galata is the former name of the Karaköy neighbourhood in Istanbul, which is located at the northern shore of the Golden Horn. The district is connected to the historic Fatih district by several bridges that cross the Golden Horn, most notabl ...

only two percent of cases involved non-Muslims whereas in 1789 non-Muslims were a part of thirty percent of cases. Ottoman court records also reflect the use of Islamic courts by formerly non-Muslim women. As it was illegal for non-Muslims to own Muslims and for non-Muslim men to marry Muslim women in the Ottoman empire, conversion to Islam would have been an option for non-Muslim women to free themselves of a spouse or master they did not want to subject to. However, this would likely lead to them being shunned by their former community. Classical fiqh acknowledges and regulates slavery as a legitimate institution. It granted slaves certain rights and protections, improving their status relative to Greek and Roman law, and restricted the scenarios under which people could be enslaved. However, slaves could not inherit or enter into a contract, and were subject to their master's will in a number of ways. The labor and property of slaves were owned by the master, who was also entitled to sexual submission of his unmarried slaves. Formal legal disabilities for some groups coexisted with a legal culture that viewed Sharia as a reflection of universal principles of justice, which involved protection of the weak against injustices committed by the strong. This conception was reinforced by the historical practice of Sharia courts, where peasants "almost always" won cases against oppressive landowners, and non-Muslims often prevailed in disputes against Muslims, including such powerful figures as the governor of their province. In family matters the Sharia court was seen as a place where the rights of women could be asserted against their husband's transgressions.

Courts

'Abd Allah ibn Shaykh Murshid al-Katib - Sa'di and a Dervish Go to Settle their Quarrel Before a Judge - Walters W618106B - Cropped

judge A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...

(qadi) was in charge of the qadi's court (''mahkama''), also called the Sharia court. Qadis were trained in Islamic law, though not necessarily to a level required to issue fatwas. Court personnel also included a number of assistants performing various roles. Judges were theoretically independent in their decisions, though they were appointed by the ruler and often experienced pressure from members of the ruling elite where their interests were at play. The role of qadis was to evaluate the evidence, establish the facts of the case, and issue a verdict based on the applicable rulings of Islamic jurisprudence. The qadi was supposed to solicit a fatwa from a mufti if it was unclear how the law should be applied to the case. Since Islamic legal theory does not recognize the distinction between private and public law, court procedures were identical for civil and criminal cases, and required a private plaintiff to produce evidence against the defendant. The main type of evidence was oral witness testimony. The standards of evidence for criminal cases were so strict that a conviction was often difficult to obtain even for apparently clear-cut cases. Most historians believe that because of these stringent procedural norms, qadi's courts at an early date lost their jurisdiction over criminal cases, which were instead handled in other types of courts. If an accusation did not result in a verdict in a qadi's court, the plaintiff could often pursue it in another type of court called the ''

mazalim ''Al-maẓālim'' (injustices, grievances) were an ancient pre-Islamic institution that was adopted by the Abbasids The Abbasid Caliphate ( or ; ar, الْخِلَافَةُ الْعَبَّاسِيَّة, ') was the third caliphate to succee ...

'' court, administered by the ruler's council. The rationale for ''mazalim'' (lit. wrongs, grievances) courts was to address the wrongs that Sharia courts were unable to address, including complaints against government officials. Islamic jurists were commonly in attendance and a judge often presided over the court as a deputy of the ruler. ''Mazalim'' verdicts were supposed to conform to the spirit of Sharia, but they were not bound by the letter of the law or the procedural restrictions of qadi's courts. The police (''

shurta ''Shurṭa'' ( ar, شرطة) is the common Arabic term for police, although its precise meaning is that of a "picked" or elite force. Bodies termed ''shurṭa'' were established in the early days of the Caliphate, perhaps as early as the caliphate ...

''), which took initiative in preventing and investigating crime, operated its own courts. Like the mazalim courts, police courts were not bound by the rules of Sharia and had the powers to inflict discretionary punishments. Another office for maintaining public order was the ''

muhtasib A muḥtasib ( ar, محتسب, from the root ''ḥisbah'', or "accountability"Sami Zubaida (2005), Law and Power in the Islamic World, , pages 58-60) was "a holder of the office of al-hisbah in classical Islamic administrations", according to Ox ...

'' (market inspector), who was charged with preventing fraud in economic transactions and infractions against public morality. The ''muhtasib'' took an active role in pursuing these types of offenses and meted out punishments based on local custom.

Jurists

Sharia was traditionally interpreted by

s. During the first few centuries of Islam, muftis were private legal specialists who normally also held other jobs. They issued

s (legal opinions), generally free of charge, in response to questions from laypersons or requests for consultation coming from judges, which would be stated in general terms. Fatwas were regularly upheld in courts, and when they were not, it was usually because the fatwa was contradicted by a more authoritative legal opinion. The stature of jurists was determined by their scholarly reputation. The majority of classical legal works, written by author-jurists, were based in large part on fatwas of distinguished muftis. These fatwas functioned as a form of legal

precedent A precedent is a principle or rule established in a previous legal case that is either binding on or persuasive for a court or other tribunal when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts. Common-law legal systems place great valu ...

, unlike court verdicts, which were valid only for the given case. Although independent muftis never disappeared, from the 12th century onward Muslim rulers began to appoint salaried muftis to answer questions from the public. Over the centuries,

Sunni Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word '' Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a disagr ...

muftis were gradually incorporated into state bureaucracies, while

Shia Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest Islamic schools and branches, branch of Islam. It holds that the Prophets and messengers in Islam, Islamic prophet Muhammad in Islam, Muhammad designated Ali, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his S ...

jurists in Iran progressively asserted an autonomous authority starting from the early modern era. Samarkand, Registan, Ulugbek Medressa (6238565020)

Samarkand, Registan, Ulugbek Medressa (6238565020)

Islamic law was initially taught in study circles that gathered in mosques and private homes. The teacher, assisted by advanced students, provided commentary on concise treatises of law and examined the students' understanding of the text. This tradition continued to be practiced in ''

madrasa Madrasa (, also , ; Arabic: مدرسة , pl. , ) is the Arabic word for any type of educational institution, secular or religious (of any religion), whether for elementary instruction or higher learning. The word is variously transliterated '' ...

s'', which spread during the 10th and 11th centuries. Madrasas were institutions of higher learning devoted principally to study of law, but also offering other subjects such as theology, medicine, and mathematics. The madrasa complex usually consisted of a mosque, boarding house, and a library. It was maintained by a ''

waqf A waqf ( ar, وَقْف; ), also known as hubous () or '' mortmain'' property is an inalienable charitable endowment under Islamic law. It typically involves donating a building, plot of land or other assets for Muslim religious or charitabl ...

'' (charitable endowment), which paid salaries of professors, stipends of students, and defrayed the costs of construction and maintenance. At the end of a course, the professor granted a license (''

ijaza An ''ijazah'' ( ar, الإِجازَة, "permission", "authorization", "license"; plural: ''ijazahs'' or ''ijazat'') is a license authorizing its holder to transmit a certain text or subject, which is issued by someone already possessing such au ...

'') certifying a student's competence in its subject matter. Students specializing in law would complete a curriculum consisting of preparatory studies, the doctrines of a particular madhhab, and training in legal disputation, and finally write a dissertation, which earned them a license to teach and issue fatwas.

Modern legal reforms

Under colonial rule

Starting from the 17th century, European powers began to extend political influence over lands ruled by Muslim dynasties, and by the end of the 19th century, much of the Muslim world came under colonial domination. The first areas of Islamic law to be impacted were usually commercial and criminal laws, which impeded colonial administration and were soon replaced by European regulations. Islamic commercial laws were also replaced by European (mostly French) laws in Muslim states which retained formal independence, because these states increasingly came to rely on Western capital and could not afford to lose the business of foreign merchants who refused to submit to Islamic regulations. Warren Hastings

The first significant changes to the legal system of

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...

were initiated in the late 18th century by the governor of Bengal

Warren Hastings Warren Hastings (6 December 1732 – 22 August 1818) was a British colonial administrator, who served as the first Governor of the Presidency of Fort William (Bengal), the head of the Supreme Council of Bengal, and so the first Governor-Genera ...

. Hastings' plan of legal reform envisioned a multi-tiered court system for the Muslim population, with a middle tier of British judges advised by local Islamic jurists, and a lower tier of courts operated by qadis. Hastings also commissioned a translation of the classic manual of Hanafi fiqh, '' Al-Hidayah'', from Arabic into Persian and then English, later complemented by other texts. These translations enabled British judges to pass verdicts in the name of Islamic law based on a combination of Sharia rules and

common law In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions."The common law is not a brooding omnipresen ...

doctrines, and eliminated the need to rely on consultation by local ulema, whom they mistrusted. In the traditional Islamic context, a concise text like ''Al-Hidayah'' would be used as a basis for classroom commentary by a professor, and the doctrines thus learned would be mediated in court by judicial discretion, consideration of local customs and availability of different legal opinions that could fit the facts of the case. The British use of ''Al-Hidayah'', which amounted to an inadvertent codification of Sharia, and its interpretation by judges trained in Western legal traditions anticipated later legal reforms in the Muslim world. British administrators felt that Sharia rules too often allowed criminals to escape punishment, as exemplified by Hastings' complaint that Islamic law was "founded on the most lenient principles and on an abhorrence of bloodshed". In the course of the 19th century, criminal laws and other aspects of the Islamic legal system in India were supplanted by British law, with the exception of Sharia rules retained in family laws and some property transactions. Among other changes, these reforms brought about abolition of slavery, prohibition of child marriage, and a much more frequent use of capital punishment. The resulting legal system, known as ''Anglo-Muhammadan law'', was treated by the British as a model for legal reforms in their other colonies. Like the British in India, colonial administrations typically sought to obtain precise and authoritative information about indigenous laws, which prompted them to prefer classical Islamic legal texts over local judicial practice. This, together with their conception of Islamic law as a collection of inflexible rules, led to an emphasis on traditionalist forms of Sharia that were not rigorously applied in the pre-colonial period and served as a formative influence on the modern identity politics of the Muslim world.

Ottoman empire

During the colonial era, Muslim rulers concluded that they could not resist European pressure unless they modernized their armies and built centrally administered states along the lines of Western models. In the

Ottoman empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

, the first such changes in the legal sphere involved placing the formerly independent

s under state control. This reform, passed in 1826, enriched the public treasury at the expense of the waqfs, thereby depleting the financial support for traditional Islamic legal education. Over the second half of the 19th century, a new hierarchical system of secular courts was established to supplement and eventually replace most religious courts. Students hoping to pursue legal careers in the new court system increasingly preferred attending secular schools over the traditional path of legal education with its dimming financial prospects. The

Tanzimat The Tanzimat (; ota, تنظيمات, translit=Tanzimāt, lit=Reorganization, ''see'' nizām) was a period of reform in the Ottoman Empire that began with the Gülhane Hatt-ı Şerif in 1839 and ended with the First Constitutional Era in 1876. ...

reforms of the 19th century saw reorganization of both Islamic civil law and sultanic criminal law after the model of the Napoleonic Code. In the 1870s, a codification of civil law and procedure (excepting marriage and divorce), called the ''

Mecelle The Mecelle was the civil code of the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century. It was the first attempt to codify a part of the Sharia-based law of an Islamic state. Name The Ottoman Turkish name of the code is ''Mecelle-ʾi A� ...

'', was produced for use in both Sharia and secular courts. It adopted the Turkish language for the benefit of the new legal class who no longer possessed competence in the Arabic idiom of traditional jurisprudence. The code was based on Hanafi law, and its authors selected minority opinions over authoritative ones when they were felt to better "suit the present conditions". The Mecelle was promulgated as a '' qanun'' (sultanic code), which represented an unprecedented assertion of the state's authority over Islamic civil law, traditionally the preserve of the ulema. The 1917 Ottoman Law of Family Rights adopted an innovative approach of drawing rules from minority and majority opinions of all Sunni madhhabs with a modernizing intent. The

Republic of Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

, which emerged after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, abolished its Sharia courts and replaced Ottoman civil laws with the

Swiss Civil Code The Swiss Civil Code (SR/RS 210, german: Schweizerisches Zivilgesetzbuch (ZGB); french: Code civil suisse (CC); it, Codice civile svizzero (CC); rm, Cudesch civil svizzer) is a portion of the second part (SR/RS 2) of the internal Swiss law ("Pr ...

, but Ottoman civil laws remained in force for several decades in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Iraq.

Nation states

Westernization of legal institutions and expansion of state control in all areas of law, which began during the colonial era, continued in nation-states of the Muslim world. Sharia courts at first continued to exist alongside state courts as in earlier times, but the doctrine that sultanic courts should implement the ideals of Sharia was gradually replaced by legal norms imported from Europe. Court procedures were also brought in line with European practice. Though the Islamic terms ''qadi'' and ''mahkama'' (qadi's/Sharia court) were preserved, they generally came to mean judge and court in the Western sense. While in the traditional Sharia court all parties represented themselves, in modern courts they are represented by professional lawyers educated in Western-style law schools, and the verdicts are subject to review in an appeals court. In the 20th century, most countries abolished a parallel system of Sharia courts and brought all cases under a national civil court system. In most Muslim-majority countries, traditional rules of classical fiqh have been largely preserved only in family law. In some countries religious minorities such as Christians or Shia Muslims have been subject to separate systems of family laws. Many Muslims today believe that contemporary Sharia-based laws are an authentic representation of the pre-modern legal tradition. In reality, they generally represent the result of extensive legal reforms made in the modern era. As traditional Islamic jurists lost their role as authoritative interpreters of the laws applied in courts, these laws were codified by legislators and administered by state systems which employed a number of devices to effect changes, including: * Selection of alternative opinions from traditional legal literature (''takhayyur''), potentially among multiple madhhabs or denominations, and combining parts of different rulings (''talfiq''). * Appeal to the classical doctrines of necessity (''darura''), public interest (''maslaha''), and the objectives (''maqasid'') of Sharia, which played a limited role in classical fiqh, but were now given wider utilitarian applications. * Changes in administrative law that grant the courts discretionary powers to restrict certain practices which are not forbidden by substantive law (e.g., polygamy), in some cases imposing penal sanctions as additional deterrence. * Modernist interpretation of Islamic scriptures without adherence to the rules or methodologies of traditional jurisprudence, known as ''neo-ijtihad''. The Late Grand Moufti (1906) - TIMEA

The most powerful influence on liberal reformist thought came from the work of the Egyptian Islamic scholar Muhammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905). Abduh viewed only Sharia rules pertaining to religious rituals as inflexible, and argued that the other Islamic laws should be adapted based on changing circumstances in consideration of social well-being. Following precedents of earlier Islamic thinkers, he advocated restoring Islam to its original purity by returning to the Quran and the sunna instead of following the medieval schools of jurisprudence. He championed a creative approach to ijtihad that involved direct interpretation of scriptures as well as the methods of ''takhayyur'' and ''talfiq''. One of the most influential figures in modern legal reforms was the Egyptian legal scholar

Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri Abd el-Razzak el-Sanhuri or ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-Sanhūrī ( ar, عبد الرزاق السنهوري) (11 August 1895 – 21 July 1971) was an Egyptian jurist, law professor, judge and politician. He is best remembered as the primary author of ...

(1895–1971), who possessed expertise in both Islamic and Western law. Sanhuri argued that reviving Islamic legal heritage in a way that served the needs of contemporary society required its analysis in light of the modern science of

comparative law Comparative law is the study of differences and similarities between the law (legal systems) of different countries. More specifically, it involves the study of the different legal "systems" (or "families") in existence in the world, including the ...

. He drafted the civil codes of Egypt (1949) and Iraq (1951) based on a variety of sources, including classical fiqh, European laws, existing Arab and Turkish codes, and the history of local court decisions. Sanhuri's Egyptian code incorporated few classical Sharia rules, but he drew on traditional jurisprudence more frequently for the Iraqi code. Sanhuri's codes were subsequently adopted in some form by most Arab countries. Aside from the radical reforms of Islamic family law carried out in Tunisia (1956) and Iran (1967), governments often preferred to make changes that made a clear break from traditional Sharia rules by imposing administrative hurdles rather than changing the rules themselves, in order to minimize objections from religious conservatives. Various procedural changes have been made in a number of countries to restrict polygamy, give women greater rights in divorce, and eliminate child marriage. Inheritance has been the legal domain least susceptible to reform, as legislators have been generally reluctant to tamper with the highly technical system of Quranic shares. Some reforms have faced strong conservative opposition. For example, the 1979 reform of Egyptian family law, promulgated by

Anwar Sadat Muhammad Anwar el-Sadat, (25 December 1918 – 6 October 1981) was an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as the third president of Egypt, from 15 October 1970 until his assassination by fundamentalist army officers on 6 ...

through presidential decree, provoked an outcry and was annulled in 1985 by the supreme court on procedural grounds, to be later replaced by a compromise version. The 2003 reform of Moroccan family law, which sought to reconcile universal human rights norms and the country's Islamic heritage, was drafted by a commission that included parliamentarians, religious scholars and feminist activists, and the result has been praised by international rights groups as an example of progressive legislation achieved within an Islamic framework.

Islamization

The

of the late 20th century brought the topic of Sharia to international attention in the form of numerous political campaigns in the Muslim world calling for full implementation of Sharia. A number of factors have contributed to the rise of these movements, classified under the rubric of

Islamism Islamism (also often called political Islam or Islamic fundamentalism) is a political ideology which posits that modern states and regions should be reconstituted in constitutional, economic and judicial terms, in accordance with what is ...

political Islam Political Islam is any interpretation of Islam as a source of political identity and action. It can refer to a wide range of individuals and/or groups who advocate the formation of state and society according to their understanding of Islamic pri ...

, including the failure of authoritarian secular regimes to meet the expectations of their citizens, and a desire of Muslim populations to return to more culturally authentic forms of socio-political organization in the face of a perceived cultural invasion from the West. Islamist leaders such as

Ayatollah Khomeini Ruhollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Khomeini, Imam Khomeini ( , ; ; 17 May 1900 – 3 June 1989) was an Iranian political and religious leader who served as the first supreme leader of Iran from 1979 until his death in 1989. He was the founder of ...

drew on leftist anticolonialist rhetoric by framing their call for Sharia as a resistance struggle. They accused secular leaders of corruption and predatory behavior, and claimed that a return to Sharia would replace despotic rulers with pious leaders striving for social and economic justice. In the

Arab world The Arab world ( ar, اَلْعَالَمُ الْعَرَبِيُّ '), formally the Arab homeland ( '), also known as the Arab nation ( '), the Arabsphere, or the Arab states, refers to a vast group of countries, mainly located in Western A ...

these positions are often encapsulated in the slogan "Islam is the solution" (''al-Islam huwa al-hall''). Full implementation of Sharia theoretically refers to expanding its scope to all fields of law and all areas of public life. In practice, Islamization campaigns have focused on a few highly visible issues associated with the conservative Muslim identity, particularly women's

hijab In modern usage, hijab ( ar, حجاب, translit=ḥijāb, ) generally refers to headcoverings worn by Muslim women. Many Muslims believe it is obligatory for every female Muslim who has reached the age of puberty to wear a head covering. While ...

and the ''hudud'' criminal punishments (whipping, stoning and amputation) prescribed for certain crimes. For many Islamists, ''hudud'' punishments are at the core of the divine Sharia because they are specified by the letter of scripture rather than by human interpreters. Modern Islamists have often rejected, at least in theory, the stringent procedural constraints developed by classical jurists to restrict their application. To the broader Muslim public, the calls for Sharia often represent, even more than any specific demands, a vague vision of their current economic and political situation being replaced by a "just utopia". A number of legal reforms have been made under the influence of these movements, starting from the 1970s when Egypt and Syria amended their constitutions to specify Sharia as the basis of legislation. The

Iranian Revolution The Iranian Revolution ( fa, انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution ( fa, انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynas ...

of 1979 represented a watershed for Islamization advocates, demonstrating that it was possible to replace a secular regime with a

theocracy Theocracy is a form of government in which one or more deity, deities are recognized as supreme ruling authorities, giving divine guidance to human intermediaries who manage the government's daily affairs. Etymology The word theocracy origina ...

. Several countries, including Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, and some Nigerian states have incorporated hudud rules into their criminal justice systems, which, however, retained fundamental influences of earlier Westernizing reforms. In practice, these changes were largely symbolic, and aside from some cases brought to trial to demonstrate that the new rules were being enforced, hudud punishments tended to fall into disuse, sometimes to be revived depending on the local political climate. The supreme courts of Sudan and Iran have rarely approved verdicts of stoning or amputation, and the supreme courts of Pakistan and Nigeria have never done so. Nonetheless, Islamization campaigns have also had repercussions in several other areas of law, leading to curtailment of rights of women and religious minorities, and in the case of Sudan contributing to the breakout of a civil war. Advocates of Islamization have often been more concerned with ideology than traditional jurisprudence and there is no agreement among them as to what form a modern Sharia-based "

Islamic state An Islamic state is a State (polity), state that has a form of government based on sharia, Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical Polity, polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a t ...

" should take. This is particularly the case for the theorists of

Islamic economics Islamic economics ( ar, الاقتصاد الإسلامي) refers to the knowledge of economics or economic activities and processes in terms of Islamic principles and teachings. Islam has a set of special moral norms and values about individua ...

and

Islamic finance Islamic banking, Islamic finance ( ar, مصرفية إسلامية), or Sharia-compliant finance is banking or financing activity that complies with Sharia (Islamic law) and its practical application through the development of Islamic economic ...

, who have advocated both free-market and socialist economic models. The notion of "Sharia-compliant" finance has become an active area of doctrinal innovation and its development has had a major impact on business operations around the world.

Contemporary applications

In state laws

Types of legal systems

The legal systems of most Muslim-majority countries can be classified as either secular or mixed. Sharia plays no role in secular legal systems. In mixed legal systems, Sharia rules are allowed to influence some national laws, which are codified and may be based on European or Indian models, and the central legislative role is played by politicians and modern jurists rather than the

(traditional Islamic scholars). Saudi Arabia and some other Gulf states possess what may be called classical Sharia systems, where national law is largely uncodified and formally equated with Sharia, with ulema playing a decisive role in its interpretation. Iran has adopted some features of classical Sharia systems, while also maintaining characteristics of mixed systems, like codified laws and a parliament.

Constitutional law

Constitutions of many Muslim-majority countries refer to Sharia as a source or the main source of law, though these references are not in themselves indicative of how much the legal system is influenced by Sharia, and whether the influence has a traditionalist or modernist character. The same constitutions usually also refer to universal principles such as democracy and human rights, leaving it up to legislators and the judiciary to work out how these norms are to be reconciled in practice. Conversely, some countries (e.g., Algeria), whose constitution does not mention Sharia, possess Sharia-based family laws. Nisrine Abiad identifies Bahrain, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia as states with "strong constitutional consequences of Sharia "on the organization and functioning of power".

Family law

Except for secular systems, Muslim-majority countries possess Sharia-based laws dealing with family matters (marriage, inheritance, etc.). These laws generally reflect influence of various modern-era reforms and tend to be characterized by ambiguity, with traditional and modernist interpretations often manifesting themselves in the same country, both in legislation and court decisions. In some countries (e.g., parts of Nigeria), people can choose whether to pursue a case in a Sharia or secular court.

Criminal law

Countries in the Muslim world generally have criminal codes influenced by civil law or common law, and in some cases a combination of Western legal traditions. Saudi Arabia has never adopted a criminal code and Saudi judges still follow traditional Hanbali jurisprudence. In the course of Islamization campaigns, several countries (Libya, Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Mauritania, and Yemen) inserted Islamic criminal laws into their penal codes, which were otherwise based on Western models. In some countries only ''hudud'' penalties were added, while others also enacted provisions for '' qisas'' (law of retaliation) and ''

'' (monetary compensation). Iran subsequently issued a new "Islamic Penal Code". The criminal codes of Afghanistan and United Arab Emirates contain a general provision that certain crimes are to be punished according to Islamic law, without specifying the penalties. Some Nigerian states have also enacted Islamic criminal laws. Laws in the Indonesian province of Aceh provide for application of discretionary (''

ta'zir In Islamic Law, ''tazir'' (''ta'zeer'' or ''ta'zir'', ar, تعزير) refers to punishment for offenses at the discretion of the judge (Qadi) or ruler of the state.Brunei Brunei ( , ), formally Brunei Darussalam ( ms, Negara Brunei Darussalam, Jawi alphabet, Jawi: , ), is a country located on the north coast of the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. Apart from its South China Sea coast, it is completely sur ...

has been implementing a "Sharia Penal Code", which includes provisions for stoning and amputation, in stages since 2014. The countries where ''hudud'' penalties are legal do not use stoning and amputation routinely, and generally apply other punishments instead.

Property law

Sharia recognizes the concept of ''haqq''. ''Haqq'' refers to personal rights of the individual and the right to generate and accumulate wealth. The various ways in which property can be acquired under Sharia are purchase, inheritance, bequest, physical or mental effort, ''diya'' and donations. Certain concepts relating to property under Sharia are ''Mulk'', ''Waqf'', ''Mawat'' and ''Motasarruf''.

Muslim-minority countries

Sharia also plays a role beyond religious rituals and personal ethics in some countries with Muslim minorities. For example, in Israel Sharia-based family laws are administered for the Muslim population by the

Ministry of Justice A Ministry of Justice is a common type of government department that serves as a justice ministry. Lists of current ministries of justice Named "Ministry" * Ministry of Justice (Abkhazia) * Ministry of Justice (Afghanistan) * Ministry of Just ...

through the Sharia Courts. In India, the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act provides for the use of Islamic law for Muslims in several areas, mainly related to family law. In England, the

Muslim Arbitration Tribunal The Muslim Arbitration Tribunal is a form of alternative dispute resolution which operates under the Arbitration Act 1996 which is available in England. It is one of a range of services (Islamic Sharia Council is another) for Muslims who wish to ...

makes use of Sharia family law to settle disputes, though this limited adoption of Sharia is controversial.

Court procedures

Sharia courts traditionally do not rely on lawyers;

plaintiffs A plaintiff ( Π in legal shorthand) is the party who initiates a lawsuit (also known as an ''action'') before a court. By doing so, the plaintiff seeks a legal remedy. If this search is successful, the court will issue judgment in favor of the ...

and

defendants In court proceedings, a defendant is a person or object who is the party either accused of committing a crime in criminal prosecution or against whom some type of civil relief is being sought in a civil case. Terminology varies from one jurisdi ...

represent themselves. In Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have preserved traditional procedure in Sharia courts, trials are conducted solely by the judge, and there is no jury system. There is no pre-trial

discovery Discovery may refer to: * Discovery (observation), observing or finding something unknown * Discovery (fiction), a character's learning something unknown * Discovery (law), a process in courts of law relating to evidence Discovery, The Discovery ...

process, and no

cross-examination In law, cross-examination is the interrogation of a witness called by one's opponent. It is preceded by direct examination (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, South Africa, India and Pakistan known as examination-in-chief) and m ...

of witnesses. Unlike common law, judges' verdicts do not set binding

precedents A precedent is a principle or rule established in a previous legal case that is either binding on or persuasive for a court or other tribunal when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts. Common-law legal systems place great valu ...

under the principle of '' stare decisis'', and unlike civil law, Sharia is left to the interpretation in each case and has no formally codified universal statutes. The

rules of evidence The law of evidence, also known as the rules of evidence, encompasses the rules and legal principles that govern the proof of facts in a legal proceeding. These rules determine what evidence must or must not be considered by the trier of f ...

in Sharia courts traditionally prioritize oral testimony, and witnesses must be Muslim.Antoinette Vlieger (2012), Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, , Chapter 4 Male Muslim witnesses are deemed more reliable than female Muslim witnesses, and non-Muslim witnesses considered unreliable and receive no priority in a Sharia court. In civil cases in some countries, a Muslim woman witness is considered half the worth and reliability than a Muslim man witness. In criminal cases, women witnesses are unacceptable in stricter, traditional interpretations of Sharia, such as those found in

jurisprudence, which forms the basis of law in Saudi Arabia.

Criminal cases

A confession, an oath, or the oral testimony of Muslim witnesses are the main evidence admissible in traditional sharia courts for hudud crimes, i.e., the religious crimes of adultery, fornication, rape, accusing someone of illicit sex but failing to prove it,

apostasy Apostasy (; grc-gre, ἀποστασία , 'a defection or revolt') is the formal disaffiliation from, abandonment of, or renunciation of a religion by a person. It can also be defined within the broader context of embracing an opinion that i ...

, drinking intoxicants and theft. According to classical jurisprudence, testimony must be from at least two free Muslim male witnesses, or one Muslim male and two Muslim females, who are not related parties and who are of sound mind and reliable character. Testimony to establish the crime of adultery, fornication or rape must be from four Muslim male witnesses, with some

s allowing substitution of up to three male with six female witnesses; however, at least one must be a Muslim male.

Forensic evidence Forensic identification is the application of forensic science, or "forensics", and technology to identify specific objects from the trace evidence they leave, often at a crime scene or the scene of an accident. Forensic means "for the courts". H ...

(''i.e.'', fingerprints, ballistics, blood samples, DNA etc.) and other circumstantial evidence may likewise rejected in hudud cases in favor of eyewitnesses in some modern interpretations. In the case of regulations that were part of local Malaysian legislation that did not go into effect, this could cause severe difficulties for women plaintiffs in rape cases. In Pakistan, DNA evidence is rejected in paternity cases on the basis of legislation that favors the presumption of children's legitimacy, while in sexual assault cases DNA evidence is regarded as equivalent to expert opinion and evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Civil cases

recommends written financial contracts with reliable witnesses, although there is dispute about equality of female testimony. Marriage is solemnized as a written financial contract, in the presence of two Muslim male witnesses, and it includes a brideprice (

Mahr In Islam, a mahr (in ar, مهر; fa, مهريه; tr, mehir; sw, mahari; also transliterated ''mehr'', ''meher'', ''mehrieh'', or ''mahriyeh'') is the obligation, in the form of money or possessions paid by the groom, to the bride at the time ...

) payable from a Muslim man to a Muslim woman. The brideprice is considered by a Sharia court as a form of debt. Written contracts were traditionally considered paramount in Sharia courts in the matters of dispute that are debt-related, which includes marriage contracts. Written contracts in debt-related cases, when notarized by a judge, is deemed more reliable. In commercial and civil contracts, such as those relating to exchange of merchandise, agreement to supply or purchase goods or property, and others, oral contracts and the testimony of Muslim witnesses historically triumphed over written contracts. Islamic jurists traditionally held that written commercial contracts may be forged.Reem Meshal (2014), ''Sharia and the Making of the Modern Egyptian'',

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, , pp. 96–101 and Chapter 4Timur Kuran (2012), The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East, Princeton University Press, , pp. 246–49 and Chapter 12

Timur Kuran Timur Kuran is a Turkish-American economist and political scientist, Professor of Economics and Political Science, and Gorter Family Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University. His work spans economics, political science, history, and law. ...

states that the treatment of written evidence in religious courts in Islamic regions created an incentive for opaque transactions, and the avoidance of written contracts in economic relations. This led to a continuation of a "largely oral contracting culture" in Muslim-majority nations and communities. In lieu of written evidence, oaths are traditionally accorded much greater weight; rather than being used simply to guarantee the truth of ensuing testimony, they are themselves used as evidence. Plaintiffs lacking other evidence to support their claims may demand that defendants take an oath swearing their innocence, refusal thereof can result in a verdict for the plaintiff. Taking an oath for Muslims can be a grave act; one study of courts in Morocco found that lying litigants would often "maintain their testimony right up to the moment of oath-taking and then to stop, refuse the oath, and surrender the case."Frank, Michael J. (April 2006). "Trying Times – The Prosecution of Terrorists in the Central Criminal Court of Iraq". ''

Florida Journal of International Law The ''Florida Journal of International Law'' is a law review established in 1984 devoted to timely discussion of international legal issues. Recent articles have treated subjects as varied as international trade and commerce law, human rights law, ...

''. Accordingly, defendants are not routinely required to swear before testifying, which would risk casually profaning the Quran should the defendant commit perjury.

Diya

In classical jurisprudence monetary compensation for bodily harm (''

'' or blood money) is assessed differently for different classes of victims. For example, for Muslim women the amount was half that assessed for a Muslim man. ''Diya'' for the death of a free Muslim man is twice as high as for Jewish and Christian victims according to the Maliki and Hanbali madhhabs and three times as high according to Shafi'i rules. Several legal schools assessed ''diya'' for

Magians Magi (; singular magus ; from Latin ''magus'', cf. fa, مغ ) were priests in Zoroastrianism and the earlier religions of the western Iranians. The earliest known use of the word ''magi'' is in the trilingual inscription written by Darius th ...

(''

majus ''Majūs'' (Arabic: مجوس) or ''Magūs'' (Persian: مگوش) was originally a term meaning Zoroastrians (and specifically, Zoroastrian priests). It was a technical term, meaning magus, and like its synonym ''gabr'' (of uncertain etymology) ori ...

'') at one-fifteenth the value of a free Muslim male.Anver M. Emon (2012), ''Religious Pluralism and Islamic Law: Dhimmis and Others in the Empire of Law'', Oxford University Press, , pp. 234–35 Modern countries which incorporate classical ''diya'' rules into their legal system treat them in different ways. The Pakistan Penal Code modernized the Hanafi doctrine by eliminating distinctions between Muslims and non-Muslims. In Iran, ''diya'' for non-Muslim victims professing one of the faiths protected under the constitution (Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians) was made equal to ''diya'' for Muslims in 2004, though according to a 2006 US State Department report, the penal code still discriminates against other religious minorities and women. According to Human Rights Watch and the US State Department, in Saudi Arabia Jewish or Christian male plaintiffs are entitled to half the amount a Muslim male would receive, while for all other non-Muslim males the proportion is one-sixteenth.

Role of fatwas

The spread of codified state laws and Western-style legal education in the modern Muslim world has displaced traditional muftis from their historical role of clarifying and elaborating the laws applied in courts. Instead, fatwas have increasingly served to advise the general public on other aspects of Sharia, particularly questions regarding religious rituals and everyday life. Modern fatwas deal with topics as diverse as insurance, sex-change operations, moon exploration and beer drinking. Most Muslim-majority states have established national organizations devoted to issuing fatwas, and these organizations to a considerable extent replaced independent muftis as religious guides for the general population. State-employed muftis generally promote a vision of Islam that is compatible with state law of their country. Modern public and political fatwas have addressed and sometimes sparked controversies in the Muslim world and beyond.

proclamation A proclamation (Lat. ''proclamare'', to make public by announcement) is an official declaration issued by a person of authority to make certain announcements known. Proclamations are currently used within the governing framework of some nations ...

condemning

Salman Rushdie Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (; born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Wes ...

to death for his novel ''

The Satanic Verses ''The Satanic Verses'' is the fourth novel of British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie. First published in September 1988, the book was inspired by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. As with his previous books, Rushdie used magical realism ...

'' is credited with bringing the notion of fatwa to world's attention, although some scholars have argued that it did not qualify as one. Together with later militant fatwas, it has contributed to the popular misconception of the fatwa as a religious death warrant. Modern fatwas have been marked by an increased reliance on the process of ''

'', i.e. deriving legal rulings based on an independent analysis rather than conformity with the opinions of earlier legal authorities (''

''), and some of them are issued by individuals who do not possess the qualifications traditionally required of a mufti. The most notorious examples are the fatwas of militant extremists. When

Osama Bin Laden Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was a Saudi-born extremist militant who founded al-Qaeda and served as its leader from 1988 until Killing of Osama bin Laden, his death in 2011. Ideologically a Pan-Islamism ...

and his associates issued a fatwa in 1998 proclaiming "jihad against Jews and Crusaders", many Islamic jurists, in addition to denouncing its content, stressed that bin Laden was not qualified to either issue a fatwa or proclaim a jihad. New forms of ijtihad have also given rise to fatwas that support such notions as gender equality and banking interest, which are at variance with classical jurisprudence. In the internet age, a large number of websites provide fatwas in response to queries from around the world, in addition to radio shows and satellite television programs offering call-in fatwas. Erroneous and sometimes bizarre fatwas issued by unqualified or eccentric individuals in recent times have sometimes given rise to complaints about a "chaos" in the modern practice of issuing fatwas. There exists no international Islamic authority to settle differences in interpretation of Islamic law. An

International Islamic Fiqh Academy International Islamic Fiqh Academy ( ar, مجمع الفقه الإسلامي الدولي) is an international Islamic institution for the advanced study of Islamic jurisprudence and law based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It was founded following a ...

was created by the

Organisation of Islamic Cooperation An organization or organisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is an entity—such as a company, an institution, or an association—comprising one or more people and having a particular purpose. The word is derived from ...

, but its legal opinions are not binding. The vast amount of fatwas produced in the modern world attests to the importance of Islamic authenticity to many Muslims. However, there is little research available to indicate to what extent Muslims acknowledge the authority of different muftis or heed their rulings in real life.

Role of ''hisba''

The classical doctrine of '' hisba'', associated with the Quranic injunction of ''

'', refers to the duty of Muslims to promote moral rectitude and intervene when another Muslim is acting wrongly. Historically, its legal implementation was entrusted to a public official called ''

'' (market inspector), who was charged with preventing fraud, disturbance of public order and infractions against public morality. This office disappeared in the modern era everywhere in the Muslim world, but it was revived in Arabia by the first Saudi state, and later instituted as a government committee responsible for supervising markets and public order. It has been aided by volunteers enforcing attendance of daily prayers, gender segregation in public places, and a conservative notion of

. Committee officers were authorized to detain violators before a 2016 reform. With the rising international influence of

Wahhabism Wahhabism ( ar, ٱلْوَهَّابِيَةُ, translit=al-Wahhābiyyah) is a Sunni Islamic revivalist and fundamentalist movement associated with the reformist doctrines of the 18th-century Arabian Islamic scholar, theologian, preacher, an ...

, the conception of ''hisba'' as an individual obligation to police religious observance has become more widespread, which led to the appearance of activists around the world who urge fellow Muslims to observe Islamic rituals, dress code, and other aspects of Sharia. Taliban beating woman in public RAWA

In Iran, ''hisba'' was enshrined in the constitution after the 1979 Revolution as a "universal and reciprocal duty", incumbent upon both the government and the people. Its implementation has been carried out by official committees as well as volunteer forces ('' basij''). Elsewhere, policing of various interpretations of Sharia-based public morality has been carried out by the

Kano State Hisbah Corps The Kano State Hisbah Corps is a religious police force in Kano state, Nigeria. responsible for the enforcement of Shari'a to only Muslims in Kano state and other parts of the northern Nigeria. Sheikh Aminu Ibrahim Daurawa is the founder and form ...

in the Nigerian state of

Kano Kano may refer to: Places *Kano State, a state in Northern Nigeria * Kano (city), a city in Nigeria, and the capital of Kano State **Kingdom of Kano, a Hausa kingdom between the 10th and 14th centuries **Sultanate of Kano, a Hausa kingdom between ...

, by ''Wilayatul Hisbah'' in the Aceh province of

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

, by the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in the Gaza Strip, and by the

Taliban The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state (polity), state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalist, m ...

during their 1996–2001 and 2021– rule of Afghanistan. Religious police organizations tend to have support from conservative currents of public opinion, but their activities are often disliked by other segments of the population, especially liberals, urban women, and younger people. In Egypt, a law based on the doctrine of hisba had for a time allowed a Muslim to sue another Muslim over beliefs that may harm society, though because of abuses it has been amended so that only the state prosecutor may bring suit based on private requests.Nancy Gallagher (2005), Apostasy, Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures: Family, Law and Politics, Editors: Suad Joseph and Afsāna Naǧmābād, , p. 9 Before the amendment was passed, a hisba suit brought by a group of Islamists against the liberal theologian

Nasr Abu Zayd Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd ( ar, نصر حامد أبو زيد, ; also Abu Zaid or Abu Zeid; July 10, 1943 – July 5, 2010) was an Egyptian Quranic thinker, author, academic and one of the leading liberal theologians in Islam. He is famous for his proj ...

on charges of

led to the annulment of his marriage. The law was also invoked in an unsuccessful blasphemy suit against the feminist author

Nawal El Saadawi Nawal El Saadawi ( ar, نوال السعداوي, , 22 October 1931 – 21 March 2021) was an Egyptian feminist writer, activist and physician. She wrote many books on the subject of women in Islam, paying particular attention to the practice of ...

. Hisba has also been invoked in several Muslim-majority countries as rationale for blocking pornographic content on the internet and for other forms of faith-based censorship.

Contemporary debates and controversies

Compatibility with democracy

It has been argued that the extent to which Sharia is compatible with democracy depends on how it is culturally interpreted, with a cultural position that Sharia represents the human attempt to interpret God's message associated with a greater preference for democracy than an Islamist interpretation that Sharia law is the literal word of God.

General Muslim views

Scholars John L. Esposito and DeLong-Bas distinguish four attitudes toward Sharia and democracy prominent among contemporary Muslims: * Advocacy of democratic ideas, often accompanied by a belief that they are compatible with Islam, which can play a public role within a democratic system, as exemplified by many protestors who took part in the

Arab Spring The Arab Spring ( ar, الربيع العربي) was a series of Nonviolent resistance, anti-government protests, Rebellion, uprisings and Insurgency, armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in T ...

uprisings; * Support for democratic procedures such as elections, combined with religious or moral objections toward some aspects of Western democracy seen as incompatible with sharia, as exemplified by Islamic scholars like

; * Rejection of democracy as a Western import and advocacy of traditional Islamic institutions, such as

shura Shura ( ar, شُورَىٰ, translit=shūrā, lit=consultation) can for example take the form of a council or a referendum. The Quran encourages Muslims to decide their affairs in consultation with each other. Shura is mentioned as a praisewort ...

(consultation) and

(consensus), as exemplified by supporters of absolute monarchy and radical Islamist movements; * Belief that democracy requires restricting religion to private life, held by a minority in the Muslim world. According to Polls conducted by Gallup and

PEW A pew () is a long bench seat or enclosed box, used for seating members of a congregation or choir in a church, synagogue or sometimes a courtroom. Overview The first backless stone benches began to appear in English churches in the thirt ...

in Muslim-majority countries; most Muslims see no contradiction between democratic values and religious principles, desiring neither a theocracy, nor a secular democracy, but rather a political model where democratic institutions and values can coexist with the values and principles of Sharia.

Islamic political theories /
Islamism Islamism (also often called political Islam or Islamic fundamentalism) is a political ideology which posits that modern states and regions should be reconstituted in constitutional, economic and judicial terms, in accordance with what is ...

Muslih and Browers identify three major perspectives on democracy among prominent Muslims thinkers who have sought to develop modern, distinctly Islamic theories of socio-political organization conforming to Islamic values and law: * The rejectionist Islamic view, elaborated by

Sayyid Qutb Sayyid 'Ibrāhīm Ḥusayn Quṭb ( or ; , ; ar, سيد قطب إبراهيم حسين ''Sayyid Quṭb''; 9 October 1906 – 29 August 1966), known popularly as Sayyid Qutb ( ar, سيد قطب), was an Egyptian author, educator, Islamic ...

and

Abul A'la Maududi Abul A'la al-Maududi ( ur, , translit=Abū al-Aʿlā al-Mawdūdī; – ) was an Islamic scholar, Islamist ideologue, Muslim philosopher, jurist, historian, journalist, activist and scholar active in British India and later, following the parti ...

, condemns imitation of foreign ideas, drawing a distinction between Western democracy and the Islamic doctrine of ''shura'' (consultation between ruler and ruled). This perspective, which stresses comprehensive implementation of Sharia, was widespread in the 1970s and 1980s among various movements seeking to establish an Islamic state, but its popularity has diminished in recent years. * The moderate Islamic view stresses the concepts of ''

maslaha Maslaha or maslahah ( ar, مصلحة, lit=public interest) is a concept in shari'ah ( Islamic divine law) regarded as a basis of law.I. Doi, Abdul Rahman. (1995). "Mașlahah". In John L. Esposito. ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic Wo ...

'' (public interest), '' ʿadl'' (justice), and ''shura''. Islamic leaders are considered to uphold justice if they promote public interest, as defined through ''shura''. In this view, ''shura'' provides the basis for representative government institutions that are similar to Western democracy, but reflect Islamic rather than Western liberal values. Hasan al-Turabi,

Rashid al-Ghannushi Rached Ghannouchi ( ar, راشد الغنوشي, Rāshid al-Ghannūshī; born 22 June 1941), also spelled Rachid al-Ghannouchi or Rached el-Ghannouchi, is a Tunisian politician, the co-founder of the Ennahdha Party and serving as its intellec ...

, and

have advocated different forms of this view. * The liberal Islamic view is influenced by Muhammad Abduh's emphasis on the role of reason in understanding religion. It stresses democratic principles based on pluralism and freedom of thought. Authors like

Fahmi Huwaidi Fahmi Huwaidi ( ar, فهمي هويدي; born 29 August 1937 in El Saff, Giza Governorate) is an Egyptian columnist. A "moderate Islamist", he writes for ''Al Jazeera'' and the Egyptian opposition newspaper '' Al-Dustour''. He has been called "pr ...

and Tariq al-Bishri have constructed Islamic justifications for full citizenship of non-Muslims in an Islamic state by drawing on early Islamic texts. Others, like

Mohammed Arkoun Mohammed Arkoun ( ar, محمد أركون; 1 February 1928 – 14 September 2010) was an Algerian scholar and thinker. He was considered to have been one of the most influential secular scholars in Islamic studies contributing to contemporary inte ...

and Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, have justified pluralism and freedom through non-literalist approaches to textual interpretation.

Abdolkarim Soroush Abdolkarim Soroush ( ; born Hossein Haj Faraj Dabbagh (born 1945; fa, حسين حاج فرج دباغ), is an Iranian Islamic thinker, reformer, Rumi scholar, public intellectual, and a former professor of phil ...

has argued for a "religious democracy" based on religious thought that is democratic, tolerant, and just. Islamic liberals argue for the necessity of constant reexamination of religious understanding, which can only be done in a democratic context.

Support and opposition

=Support

= A 2013 survey based on interviews of 38,000 Muslims, randomly selected from urban and rural parts in 39 countries using area probability designs, by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that a majority—in some cases "overwhelming" majority—of Muslims in a number of countries support making "Sharia" or "Islamic law" the

law of the land The phrase ''law of the land'' is a legal term, equivalent to the Latin ''lex terrae'', or ''legem terrae'' in the accusative case. It refers to all of the laws in force within a country or region, including statute law and case-made law. Use in ...

, including Afghanistan (99%), Iraq (91%), Niger (86%), Malaysia (86%), Pakistan (84%), Morocco (83%), Bangladesh (82%), Egypt (74%), Indonesia (72%), Jordan (71%), Uganda (66%), Ethiopia (65%), Mali (63%), Ghana (58%), and Tunisia (56%). In Muslim regions of Southern-Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the support is less than 50%: Russia (42%), Kyrgyzstan (35%), Tajikistan (27%), Kosovo (20%), Albania (12%), Turkey (12%), Kazakhstan (10%), Azerbaijan (8%). Regional averages of support were 84% in South Asia, 77% in Southeast Asia, 74% in the Middle-East/North Africa, 64%, in Sub-Saharan Africa, 18% in Southern-Eastern Europe, and 12% in Central Asia . However, while most of those who support implementation of Sharia favor using it in family and property disputes, fewer supported application of severe punishments such as whippings and cutting off hands, and interpretations of some aspects differed widely. According to the Pew poll, among Muslims who support making Sharia the law of the land, most do not believe that it should be applied to non-Muslims. In the Muslim-majority countries surveyed this proportion varied between 74% (of 74% in Egypt) and 19% (of 10% in Kazakhstan), as percentage of those who favored making Sharia the law of the land. In all of the countries surveyed, respondents were more likely to define Sharia as "the revealed word of God" rather than as "a body of law developed by men based on the word of God". In analyzing the poll,

Amaney Jamal Amaney A. Jamal (born December 30, 1970) is an American scholar of Middle Eastern politics who is currently the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics and Director of the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice at Princeton University. Ja ...

has argued that there is no single, shared understanding of the notions "Sharia" and "Islamic law" among the respondents. In particular, in countries where Muslim citizens have little experience with rigid application of Sharia-based state laws, these notions tend to be more associated with Islamic ideals like equality and social justice than with prohibitions. Other polls have indicated that for Egyptians, the word "Sharia" is associated with notions of political, social and gender justice. In 2008,

Rowan Williams Rowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth, (born 14 June 1950) is a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet. He was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, a position he held from December 2002 to December 2012. Previously the Bish ...

, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has suggested that Islamic and

Orthodox Jewish Orthodox Judaism is the collective term for the traditionalist and theologically conservative branches of contemporary Judaism. Theologically, it is chiefly defined by regarding the Torah, both Written and Oral, as revealed by God to Moses on M ...

courts should be integrated into the British legal system alongside ecclesiastical courts to handle marriage and divorce, subject to agreement of all parties and strict requirements for protection of equal rights for women. His reference to the sharia sparked a controversy. Later that year, Nicholas Phillips, then

Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the peerage in the United Kingdom, or are ...

, stated that there was "no reason why sharia principles ..should not be the basis for mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution." A 2008 YouGov poll in the United Kingdom found 40% of Muslim students interviewed supported the introduction of sharia into British law for Muslims.

Michael Broyde use both this parameter and , birth_date to display the person's date of birth, date of death, and age at death) --> , death_place = , death_cause = , body_discovered = , resting_place = , resting_place_coordinates ...

, professor of law at

Emory University Emory University is a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1836 as "Emory College" by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory, Emory is the second-oldest private institution of ...

specializing in

alternative dispute resolution Alternative dispute resolution (ADR), or external dispute resolution (EDR), typically denotes a wide range of dispute resolution processes and techniques that parties can use to settle disputes with the help of a third party. They are used for ...

and

Jewish law ''Halakha'' (; he, הֲלָכָה, ), also Romanization of Hebrew, transliterated as ''halacha'', ''halakhah'', and ''halocho'' ( ), is the collective body of Judaism, Jewish religious laws which is derived from the Torah, written and Oral Tora ...

, has argued that sharia courts can be integrated into the American religious arbitration system, provided that they adopt appropriate institutional requirements as American rabbinical courts have done.

=Opposition

In the

Western world The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and state (polity), states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania.

, Sharia has been called a source of "hysteria", "more controversial than ever", the one aspect of Islam that inspires "particular dread". On the Internet, "dozens of self-styled counter-jihadis" emerged to campaign against Sharia law, describing it in strict interpretations resembling those of Salafi Muslims. Also, fear of Sharia law and of the ideology of extremism among Muslims as well as certain congregations donating money to terrorist organizations within the Muslim community reportedly spread to mainstream conservative Republicans in the United States. Former House Speaker

Newt Gingrich Newton Leroy Gingrich (; né McPherson; born June 17, 1943) is an American politician and author who served as the 50th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. A member of the Republican Party, he was the U ...

won ovations calling for a federal ban on Sharia law. The issue of "liberty versus Sharia" was called a "momentous civilisational debate" by right-wing pundit Diana West. In 2008 in Britain, the future Prime Minister (

David Cameron David William Donald Cameron (born 9 October 1966) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. He previously served as Leader o ...

) declared his opposition to "any expansion of Sharia law in the UK." In Germany, in 2014, the Interior Minister ( Thomas de Maizière) told a newspaper (''

Bild ''Bild'' (or ''Bild-Zeitung'', ; ) is a German tabloid newspaper published by Axel Springer SE. The paper is published from Monday to Saturday; on Sundays, its sister paper ''Bild am Sonntag'' ("''Bild on Sunday''") is published instead, which ...

''), "Sharia law is not tolerated on German soil." Some countries and jurisdictions have explicit bans on sharia law. In Canada, for example, sharia law has been explicitly banned in

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

by a 2005 unanimous vote of the National Assembly, while the province of

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

allows family law disputes to be arbitrated only under Ontario law. In the U.S., opponents of Sharia have sought to ban it from being considered in courts, where it has been routinely used alongside traditional Jewish and Catholic laws to decide legal, business, and family disputes subject to contracts drafted with reference to such laws, as long as they do not violate secular law or the U.S. constitution. After failing to gather support for a federal law making observing Sharia a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison, anti-Sharia activists have focused on state legislatures. By 2014, bills aimed against use of Sharia have been introduced in 34 states and passed in 11. A notable example of this would be 2010 Oklahoma State Question 755, which sought to permanently ban the use of Sharia law in courts. While approved by voters, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals placed an injunction on the law. Citing the unconstitutionality of the law's impartial focus on a specific religion, the law was struck down and never took effect. These bills have generally referred to banning foreign or religious law in order to thwart legal challenges. According to Jan Michiel Otto, Professor of Law and Governance in Developing Countries at

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince o ...

, " thropological research shows that people in local communities often do not distinguish clearly whether and to what extent their norms and practices are based on local tradition, tribal custom, or religion. Those who adhere to a confrontational view of Sharia tend to ascribe many undesirable practices to Sharia and religion overlooking custom and culture, even if high-ranking religious authorities have stated the opposite."

Compatibility with human rights

Governments of several predominantly Muslim countries have criticized the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the Human rights, rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN Drafting of the Universal De ...

(UDHR) for its perceived failure to take into account the cultural and religious context of non-

Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...

countries. Iran declared in the UN assembly that UDHR was "a

secular Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...

understanding of the

Judeo-Christian The term Judeo-Christian is used to group Christianity and Judaism together, either in reference to Christianity's derivation from Judaism, Christianity's borrowing of Jewish Scripture to constitute the "Old Testament" of the Christian Bible, or ...

tradition", which could not be implemented by Muslims without trespassing the Islamic law. Islamic scholars and Islamist political parties consider 'universal human rights' arguments as imposition of a non-Muslim culture on Muslim people, a disrespect of customary cultural practices and of Islam. In 1990, the

, a group representing all Muslim-majority nations, met in Cairo to respond to the UDHR, then adopted the

Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI) is a declaration of the member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) first adopted in Cairo, Egypt, on 5 August 1990, (Conference of Foreign Ministers, 9–14 Muharram 14 ...

Ann Elizabeth Mayer Ann Elizabeth Mayer is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies in the Department of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Biography Ann E. Mayer has taught law courses on subjects comprising la ...

points to notable absences from the Cairo Declaration: provisions for democratic principles, protection for religious freedom, freedom of association and freedom of the press, as well as equality in rights and equal protection under the law. Article 24 of the Cairo declaration states that "all the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic ''shari'a''". In 2009, the journal ''

Free Inquiry ''Free Inquiry'' is a bimonthly journal of secular humanist opinion and commentary published by the Council for Secular Humanism, a program of the Center for Inquiry. Philosopher Paul Kurtz was the editor-in-chief from its inception in 1980 until ...

'' summarized the criticism of the Cairo Declaration in an editorial: "We are deeply concerned with the changes to the

by a coalition of Islamic states within the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

that wishes to prohibit any criticism of religion and would thus protect Islam's limited view of human rights. In view of the conditions inside the Islamic Republic of Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Syria, Bangladesh, Iraq, and Afghanistan, we should expect that at the top of their human rights agenda would be to rectify the legal inequality of women, the suppression of political dissent, the curtailment of free expression, the persecution of ethnic minorities and religious dissenters—in short, protecting their citizens from egregious human rights violations. Instead, they are worrying about protecting Islam."

H. Patrick Glenn H. Patrick Glenn (1940–2014) was the Peter M. Laing Professor at the Faculty of Law at McGill University. He specialized in comparative law, private international law, and civil procedure. Biography Glenn was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada ...

states that Sharia is structured around the concept of mutual obligations of a collective, and it considers individual human rights as potentially disruptive and unnecessary to its revealed code of mutual obligations. In giving priority to this religious collective rather than individual liberty, the Islamic law justifies the formal inequality of individuals (women, non-Islamic people). Bassam Tibi states that Sharia framework and human rights are incompatible. Abdel al-Hakeem Carney, in contrast, states that Sharia is misunderstood from a failure to distinguish ''Sharia'' from ''siyasah'' (politics). European Court of Human Rights decision; In 1998 the

Constitutional Court of Turkey The Constitutional Court of Turkey ( tr, , sometimes abbreviated as ''AYM'') is the highest legal body for constitutional review in Turkey. It "examines the constitutionality, in respect of both form and substance, of laws, decrees having the for ...

banned and dissolved Turkey's

Refah Party The Welfare Party ( tr, Refah Partisi, RP) was an Islamist political party in Turkey. It was founded by Ali Türkmen, Ahmet Tekdal, and Necmettin Erbakan in Ankara in 1983 as heir to two earlier parties, National Order Party (MNP) and National ...

over its announced intention to introduce Sharia-based laws, ruling that it would change Turkey's secular order and undermine democracy. On appeal by Refah the

determined that "sharia is incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy". Refah's Sharia-based notion of a "plurality of legal systems, grounded on religion" was ruled to contravene the

European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR; formally the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) is an international convention to protect human rights and political freedoms in Europe. Drafted in 1950 by t ...

. It was determined that it would "do away with the State's role as the guarantor of individual rights and freedoms" and "infringe the principle of non-discrimination between individuals as regards their enjoyment of public freedoms, which is one of the fundamental principles of democracy". In an analysis, Maurits S. Berger found the ruling to be "nebulous" and surprising from a legal point of view, since the Court neglected to define what it meant by "Sharia" and would not, for example, be expected to regard Sharia rules for Islamic rituals as contravening European human rights values. Kevin Boyle also criticized the decision for not distinguishing between extremist and mainstream interpretations of Islam and implying that peaceful advocacy of Islamic doctrines ("an attitude which fails to respect he principle of secularism) is not protected by the European Convention provisions for freedom of religion.

Topics

=Blasphemy

In classical fiqh,

blasphemy Blasphemy is a speech crime and religious crime usually defined as an utterance that shows contempt, disrespects or insults a deity, an object considered sacred or something considered inviolable. Some religions regard blasphemy as a religiou ...

refers to any form of cursing, questioning or annoying God, Muhammad or anything considered sacred in Islam,Siraj Khan, Blasphemy against the Prophet, in Muhammad in History, Thought, and Culture (Editors: Coeli Fitzpatrick and Adam Hani Walker), , pp. 59–67 including denying one of the

Islamic prophets Prophets in Islam ( ar, الأنبياء في الإسلام, translit=al-ʾAnbiyāʾ fī al-ʾIslām) are individuals in Islam who are believed to spread God's message on Earth and to serve as models of ideal human behaviour. Some prophets a ...

or scriptures, insulting an

angel In various theistic religious traditions an angel is a supernatural spiritual being who serves God. Abrahamic religions often depict angels as benevolent celestial intermediaries between God (or Heaven) and humanity. Other roles include ...

or refusing to accept a religious commandment. Jurists of different schools prescribed different punishment for blasphemy against Islam, by Muslims and non-Muslims, ranging from imprisonment or fines to the death penalty. In some cases, sharia allows non-Muslims to escape death by converting and becoming a devout follower of Islam. In the modern

Muslim world The terms Muslim world and Islamic world commonly refer to the Islamic community, which is also known as the Ummah. This consists of all those who adhere to the religious beliefs and laws of Islam or to societies in which Islam is practiced. I ...

, the laws pertaining to blasphemy vary by country, and some countries prescribe punishments consisting of fines, imprisonment,

flogging Flagellation (Latin , 'whip'), flogging or whipping is the act of beating the human body with special implements such as whips, rods, switches, the cat o' nine tails, the sjambok, the knout, etc. Typically, flogging has been imposed on ...

hanging Hanging is the suspension of a person by a noose or ligature around the neck.Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Hanging as method of execution is unknown, as method of suicide from 1325. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' states that hanging i ...

, or

beheading Decapitation or beheading is the total separation of the head from the body. Such an injury is invariably fatal to humans and most other animals, since it deprives the brain of oxygenated blood, while all other organs are deprived of the i ...

.P Smith (2003). "Speak No Evil: Apostasy, Blasphemy and Heresy in Malaysian Syariah Law". ''UC Davis Journal Int'l Law & Policy''. 10, pp. 357–73. * N Swazo (2014). "The Case of Hamza Kashgari: Examining Apostasy, Heresy, and Blasphemy Under Sharia". ''The Review of Faith & International Affairs'' 12(4). pp. 16–26. Blasphemy laws were rarely enforced in pre-modern Islamic societies, but in the modern era some states and radical groups have used charges of blasphemy in an effort to burnish their religious credentials and gain popular support at the expense of liberal Muslim intellectuals and religious minorities. Blasphemy, as interpreted under Sharia, is controversial. Representatives of the

have petitioned the United Nations to condemn "defamation of religions" because "Unrestricted and disrespectful freedom of opinion creates hatred and is contrary to the spirit of peaceful dialogue". The

subjects free speech to unspecified Sharia restrictions: Article 22(a) of the Declaration states that "Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shariah." Others, in contrast, consider blasphemy laws to violate freedom of speech, stating that freedom of expression is essential to empowering both Muslims and non-Muslims, and point to the abuse of blasphemy laws in prosecuting members of religious minorities, political opponents, and settling personal scores. In Pakistan, blasphemy laws have been used to convict more than a thousand people, about half of them Ahmadis and

Christians Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...

. While none have been legally executed, two Pakistani politicians,

Shahbaz Bhatti Clement Shahbaz Bhatti (9 September 19682 March 2011), popularly known as Shahbaz Bhatti, was a Pakistani politician who was elected as a member of the National Assembly from 2008. He was the first Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs from N ...

and

Salmaan Taseer Salman Taseer ( Punjabi and ur, ); ( 4 January 2011) was a Pakistani businessman and politician, who served as the 26th Governor of Punjab from 2008 until his assassination in 2011. A member of the Pakistan Peoples Party since the 1980s, h ...

, have been assassinated over their criticism of the blasphemy laws. The Pakistani blasphemy laws are based upon colonial-era legislation which made it a "crime to disturb a religious assembly, trespass on burial grounds, insult religious beliefs or intentionally destroy or defile a place or an object of worship", with these laws being modified between 1980 and 1986 by the military government of General

Zia-ul Haq General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq HI, GCSJ, ร.ม.ภ, (Urdu: ; 12 August 1924 – 17 August 1988) was a Pakistani four-star general and politician who became the sixth President of Pakistan following a coup and declaration of martial law in ...

to make them more severe. A number of clauses were added by the government in order to "Islamicise" the laws and deny the Muslim character of the Ahmadi minority.

=Apostasy

According to the classical doctrine, apostasy from Islam is a crime as well as a sin, punishable with the

death penalty Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

, typically after a waiting period to allow the apostate time to repent and to return to Islam.

Wael Hallaq Wael B. Hallaq is the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he has been teaching ethics, law, and political thought since 2009. He is considered a leading scholar in the field of Islamic legal studies, and has ...

writes that " na culture whose lynchpin is religion, religious principles and religious morality, apostasy is in some way equivalent to high treason in the modern nation-state". Early Islamic jurists set the standard for apostasy from Islam so high that practically no apostasy verdict could be passed before the 11th century, but later jurists lowered the bar for applying the death penalty, allowing judges to interpret the apostasy law in different ways, which they did sometimes leniently and sometimes strictly. In the late 19th century, the use of criminal penalties for apostasy fell into disuse, although civil penalties were still applied. According to Abdul Rashied Omar, the majority of modern Islamic jurists continue to regard apostasy as a crime deserving the

. This view is dominant in conservative societies like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. A number of liberal and progressive Islamic scholars have argued that apostasy should not be viewed as a crime. Others argue that the death penalty is an inappropriate punishment, inconsistent with the Qur'anic verses such as "no compulsion in religion"; and/or that it was a man-made rule enacted in the early Islamic community to prevent and punish the equivalent of desertion or treason, and should be enforced only if apostasy becomes a mechanism of public disobedience and disorder ('' fitna'').Ahmet Albayrak writes in ''The Qur'an: An Encyclopedia'' that regarding apostasy as a wrongdoing is not a sign of intolerance of other religions, and is not aimed at one's freedom to choose a religion or to leave Islam and embrace another faith, but that on the contrary, it is more correct to say that the punishment is enforced as a safety precaution when warranted if apostasy becomes a mechanism of public disobedience and disorder ('' fitna''). Oliver Leaman, ''The Qur'an: An Encyclopedia'', pp. 526–27. According to

Khaled Abou El Fadl Khaled Abou el Fadl ( ar, خالد أبو الفضل, ) (born October 23, 1963) is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law where he has taught courses on International Human Rights, Islamic jurisprude ...

, moderate Muslims do not believe that apostasy requires punishment.

Critics A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or governme ...

argue that the death penalty or other punishment for apostasy in Islam is a violation of universal

, and an issue of

freedom of faith Freedom of religion or religious liberty is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. It also includes the freedom ...

and conscience. Twenty-three Muslim-majority countries, , penalized apostasy from Islam through their

criminal law Criminal law is the body of law that relates to crime. It prescribes conduct perceived as threatening, harmful, or otherwise endangering to the property, health, safety, and moral welfare of people inclusive of one's self. Most criminal law i ...

s. , apostasy from Islam was a capital offense in Afghanistan, Brunei, Mauritania, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.Laws Criminalizing Apostasy
Library of Congress (2014) In other countries, Sharia courts could use family laws to void the Muslim apostate's

marriage Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognized union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children, and between ...

and to deny child-custody rights as well as

inheritance Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, Title (property), titles, debts, entitlements, Privilege (law), privileges, rights, and Law of obligations, obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ ...

rights. In the years 1985–2006, four individuals were legally executed for apostasy from Islam: "one in Sudan in 1985; two in Iran, in 1989 and 1998; and one in Saudi Arabia in 1992." While modern states have rarely prosecuted apostasy, the issue has a "deep cultural resonance" in some Muslim societies and Islamists have tended to exploit it for political gain. In a 2008–2012 Pew Research Center poll, public support for capital punishment for apostasy among Muslims ranged from 78% in Afghanistan to less than 1% in Kazakhstan, reaching over 50% in 6 of the 20 countries surveyed.

=LGBT rights

World laws pertaining to homosexual relationships and expression

Homosexual intercourse is illegal in classical Sharia, with different penalties, including capital punishment, stipulated depending on the situation and legal school. In pre-modern Islam, the penalties prescribed for homosexual acts were "to a large extent theoretical" according to the ''

Encyclopaedia of Islam The ''Encyclopaedia of Islam'' (''EI'') is an encyclopaedia of the academic discipline of Islamic studies published by Brill. It is considered to be the standard reference work in the field of Islamic studies. The first edition was published in ...

'', owing in part to stringent procedural requirements for their harsher (''hudud'') forms and in part to prevailing social tolerance toward same-sex relationships. Historical instances of prosecution for homosexual acts are rare, and those which followed Sharia rules are even rarer. Public attitudes toward homosexuality in the Muslim world turned more negative starting from the 19th century through the gradual spread of Islamic fundamentalist movements such as

Salafism The Salafi movement or Salafism () is a reform branch movement within Sunni Islam that originated during the nineteenth century. The name refers to advocacy of a return to the traditions of the "pious predecessors" (), the first three generat ...

and

, and under the influence of sexual notions prevalent in Europe at that time.Tilo Beckers, "Islam and the Acceptance of Homosexuality," in ''Islam and Homosexuality, Volume 1'', ed. Samar Habib, 64–65 (Praeger, 2009). A number of Muslim-majority countries have retained criminal penalties for homosexual acts enacted under colonial rule. In recent decades, prejudice against LGBT individuals in the Muslim world has been exacerbated by increasingly conservative attitudes and the rise of Islamist movements, resulting in Sharia-based penalties enacted in several countries. The death penalty for homosexual acts is currently a legal punishment in Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, some northern states in Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, parts of Somalia, and Yemen, all of which have Sharia-based criminal laws. It is unclear whether the laws of Afghanistan and United Arab Emirates provide for the death penalty for gay sex, as they have never been carried out. Criminalization of consensual homosexual acts and especially making them liable to capital punishment has been condemned by international rights groups. According to polls, the level of social acceptance for homosexuality ranges from 52% among Muslims in the U.S. to less than 10% in a number of Muslim-majority nations.

=Women

Domestic violence

The Surah 4:34, in the Quran, has been debated for domestic violence and also has been the subject to varied interpretations. According to some interpretations, Sharia condones certain forms of domestic violence against women, when a husband suspects ''

nushuz An-Nisa 4:34 is the 34th verse in the fourth chapter of the Quran. This verse adjudges the role of a husband as protector and maintainer of his wife and how he should deal with disloyalty on her part. Scholars vastly differ on the implicatio ...

'' (disobedience, disloyalty, rebellion, ill conduct) in his wife only after admonishing and staying away from the bed does not work. These interpretations have been criticized as inconsistent with women's rights in domestic abuse cases.

Musawah Musawah ('equality'; in Arabic: ) is a global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family and family laws, led by 'Islamic feminists' "seeking to reclaim Islam and the Koran for themselves", applying progressive interpretations of sac ...

, CEDAW, KAFA and other organizations have proposed ways to modify Sharia-inspired laws to improve women's rights in Muslim-majority nations, including women's rights in domestic abuse cases. Others believe that wife-beating is not consistent with a more modernist perspective of the Quran. Many Imams and scholars who learned Shariah in traditional Islamic seminaries object to the misuse of this verse to justify domestic violence. Muslims for

White Ribbon Campaign The White Ribbon Campaign (WRC) is a global movement of men and boys working to end male violence against women and girls. It was formed by a group of pro-feminist men in London, Ontario in November 1991 as a response to the École Polytechni ...

was launched in 2010 with Imams and Muslim leaders committing to join with others to work to end violence against women.

Khutbah ''Khutbah'' ( ar, خطبة ''khuṭbah'', tr, hutbe) serves as the primary formal occasion for public preaching in the Islamic tradition. Such sermons occur regularly, as prescribed by the teachings of all legal schools. The Islamic traditio ...

campaigns were held in many parts of the world to speak out against domestic violence and encourage Muslim congregants to eradicate domestic abuse.

Personal status laws and child marriage

Shari'a is the basis for personal status laws in most Islamic-majority nations. These personal status laws determine

rights of women Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. In some countries, ...

in matters of marriage, divorce and child custody. A 2011

UNICEF UNICEF (), originally called the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund in full, now officially United Nations Children's Fund, is an agency of the United Nations responsible for providing Humanitarianism, humanitarian and Devel ...

report concludes that Sharia law provisions are discriminatory against women from a human rights perspective. In many countries, in legal proceedings relating to Sharia-based personal status law, a woman's testimony is worth half of a man's before a court. The 1917 codification of Islamic family law in the

distinguished between the age of competence for marriage, which was set at 18 for boys and 17 for girls, and the minimum age for marriage, which followed the traditional Hanafi limits of 12 for boys and 9 for girls. Marriage below the age of competence was permissible only if proof of sexual maturity was accepted in court, while marriage under the minimum age was forbidden. During the 20th century, most countries in the Middle East followed the Ottoman precedent in defining the age of competence, while raising the minimum age to 15 or 16 for boys and 13–16 for girls. Marriage below the age of competence is subject to approval by a judge and the legal guardian of the adolescent. Egypt diverged from this pattern by setting the age limits of 18 for boys and 16 for girls, without a distinction between competence for marriage and minimum age. Many senior clerics in Saudi Arabia have opposed setting a minimum age for marriage, arguing that a woman reaches adulthood at puberty.

Rape

Rape is considered a serious crime in the Sharia law since the Islamic prophet Muhammad ordered rapists to be punished by stoning. Rape is a crime in all countries of the North Africa and Middle East region, but as of 2011, Sharia-based or secular laws in some countries, including Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia, allowed a rapist to escape punishment by marrying his victim, while in other countries, including Libya, Oman, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, rape victims who press charges risk being prosecuted for extramarital sex (''

zina ''Zināʾ'' () or ''zinā'' ( or ) is an Islamic legal term referring to unlawful sexual intercourse. According to traditional jurisprudence, ''zina'' can include adultery, fornication, prostitution, rape, sodomy, incest, and bestiality. ...

'').

Women's property rights

Islamic law granted Muslim women certain legal rights, such as property rights which women in the West did not possess until "comparatively recent times". Starting with the 20th century, Western legal systems evolved to expand women's rights, but women's rights in the Muslim world have to varying degree remained tied to the Quran, hadiths and their traditional interpretations by Islamic jurists. Sharia grants women the right to inherit property from other family members, and these rights are detailed in the Quran. A woman's inheritance is unequal and less than a man's, and dependent on many factors. For instance, a daughter's inheritance is usually half that of her brother's.

=Slavery

Slaves Zadib Yemen 13th century BNF Paris

Sharia recognizes the basic inequality between master and slave, between free women and slave women, between believers and non-believers, as well as their unequal rights. * Bernard Lewis (2002), What Went Wrong?, , pp. 82–83; * Brunschvig. 'Abd; Encyclopedia of Islam, Brill, 2nd Edition, Vol 1, pp. 13–40. Sharia authorized the institution of slavery, using the words ''abd'' (slave) and the phrase ''ma malakat aymanukum'' ("that which your right hand owns") to refer to women slaves, seized as captives of war. Under Islamic law, Muslim men could have sexual relations with female captives and slaves.Ali, K. (2010). Marriage and slavery in early Islam. Harvard University Press. Slave women under sharia did not have a right to own property or to move freely. Sharia, in Islam's history, provided a religious foundation for enslaving non-Muslim women (and men), but allowed for the

manumission Manumission, or enfranchisement, is the act of freeing enslaved people by their enslavers. Different approaches to manumission were developed, each specific to the time and place of a particular society. Historian Verene Shepherd states that t ...

of slaves. However, manumission required that the non-Muslim slave first convert to Islam. A slave woman who bore a child to her Muslim master (''umm al-walad'') could not be sold, becoming legally free upon her master's death, and the child was considered free and a legitimate heir of the father.

Terrorism

North face south tower after plane strike 9-11

Some

extremists Extremism is "the quality or state of being extreme" or "the advocacy of extreme measures or views". The term is primarily used in a political or religious sense to refer to an ideology that is considered (by the speaker or by some implied shar ...

have used their interpretation of Islamic scriptures and Sharia, in particular the doctrine of

, to justify acts of war and terror against Muslim as well as non-Muslim individuals and governments. The expert on terrorism

Rachel Ehrenfeld Rachel Ehrenfeld is an expert on terrorism and corruption-related topics. These include terror financing, economic warfare, and narcoterrorism. She has lectured on these issues in many countries, and has advised banking communities, law enforcemen ...

wrote that the "Sharia's finance (

Islamic banking Islamic banking, Islamic finance ( ar, مصرفية إسلامية), or Sharia-compliant finance is banking or financing activity that complies with Sharia (Islamic law) and its practical application through the development of Islamic economic ...

) is a new weapon in the arsenal of what might be termed fifth-generation warfare (5GW)". However, sharia-complaint financing actually requires a person to stay away from weapons manufacturing. In classical fiqh, the term ''jihad'' refers to armed struggle against unbelievers. Classical jurists developed an elaborate set of rules pertaining to jihad, including prohibitions on harming those who are not engaged in combat. According to

Bernard Lewis Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near E ...

, " no time did the classical jurists offer any approval or legitimacy to what we nowadays call terrorism" and the terrorist practice of suicide bombing "has no justification in terms of Islamic theology, law or tradition". In the modern era the notion of jihad has lost its jurisprudential relevance and instead gave rise to an ideological and political discourse. While modernist Islamic scholars have emphasized defensive and non-military aspects of jihad, some radical

Islamists Islamism (also often called political Islam or Islamic fundamentalism) is a political ideology which posits that modern states and regions should be reconstituted in constitutional, economic and judicial terms, in accordance with what is c ...

have advanced aggressive interpretations that go beyond the classical theory. For al-Qaeda ideologues, in jihad all means are legitimate, including targeting Muslim non-combatants and the mass killing of non-Muslim civilians. According to these interpretations, Islam does not discriminate between military and civilian targets, but rather between Muslims and nonbelievers, whose blood can be legitimately spilled. Some modern ulema, such as

and Sulaiman Al-Alwan, have supported suicide attacks against Israeli civilians, arguing that they are army reservists and hence should be considered as soldiers, while Hamid bin Abdallah al-Ali declared that suicide attacks in Chechnya were justified as a "sacrifice". Many prominent Islamic scholars, including al-Qaradawi himself, have issued condemnations of terrorism in general terms. For example,

Abdul-Aziz ibn Abdullah Al ash-Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Al-Sheikh ( ar, عبد العزيز بن عبد الله آل الشيخ ''ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd Āllah Āl ash-Sheikh''; born 30 November 1940) is a Saudi Arabian Islamic scholar who is the current Grand Mufti of Sau ...

, the

Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia is the most senior and most influential Muslim religious and legal authority in Saudi Arabia. The holder of the position is appointed by the King. The Grand Mufti is the head of the Permanent Committee for Islamic ...

has stated that "terrorizing innocent people ..constitute a form of injustice that cannot be tolerated by Islam", while

Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy ( ar, محمد سيد طنطاوي; 28 October 1928 – 10 March 2010), also referred to as ''Tantawi'', was an influential Islamic scholar in Egypt. From 1986 to 1996, he was the Grand Mufti of Egypt. In 1996, presid ...

Grand Imam of al-Azhar The Grand Imam of al-Azhar ( ar, الإمام الأكبر), also known as Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar ( ar, links=no, شيخ الأزهر الشريف), currently Ahmed el-Tayeb, is a prestigious and a prominent official title in Egypt. He is conside ...

and former

Grand Mufti The Grand Mufti (also called Chief Mufti, State Mufti and Supreme Mufti) is the head of regional muftis, Islamic jurisconsults, of a state. The office originated in the early modern era in the Ottoman empire and has been later adopted in a num ...

of Egypt has stated that "attacking innocent people is not courageous; it is stupid and will be punished on the Day of Judgment".Anisseh Engeland-Nourai
The Challenge of Fragmentation of International Humanitarian Law Regarding the Protection of Civilians – An Islamic Perspective
School of Law, University of Bedfordshire, pp. 18–25

Comparison with other legal systems

Jewish law

Islamic legal tradition has a number of parallels with

Judaism Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in the ...

. In both religions, revealed law holds a central place, in contrast to

which does not possess a body of revealed law, and where theology rather than law is considered to be the principal field of religious study. Both Islamic and Jewish law (''

'') are derived from formal textual revelations (Quran and

Pentateuch The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the sa ...

) as well as less formal, orally transmitted prophetic traditions (''

'' and ''

mishna The Mishnah or the Mishna (; he, מִשְׁנָה, "study by repetition", from the verb ''shanah'' , or "to study and review", also "secondary") is the first major written collection of the Jewish oral traditions which is known as the Oral Torah ...

''). According to some scholars, the words ''sharia'' and ''halakha'' both mean literally "the path to follow". The ''fiqh'' literature parallels

rabbinical law In its primary meaning, the Hebrew word (; he, מִצְוָה, ''mīṣvā'' , plural ''mīṣvōt'' ; "commandment") refers to a commandment commanded by God to be performed as a religious duty. Jewish law () in large part consists of discus ...

developed in the

Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cente ...

, with fatwas being analogous to rabbinic ''responsa''. However, the emphasis on ''qiyas'' in classical Sunni legal theory is both more explicitly permissive than Talmudic law with respect to authorizing individual reason as a source of law, and more implicitly restrictive, in excluding other, unauthorized forms of reasoning.

Western legal systems

Early Islamic law developed a number of legal concepts that anticipated similar such concepts that later appeared in English

. Similarities exist between the royal English

contract A contract is a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties that creates, defines, and governs mutual rights and obligations between them. A contract typically involves the transfer of goods, services, money, or a promise to tran ...

protected by the action of

debt Debt is an obligation that requires one party, the debtor, to pay money or other agreed-upon value to another party, the creditor. Debt is a deferred payment, or series of payments, which differentiates it from an immediate purchase. The ...

and the Islamic ''Aqd'', between the English

assize of novel disseisin In English law, the assize of novel disseisin ("recent dispossession"; ) was an action to recover lands of which the plaintiff had been disseised, or dispossessed. It was one of the so-called "petty (possessory) assizes" established by Henry II i ...

and the Islamic ''Istihqaq'', and between the English

jury A jury is a sworn body of people (jurors) convened to hear evidence and render an impartiality, impartial verdict (a Question of fact, finding of fact on a question) officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a sentence (law), penalty o ...

and the Islamic ''Lafif'' in classical Maliki jurisprudence. The

law school A law school (also known as a law centre or college of law) is an institution specializing in legal education, usually involved as part of a process for becoming a lawyer within a given jurisdiction. Law degrees Argentina In Argentina, ...

s known as

Inns of Court The Inns of Court in London are the professional associations for barristers in England and Wales. There are four Inns of Court – Gray's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, Inner Temple and Middle Temple. All barristers must belong to one of them. They have ...

also parallel

Madrasah Madrasa (, also , ; Arabic: مدرسة , pl. , ) is the Arabic word for any type of educational institution, secular or religious (of any religion), whether for elementary instruction or higher learning. The word is variously transliterated '' ...

s. The methodology of legal

and reasoning by

analogy Analogy (from Greek ''analogia'', "proportion", from ''ana-'' "upon, according to" lso "against", "anew"+ ''logos'' "ratio" lso "word, speech, reckoning" is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject ( ...

('' Qiyas'') are also similar in both the Islamic and common law systems, as are the English

trust Trust often refers to: * Trust (social science), confidence in or dependence on a person or quality It may also refer to: Business and law * Trust law, a body of law under which one person holds property for the benefit of another * Trust (bus ...

and agency institutions to the Islamic ''

Waqf A waqf ( ar, وَقْف; ), also known as hubous () or '' mortmain'' property is an inalienable charitable endowment under Islamic law. It typically involves donating a building, plot of land or other assets for Muslim religious or charitabl ...

'' and ''

Hawala Hawala or hewala ( ar, حِوالة , meaning ''transfer'' or sometimes ''trust''), also known as in Persian, and or in Somali, is a popular and informal value transfer system based on the performance and honour of a huge network of money ...

'' institutions, respectively. Elements of Islamic law also have other parallels in Western legal systems. For example, the influence of Islam on the development of an international law of the sea can be discerned alongside that of the Roman influence.

George Makdisi George Abraham Makdisi was born in Detroit, Michigan, on May 15, 1920. He died in Media, Pennsylvania, on September 6, 2002. He was a professor of oriental studies. He studied first in the United States, and later in Lebanon. He then graduated in 1 ...

has argued that the madrasa system of attestation paralleled the legal scholastic system in the West, which gave rise to the modern university system. The triple status of '' faqih'' ("

master of law A Master of Laws (M.L. or LL.M.; Latin: ' or ') is an advanced postgraduate academic degree, pursued by those either holding an undergraduate academic law degree, a professional law degree, or an undergraduate degree in a related subject. In mos ...

"), ''

'' ("professor of

legal opinions In law, a legal opinion is in certain jurisdictions a written explanation by a judge or group of judges that accompanies an order or ruling in a case, laying out the rationale and legal principles for the ruling. Opinions are in those jurisdict ...

") and ''mudarris'' ("teacher"), conferred by the classical Islamic legal degree, had its equivalents in the medieval Latin terms '' magister'', ''

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

'' and ''

doctor Doctor or The Doctor may refer to: Personal titles * Doctor (title), the holder of an accredited academic degree * A medical practitioner, including: ** Physician ** Surgeon ** Dentist ** Veterinary physician ** Optometrist *Other roles ** ...

'', respectively, although they all came to be used synonymously in both East and West. Makdisi suggested that the medieval European doctorate, ''licentia docendi'' was modeled on the Islamic degree ''ijazat al-tadris wa-l-ifta’'', of which it is a word-for-word translation, with the term ''ifta’'' (issuing of fatwas) omitted. He also argued that these systems shared fundamental freedoms: the freedom of a professor to profess his personal opinion and the freedom of a student to pass judgement on what he is learning. There are differences between Islamic and Western legal systems. For example, Sharia classically recognizes only

natural persons In jurisprudence, a natural person (also physical person in some Commonwealth countries, or natural entity) is a person (in legal meaning, i.e., one who has its own legal personality) that is an individual human being, distinguished from the broad ...

, and never developed the concept of a

legal person In law, a legal person is any person or 'thing' (less ambiguously, any legal entity) that can do the things a human person is usually able to do in law – such as enter into contracts, sue and be sued, own property, and so on. The reason for ...

, or

corporation A corporation is an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law "born out of statute"; a legal person in legal context) and r ...

, i.e., a legal entity that limits the liabilities of its managers, shareholders, and employees; exists beyond the lifetimes of its founders; and that can own assets, sign contracts, and appear in court through representatives. Interest prohibitions imposed secondary costs by discouraging record keeping and delaying the introduction of modern accounting. Such factors, according to Timur Kuran, have played a significant role in retarding economic development in the Middle East. However, the rise of monopoly wealth and corporations have proven to also be detrimental to the economic equality of a society. Ziauddin Sardar also suggests that the promotion of equitable wealth distribution and suppression of monopoly capital are a part of Islam's message that emphasises genuine equity and justice.

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Harnischfeger, Johannes (2008). ''Democratization and Islamic Law – The Sharia Conflict in Nigeria''. Frankfurt; New York City: Campus Verlag and Chicago: University of Chicago Press (distributor). . * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

External links

* * *
''Islamic law''
– in ''The Oxford Dictionary of Islam'', via Oxford Islamic Studies Online *
Sharia Law
' – information and misconceptions about sharia law
''Sharia'' by Knut S. Vikør
– In ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics'', via Bridging Cultures, National Endowment for the Humanities & George Mason University
''Law'' by Norman Calder et al
– In ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World'', via Oxford Islamic Studies

– UNAA (United Nations)
Sharia Law in the International Legal Sphere
– Yale University
Private Arrangements: 'Recognizing Sharia' in Britain
– anthropologist John R. Bowen explains the working of Britain's sharia courts in a ''

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Division of Inheritance According to Qur'an

Explanation of "The Reward of the Omnipotent"
is a manuscript, in Arabic, from the late 19th or early 20th century about Sharia {{Authority control Sharia Islamic jurisprudence Islamic terminology Legal codes Religious legal systems Religious law

Etymology and usage

Use in religious texts

Contemporary usage

Historical origins

Doctrine and formation of traditional jurisprudence (''fiqh'')

Principles of jurisprudence (''uṣūl al-fiqh'' / ijtihad process)

Legal Sources of Sharia / Legalization of Ahkam ''Ahkam'' (, ar, أحكام "rulings", plural of ()) is an Islamic term with several meanings. In the Quran, the word ''hukm'' is variously used to mean arbitration, judgement, authority, or God in Islam, God's will. In the early Islamic peri ...

Ijtihad

= Labelling of behaviors (Fıqh, ''aḥkām'' or ''etiquettes'')

Aims of Sharia and public interest

Branches of law / Furū al Fiqh

Schools of law

Pre-modern Islamic legal system

Socio-political context

Social classes; Women, slaves, non-Muslims etc

Courts

Jurists

Modern legal reforms

Under colonial rule

Ottoman empire

Nation states

Islamization

Contemporary applications

In state laws

Types of legal systems

Constitutional law

Family law

Criminal law

Property law

Muslim-minority countries

Court procedures

Criminal cases

Civil cases

Diya

Role of fatwas

Role of ''hisba''

Contemporary debates and controversies

Compatibility with democracy

General Muslim views

Islamic political theories / Islamism Islamism (also often called political Islam or Islamic fundamentalism) is a political ideology which posits that modern states and regions should be reconstituted in constitutional, economic and judicial terms, in accordance with what is ...

Support and opposition

=Support

=Opposition

Compatibility with human rights

Topics

=Blasphemy

=Apostasy

=LGBT rights

=Women

=Slavery

Terrorism

Comparison with other legal systems

Jewish law

Western legal systems

See also

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

Further reading

External links

Legal Sources of Sharia / Legalization of
Ahkam ''Ahkam'' (, ar, أحكام "rulings", plural of ()) is an Islamic term with several meanings. In the Quran, the word ''hukm'' is variously used to mean arbitration, judgement, authority, or God in Islam, God's will. In the early Islamic peri ...

Islamic political theories /
Islamism Islamism (also often called political Islam or Islamic fundamentalism) is a political ideology which posits that modern states and regions should be reconstituted in constitutional, economic and judicial terms, in accordance with what is ...