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Definition
1- Sharia (Arabic شريعة Šarīʿa; [ʃaˈriːʕa], "way" or "path") is the sacred law of Islam. Most muslims believe Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law; namely, the divine revelations set forth in the Qur'an, and the sayings and example set by the Islamic Prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh ("jurisprudence") interprets and extends the application of Sharia to questions not directly addressed in the primary sources by including secondary sources. These secondary sources usually include the consensus of the religious scholars embodied in ijma, and analogy from the Qur'an and Sunnah through qiyas. Shia jurists replace qiyas analogy with 'aql, or "reason".
All Muslims believe Sharia is God's law, but differ as to what exactly it entails.[1] Modernists, traditionalists and fundamentalists all hold different views of Sharia, as do adherents to different schools of Islamic thought and scholarship. Different countries and cultures have varying interpretations of Sharia as well.
Sharia deals with many topics addressed by secular law, including crime, politics and economics, as well as personal matters such as sexuality, hygiene, diet, prayer, and fasting. Where it enjoys official status, Sharia is applied by Islamic judges, or qadis. The imam has varying responsibilities depending on the interpretation of Sharia; while the term is commonly used to refer to the leader of communal prayers, the imam may also be a scholar, religious leader or political leader.
2- Also meaning "path" in Arabic, sharia guides all aspects of Muslim life including daily routines, familial and religious obligations, and financial dealings. It is derived primarily from the Quran and the Sunna--the sayings, practices, and teachings of the Prophet Mohammed. Precedents and analogy applied by Muslim scholars are used to address new issues. The consensus of the Muslim community also plays a role in defining this theological manual.
Sharia developed several hundred years after the Prophet Mohammed's death in 632 CE as the Islamic empire expanded to the edge of North Africa in the West and to China in the East. Since the Prophet Mohammed was considered the most pious of all believers, his life and ways became a model for all other Muslims and were collected by scholars into what is known as the hadith. As each locality tried to reconcile local customs and Islam, hadith literature grew and developed into distinct schools of Islamic thought: the Sunni schools, Hanbali, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanafi; and the Shiite school, Ja'fari. Named after the scholars that inspired them, they differ in the weight each applies to the sources from which sharia is derived, the Quran, hadith, Islamic scholars, and consensus of the community. The Hanbali school, known for following the most Orthodox form of Islam, is embraced in Saudi Arabia and by the Taliban. The Hanafi school, known for being the most liberal and the most focused on reason and analogy, is dominant among Sunnis in Central Asia, Egypt, Pakistan, India, China, Turkey, the Balkans, and the Caucasus. The Maliki school is dominant in North Africa and the Shafi'i school in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, and Yemen. Shia Muslims follow the Ja'fari school, most notably in Shia-dominant Iran. The distinctions have more impact on the legal systems in each country, however, than on individual Muslims, as many do not adhere to one school in their personal lives.
3- The Sharia started to come into being with the creation of the Quran, Islam's most important holy book, immediately following the death of Muhammad in 632. An important concept to understand is that Muhammad himself, like so many major world religious figures, wrote nothing himself. What we know of him--his sayings, teachings, and dictates--come to us from his followers and their later interpreters.
Sharia is the entire body of Islamic law. The term literally means "the way to the water source." It is a wide-ranging body of law and personal rules, regulating matters of jurisprudence, hygiene, politics, business, banking, family, sexuality, diet, and society. It is meant to serve as the governing principle both within the Muslim world and for Muslims living outside it.
The most serious misconception is that the Sharia and the Quran are synonymous. They are not. The Quran is the most important component of Sharia, but Islamic law is drawn from many other sources as well. A second major source is the Sunnah, or personal example of the Prophet Muhammad. Another misconception is that Sharia is somehow codified, or otherwise a monolithic body of law. This is untrue. There are numerous schools of thought regarding what is and is not Sharia, with both minor and major disputes between them being common.
A well-known term involving Sharia is the Fatwah. This is an opinion by an Islamic legal scholar. In Sunni Islam, these are non-binding, but in Shia Islam they could be if the scholar in question has sufficient status and support. The most infamous example of the latter is when Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran pronounced a death sentence on author Salman Rushdie in 1989. In modern times, Islamofascist terrorist leaders such as Osama bin Laden have taken to issuing "Fatwahs," but as these individuals are typically not Islamic legal scholars of any kind, these so-called Fatwahs have dubious standing within mainstream Islam.
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Necessity
Although there are many different interpretations of Sharia, and differing perspectives on each interpretation, there is consensus among Muslims that Sharia is a reflection of God's will for humankind. Sharia must therefore be, in its purest sense, perfect and unchanging.[50] The evolution or refinement of Sharia is an effort to more perfectly reflect God's will.[51]
In a 2007 University of Maryland poll (PDF), more than 60 percent of the populations in Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, and Indonesia responded that democracy was a good way to govern their respective countries, while at the same time, an average of 71 percent agreed with requiring "strict application of [sharia] law in every Islamic country." Whether democracy and Islam can coexist is a topic of heated debate. Some Islamists argue democracy is a purely Western concept imposed on Muslim countries. Others feel Islam necessitates a democratic system and that democracy has a basis in the Quran since "mutual consultation" among the people is commended (42:38 Quran). John L. Esposito and John O. Voll explain the debate in a 2001 article in the journal Humanities.
Dual Legal System. Many majority Muslim countries have a dual system in which the government is secular but Muslims can choose to bring familial and financial disputes to sharia courts. The exact jurisdiction of these courts varies from country to country, but usually includes marriage, divorce, inheritance, and guardianship. Examples can be seen in Nigeria and Kenya, which have sharia courts that rule on family law for Muslims. A variation exists in Tanzania, where civil courts apply sharia or secular law according to the religious backgrounds of the defendants. Several countries, including Lebanon and Indonesia, have mixed jurisdiction courts based on residual colonial legal systems and supplemented with sharia. Western countries are also exploring the idea of allowing Muslims to apply Islamic law in familial and financial disputes. In late 2008, Britain officially allowed sharia tribunals (NYT) governing marriage, divorce, and inheritance to make legally binding decisions if both parties agreed. The new system is in line with separate mediation allowed for Anglican and Jewish communities in England. Criminal law remains under the gavel of the existing legal system. "There is no reason why principles of sharia law, or any other religious code, should not be the basis for mediation," Britain's top judge, Lord Nicholas Phillips, said in a July 2008 speech (PDF). Supporters of this initiative, such as the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, argue that it would help maintain social cohesion (BBC) in European societies increasingly divided by religion. However, some research suggests the process to be discriminatory toward women (BBC). Other analysts suggest the system has led to grey areas. Britain's Muslims come from all over the world, Ishtiaq Ahmed, a spokesperson for the Council for Mosques in England, told the BBC, noting that this makes it hard to discern at times "where the rulings of the sharia finish and long-held cultural practices start." Sharia has recently become a topic of political concern in the United States. The state of Oklahoma will consider a ballot measure in November 2010 on whether to ban the use of sharia law in court cases, which supporters are calling "a preemptive strike against Islamic law" (ABCNews). Several opponents of new mosques being built around the United States, including one near Ground Zero, have cited fear of the spread of sharia as a reason for opposition. And about a third of Americans in an August 2010 Newsweek poll suspect U.S. President Barack Obama sympathizes with Islamist goals (PDF) to impose sharia.
Government under God. In those Muslim countries where Islam is the official religion listed in the constitution, sharia is declared to be a source, or the source, of the laws. Examples include Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates, where the governments derive their legitimacy from Islam. In Pakistan, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq, among others, it is also forbidden to enact legislation that is antithetical to Islam. Saudi Arabia employs one of the strictest interpretations of sharia. Women are not allowed to drive, are under the guardianship of male relatives at all times, and must be completely covered in public. Elsewhere, governments are much more lenient, as in the United Arab Emirates, where alcohol is tolerated. Non-Muslims are not expected to obey sharia and in most countries, they are the jurisdiction of special committees and adjunct courts under the control of the government.
Completely Secular. Muslim countries where the government is declared to be secular in the constitution include Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Chad, Somalia, and Senegal. Islamist parties run for office occasionally in these countries and sharia often influences local customs. Popular Islamist groups are often viewed as a threat by existing governments. As in Azerbaijan in the 1990s, secularism is sometimes upheld by severe government crackdowns on Islamist groups and political parties. Similar clashes have occurred in Turkey. Under the suspicion that the majority party, the Islamist Justice and Development Party, was trying to establish sharia, Turkey's chief prosecutor petitioned the constitutional court (Economist) in March 2008 to bar the party from politics altogether. One of the politicians indicted, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told Newsweek, "Turkey has achieved what people said could never be achieved--a balance between Islam, democracy, secularism and modernity." Secular Muslim countries are a minority, however, and the popularity of Islamist political parties are narrowing the gap between religion and state.
Sources for the Shaira law
Various sources of Islamic law are used by Islamic jurisprudence to elucidate the Sharia, the body of Islamic law.[1] The primary sources, accepted universally by all Muslims, are the Qur'an and Sunnah. The Qur'an is the holy scripture of Islam, believed by Muslims to be the direct and unaltered word of Allah. The Sunnah consists of the religious actions and quotations of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and narrated through his Companions and Imams- (as per the beliefs of the school of Ahle-Sunnah and Ahle-Shia).[1] However, some schools of jurisprudence use different methods to judge the source's level of authenticity.
As Islamic regulations stated in the primary sources do not explicitly deal with every conceivable eventuality, jurisprudence must refer to resources and authentic documents to find the correct course of action.[1] According to Sunni schools of law, secondary sources of Islamic law are consensus among Muslims jurists, analogical deduction, al-Ra'y; independent reasoning, benefit for the Community and Custom.[2] Hanafi school frequently relies on analogical deduction and independent reasoning, and Maliki and Hanbali generally use the Hadith instead. Shafi'i school uses Sunnah more than Hanafi and analogy more than two others.[1][3] Among Shia, Usuli school of Ja'fari jurisprudence uses four sources, which are Qur'an, Sunnah, consensus and 'aql. They use ijma under special conditions and rely on 'aql (intellect) to find general principles based on the Qur'an and Sunnah, and use usul al-fiqh as methodology to interpret the Qur'an and Sunnah in different circumstances, and Akhbari Jafaris rely more on Hadith and reject ijtihad.[1][4] According to Momen, despite considerable differences in the principles of jurisprudence between Shia and the four Sunni schools of law, there are fewer differences in the practical application of jurisprudence to ritual observances and social transactions.[5]
Perhaps the two greatest original founders of Sharia law were Malik ibn Anas and Ibn al-Shaf'i. Anas established the Maliki school of jurisprudence. Al-Shaf'i was one of Anas' students; he disagreed with his teacher about the reliability of the hadith. He felt that it was necessary to trace each hadith from the time of Muhammad through its chain of devout Muslims. This concern led to Islamic scholars considering "... which hadith were true and which were not." Needless to say this led to conflicts among scholars as to the proper application of Sharia law.
Ibn al-Shafi'i promoted the use of additional sources for Shari'a law:
The technique of "... reasoning by analogy in order to develop new laws from existing laws." As the culture evolves, new types of problems emerge that need to be dealt with. Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) used to prevent the development of a severely defective human embryo is one example.
The technique of accepting the consensus of a Muslim community. The reasoning is that Allah would not allow an entire community to be in error on a basic Islamic principle.
There are four main schools of Sharia law:
Hanbali: This is the most conservative school of Shari'a. It is used in Saudi Arabia and some states in Northern Nigeria.
Hanifi: This is the most liberal school, and is relatively open to modern ideas.
Maliki: This is based on the practices of the people of Medina during Muhammad's lifetime.
Shafi'i: This is a conservative school that emphasizes on the opinions of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad.
What applies within one school of Sharia law does not necessarily apply in the other schools. For example, the Maliki Law School accepts evidence of pregnancy as proof that an unmarried woman has either committed adultery or been raped. The other schools "... do not recognize evidence of pregnancy as proof of Zina [Adultery]." 3
Islamic law is known as sharia law, and sharia means the path to follow God's law. Sharia law is eclectic in its approach to guide the individual in most daily matters. Sharia law controls, rules and regulates all public and private behaviors.
The different schools of Sharia differ on the details of the sources of Sharia law. The sources that they all agree upon are:
- The first and primary element of Shari law is the The Glorious Qur'an.
- The second element of sharia law is known as the Sunnah (The tradition of the prophet).
Other sources accepted by some schools are:
- The third element of sharia is known as the Ijma'a.
- The fourth element of sharia law is the Qiyas.
- The fifth element of sharia law is "all encompassing".
Examples
This is a do it yourself part of this article. If you want to know examples about Sharia law, and how it is ruling, you can follow different versions of this law, in different parts of the world where it is implemented, and see for yourself.
Conclusion
Now after the above information, we see the following:
- Sharia is a very significant part of the Muslim belief, as it puts in practice, what Muslims are commanded to do by Allah, and Muhammad.
- Regardless the degree of Sharia strictness, some would prefer a strict version, and others will prefer a lesser strict one, it is desired by all Muslims, as it is retrieving its authority, and importance from Allah, and his prophet.
- If my faith is telling me that I have my own law given to me by Allah, and his prophet, and this law is capable of ruling all aspects of my life, wouldn’t I very much prefer it over any other law made by man?!
