Sharia

For other uses, see Islamic laws.

Fiqh redirects here.

Sharia, Sharia law, or Islamic law (شريعة | ʃaˈriːʕa) is the religious law forming part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam, particularly the Quran and the Hadith. In Arabic, the term sharīʿah refers to God's immutable divine law and is contrasted with fiqh, which refers to its human scholarly interpretations. The manner of its application in modern times has been a subject of dispute between Muslim traditionalists and Islamic reformists.

Quotes

Alphabetized by author or source

• Just like Nazism started with Hitler's vision, the Islamic vision is a caliphate, a society ruled by Sharia law, in which women who have sex before marriage are stoned to death, homosexuals are beaten, and apostates like me are killed. Sharia law is as inimical to liberal democracy as Nazism.
  • Ayaan Hirsi Ali, interview with the Evening Standard (2007)

• Šaría je právo náboženské a platí jen pro muslimy – obdobně jako talmudická halacha platí jen pro židy. Židé a křesťané ani v muslimských zemích nebyli nikdy šaríí vázáni, řídili se vlastním právem.
  • Sharia is a religious law and applies only to Muslims - just as the Talmudic Halakha applies only to Jews. Even in Muslim countries, Jews and Christians were never bound by Sharia; they followed their own law.
  • Tomáš Halík, "Tomáš Halík: Desatero argumentů ke strachu z islámu" (In Czech), ceskapozice.cz, 17 October 2015.

• The canon of the shariah and the Church, closely linked with the laws of the bourgeosie, treated women as a commodity, a thing to be bought and sold by the male... Just as the bourgeosie had made the worker into its proletarian, so had the savage ancient canons of the shariah, the Church, feudalism and the bourgeosie, reduced woman to the proletariat of the man.
  • Enver Hoxha (1986) The Artful Albanian, (Chatto & Windus, London) ISBN 0701129700

• For Muslims the Islamic Shari'ah, or Divine Law, is the concrete embodiment of the Divine Will as elaborated in the Quran for the followers of Islam; and from the Islamic point of view the scriptures of all divinely revealed religions, each of which possesses its own Shari'ah, have the same function in those religions. For Muslims, who accept the Quran as the Word of God, therefore, following the Divine Law is basic and foundational for the practice of their religion.
  • Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (2015)
• Throughout almost all of Islam's history, a single interpretation of shari'ah was never adopted and enforced over society as a codified system of law. In fact, unlike in its English rendition "Sharia Law" where we use shari'ah as an adjective describing the noun "law," in original Arabic shari'ah is simply a noun. The specific adoption of an interpretation of shari'ah as law by a ruler was not religiously mandatory, and it didn't happen in history. Unitary legal systems were a European idea, and worse, the desire to merge law with religious canons was a specifically Catholic pre-Reformation idea. This realization had profound implications for my beliefs. Rather than justice―legal consistency―being derived from Islamism, Islamism relied on Western concepts of justice to get off the ground. I buried my head in my hands as I slowly realized: we Islamists were the bastard children of colonialism.
  • Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey out of Islamic Extremism (2013), p. 191

• To even say, ‘What is shariah? Does anyone go by shariah today?’, is kufr, declares the Fatawa-i-Rizvia. Even if the words have been uttered to taunt others, they constitute a grave sin. To say, ‘We do not recognize shariah, we go by custom,’ is kufr, it declares. The ulema issue a fatwa prohibiting Muslims from joining processions of polytheists. A man says, ‘Issuing a fatwa not to join processions of polytheists, etc., is sheer lathbazi.’ The utterance is reported to the ulema. The utterance constitutes denigration of shariah, the Fatawa-i-Rizvia rules, and denigration of shariah is kufr. The man’s wife is free of his nikah.
  To question ijma (consensus) or taqlid (literal adherence) is kufr, they declare. ... Not to believe in Fiqh is kufr, they declare. He who does not accept Fiqh is Satan, they declare.
  • About Sharia in the Fatawa-i-Rizvia. Arun Shourie - The World of Fatwas Or The Sharia in Action (2012, Harper Collins)

• For those who practise tyranny and deprive others of their rights, I will be harsh and stern, but for those who follow the law, I will be most soft and tender.
  • Umar, as quoted in Al Farooq, Umar (1944) by Muhammad Husayn Haykal, Ch. 5, p. 123

Quran

The Quran in Wikisource

• Original:
  ⁴⁸وَأَنْزَلْنَا إِلَيْكَ الْكِتَابَ بِالْحَقِّ مُصَدِّقًا لِمَا بَيْنَ يَدَيْهِ مِنَ الْكِتَابِ وَمُهَيْمِنًا عَلَيْهِ فَاحْكُمْ بَيْنَهُمْ بِمَا أَنْزَلَ اللَّهُ وَلَا تَتَّبِعْ أَهْوَاءَهُمْ عَمَّا جَاءَكَ مِنَ الْحَقِّ لِكُلٍّ جَعَلْنَا مِنْكُمْ شِرْعَةً وَمِنْهَاجًا وَلَوْ شَاءَ اللَّهُ لَجَعَلَكُمْ أُمَّةً وَاحِدَةً وَلَكِنْ لِيَبْلُوَكُمْ فِي مَا آتَاكُمْ فَاسْتَبِقُوا الْخَيْرَاتِ إِلَى اللَّهِ مَرْجِعُكُمْ جَمِيعًا فَيُنَبِّئُكُمْ بِمَا كُنْتُمْ فِيهِ تَخْتَلِفُونَ
  • Abdullah Yusuf Ali translation in The Holy Qur'an: Text, Translation and Commentary:
    ⁴⁸To thee We sent the Scripture in truth, confirming the scripture that came before it, and guarding it in safety: so judge between them by what Allah hath revealed, and follow not their vain desires, diverging from the Truth that hath come to thee. To each among you have we prescribed a law and an open way. If Allah had so willed, He would have made you a single people, but (His plan is) to test you in what He hath given you: so strive as in a race in all virtues. The goal of you all is to Allah; it is He that will show you the truth of the matters in which ye dispute; Translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali in The Holy Qur'an: Text, Translation and Commentary.
  • Marmaduke Pickthall translation in The Meaning of the Glorious Koran:
    ⁴⁸And unto thee have We revealed the Scripture with the truth, confirming whatever Scripture was before it, and a watcher over it. So judge between them by that which Allah hath revealed, and follow not their desires away from the truth which hath come unto thee. For each We have appointed a divine law and a traced-out way. Had Allah willed He could have made you one community. But that He may try you by that which He hath given you (He hath made you as ye are). So vie one with another in good works. Unto Allah ye will all return, and He will then inform you of that wherein ye differ.
  • The Qur'an (القرآن), Sura 5:48 (The Dinner Table, سورة المائدة).

• Original:
  ¹⁸ثُمَّ جَعَلْنَاكَ عَلَى شَرِيعَةٍ مِنَ الْأَمْرِ فَاتَّبِعْهَا وَلَا تَتَّبِعْ أَهْوَاءَ الَّذِينَ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ
  • Marmaduke Pickthall translation in The Meaning of the Glorious Koran:
    ¹⁸And now have We set thee (O Muhammad) on a clear road of (Our) commandment; so follow it, and follow not the whims of those who know not.
  • The Qur'an (القرآن), Sura 45:18 (Crouching, سورة الجاثية).

External links

• Islamic law – in The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, via Oxford Islamic Studies Online
• 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 site on sharia in Muslim Countries – 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 Boston Review article
• 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